Vignetting Life

The Odyssey

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:45:56 +0000

We had made this video more than a year ago for the send-off of our seniors’ batch. It was recently posted on the Institute Facebook page. Here is the text of the poem I had written for those who wanted it (appears at the end of the video). The poem holds true even for my batch- I like to think it’s timeless:

What a journey this was, all the way through
We’ve had so much to see and do
So much we’ve done along this path
So much we’ve learnt from the very start

We’ve learnt the difference between boys and men
The value of a word, the strength of a pen
We’ve learnt to cherish life’s twists and bends
The blessings of a mentor, the importance of friends

The time to leave has come I fear
I end the odyssey I began here
And I recount all the days gone by
Of my life here at VJTI

My memories are what I’ll take along
And the bonds of friendship I’ve tempered strong
To my alma mater, I bid goodbye
And begin the journey to touch the sky!

[RSS feed readers might want to click through if you can't see the video]

DeepWish- Putting Money Where Your Mouth Is

Mahafreed Irani — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:38:37 +0000

Ed Note: This is a guest post is authored by Mahafreed Irani. Mahafreed is a journalist with the Times of India in Mumbai. She blogs here and tweets here. /Ed Note.

While thousands of Mumbaikars spent their weekend lighting crackers on Marine Drive, Twitter members like Anaggh Desai decided to use the power of Web 2.0 to raise money for charity. On Saturday morning, the 46-year-old Mumbai-based entrepreneur asked people to send him a Deepwish (Diwali greeting on Twitter), “For every wish received, I will contribute 0.25p to NGO Goonj’’. Excited by the idea, 41 other tweeple (members of the social networking site) decided to donate amounts ranging from 50p to Rs 5 for every greeting tweeted at them. By the end of two days, an amount of Rs 55,000 was collected from tweeple all over India and even the US and Saudi Arabia towards `educating the girl child’.

On his blog, Desai, who otherwise regularly tweets one-liners, wrote, “I am putting my money where my mouth is and will donate Rs 100 for every Diwali gift received, Rs 5 for every comment on my blog, 50p for every SMS greeting and 25p for every wish on Facebook, Twitter or via email’’.

Excited by the idea, popular tweeple like @b50 mobilized people and posted updates like “476 tweets x Rs 63.75 = 30,345. Those were the effort of 42 people on per tweet basis,’’ from time to time, to thank “ Twitteristan’’ and get more contributors.

While some deepwishes were as brief as, “Play it safe’’ the idea was to get creative and tweet “some genuine, original heartfelt stuff’’. So timelines were clogged with wishful updates asking for, `friendly Indo-Pak ties, non-polluting crackers and no water scarcity’. Actress Gul Panag tweeted, “I wish I could be 4 again, and 12 and 16 and 18. Meanwhile wish to donate to charity.’’

This is not the first time members of the networking site have come together to raise money for charity. Indian tweeple have earlier participated in twestivals, multi-charity fundraising campaigns organised on Twitter.

Setting up a New Computer

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:21:30 +0000

Given the occasion of Dhanteras has just passed us by, I presume quite a few people would have bought new computers. In fact- I’m expecting a new computer to be delivered to my lab soon. Here are some of the things I do when I have to set up a new computer for myself or any of my friends:

The Operating System

Most computers come pre-installed with Windows these days. So, by and large, the Operating System installation is taken care of. If not, and if the end user in question wishes to have Windows in the long run- the first thing I do is to install Windows.

If you’ve bought your computer recently and it came pre-installed with Windows Vista- you may have the option to upgrade to Windows 7 when it releases. (Bonus tip: You could try your hand at winning a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate at Manan’s launch party in Mumbai on October 24th). If you want Ubuntu, you can download a copy here or request a CD here.

During the Windows installation (ideally during- but you can do this after the installation also) one of the most important steps I take is to make sure that there is a separate partition made for the data and for the OS install. For Windows- the OS is installed by default in the C drive. I usually keep about 15-20GB for the C drive. The remaining space on the hard drive is kept for one or more partitions in which the data is going to be kept.

Even if I install Windows, I usually (for me- always, for others- depending on whether they want to do so) also keep an extra 10-15GB partition vacant. I install a Linux distribution in this partition- my favourite is Ubuntu. I recommend this to others because a Linux distribution serves as a great backup to boot into and gain access to your data should you face any problems with corruption or viruses with Windows. You can easily set your computer to boot into Windows by default for everyday usage- by modifying the bootloader settings. The bootloader is what enables you to select and starts which Operating System you would like to use when you turn on your computer. Prolific Ubuntu user, Aysiu’s most excellent tutorials should help you with your Ubuntu install. Again- if you’re installing only Ubuntu- make sure you have a separate partition for your data. You can do this by setting the mount point of your root directory (denoted by a single forward slash- /) to a small 10-15GB partition and setting the mount point of your data partition to “/home”.

When I get a computer for myself- I always install Linux because there are a lot of things I prefer to do only in Linux. The key here is to install Linux after you’ve installed Windows- if you’re installing Windows at all. The bootloader installed by Linux is usually much better at dealing with multiple Operating Systems than that installed by Windows. Dealing with a dedicated data partition can get tricky here. What I do is to create a separate data partition during the Windows install (let say the D drive), then log into Windows, remap all the folders in the home folder (My Documents, My Pictures, etc) to equivalent newly made folders in the D drive thus: Right Click on the folder > Properties > Location > Move > Select the equivalent folder you’ve created in the D drive. Then, during the Ubuntu install, I simply set the mount point of this partition as “/data”. Then, in order to remap the folders in the home folder here, I add entries to the fstab file. For example, if I have to remap the Documents folder in my home directory (my username is “sengupta”, so my home directory is “/home/sengupta”) to the Documents folder in “/data”, I add the following line to the fstab file (located in /etc/);

/data/Documents/ /home/sengupta/Documents/ none bind

You can modify your boot menu order by modifying the file “/boot/grub/menu.lst”. You can change the countdown time by modifying the number next to “timeout”. You can have the menu hidden by default (and have it reveal itself only if you press ESC within the countdown time, you can change the default OS selection, you can reorient the order of the Operating Systems and more. Make sure you back up your original menu.lst though. Also, you can only make changes to the menu.lst file (or for that matter to the fstab file) using superuser privileges. You can perform the two actions on the terminal thus:

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.backup
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

I strongly suggest you have a friend around who is more experienced in these matters while you’re making such modifications to your computer.

Setting up Windows

Now that the Operating Systems have been set up, we see how to go about setting up Windows.

The first thing I do is to fire up Internet Explorer- then download and install Firefox. I then proceed to install my favourite addons. To make this easy, I’ve made them available here. The best of the lot is the addon XMarks (formerly Foxmarks). This enables you to sync your bookmarks across computers. It also syncs bookmarklets- making things even more convenient. I also download and install Opera and Google Chrome- both excellent browsers. Opera syncs my bookmarks across devices- such as my phone. Its session management features are better than any other browser I’ve come across yet and the notes feature is an excellent addition- great for research. Having access to these notes on the go is a blessing. Chrome’s raw speed and performance makes it perfect as a quick-launch/quick-read browser. At this point, there is fairly limited extensibility for Chrome compared to the others, so I use it as a secondary browser.

Here are some of the other softwares I install:

Microsoft Office: The only real reason I still use Windows. In my honest opinion- the Office suite is their finest work yet.
7-Zip: A great hassle free tool to open and create most types of archive formats.
µTorrent: A lightweight, but powerful bittorrent client for- you know- seeding Linux distributions and other FOSS software.
VLC: A very useful media player that can play pretty much any media format you throw at it.
Foxit Reader: An excellent alternative to Adobe’s Reader. Very fast and does not hog system resources.
IrfanView: A small but incredibly powerful image editing application.
Picasa: A great photo management tool- I use this to upload photos to Picasaweb (for backups), to Facebook and to Flickr.
Security: I prefer ESET’s Smart Security suite- it’s core antivirus program, NOD32 is written extensively in Assembly which makes it fast and nonintrusive. Free antivirus programs such as AVG and Spybot are pretty good too.
Dropbox: Excellent for backing up important files and syncing them across computers. Also allows you to share certain folders with friends.
CCleaner: Great for maintaining your computer- helps remove unnecessary data, cleans up your registry, helps manage installations and allows you to modify which applications are launched at startup.
iTunes/Songbird: To manage your music collection. I’ve prefer iTunes thus far primarily because of iTunes U.

Optional:

Filezilla, CutePDF, Nokia PCSuite, Notepad++, TeraCopy, Infrarecorder, Auslogics Disk Defrag

Setting up Ubuntu

I choose Ubuntu because it is, in my opinion one of the more user friendly distributions around. Of course- when I say “user” friendly- the term is very relative- it depends on the user. But generally speaking- it’s a great distribution for someone who is interesting in learning about Linux to start with.

As far as installing software is concerned- things are very simple indeed. In the Linux world, large numbers of software packages are generally housed together in “repositories” on certain Servers around the internet. These repositories are generally very well maintained and regularly updated. These repositores can be located in multiple locations. There is in fact an internal Ubuntu repository at IIT Bombay as well. For Ubuntu, there are two main ways of installing new software:

The first is a GUI based method. Open up “Add/Remove Applications” (last option under “Applications” at the top of the screen). Either search for the applications you want or scroll through a category of your choice. Select all the applications you wish to install and hit “apply changes”. That’s it. The required packages will be downloaded and installed. The second method involves the command line. Say I wish to install VLC and Opera. I can achieve that using the following command:

sudo apt-get install vlc opera

Of course- I can install as many packages as I please- by replacing “vlc opera” in the above command by the names of the packages I want. A typical command I issue to set my Ubuntu up would be this:

sudo apt-get install vim-full build-essential manpages-dev gparted scilab octave3.0 python-matplotlib python-profiler python python-scipy python-numpy python-sympy python-doc mayavi2 maxima opera vlc mplayer gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly cheese amarok ssh wine texmaker

Issue this command- leave your computer for a while to allow it to download and install everything- when you’re back- everything’s installed. Of course- there are a couple of hoops to go through if you need to install something that’s beta, or commercial- fairly simple for the most part- they usually involve adding/enabling the repository sources and authenticating them.

To know more about any of the packages, say vim-full, type:

aptitude show vim-full

In Ubuntu, you needn’t upgrade every individual package- you can upgrade all packages at once. To do this- your package manager must first be updated about the status of new packages- and then your package manager must to told to upgrade all your packages:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Distribution upgrades require a dist-upgrade. And of course- you can use a GUI if you’re more comfortable with it- Go to System > Administration >Update manager.

I keep a list of useful Ubuntu Packages here for my reference.

I’m Back- Again

Aditya Sengupta — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:42:03 +0000

Guess who’s back?

It has been quite a while since my last post. The blog’s been dying of neglect- it seemed right to attempt a resuscitation.

In recent news- I’m now pursuing a research fellowship at IIT Bombay. This is an MHRD funded project that aims to develop and deploy open source simulation packages equivalent to MATLAB and OrCAD. My area of interest here is Control Systems and the tool I use is Scilab- though I have been trying my hand at Python (which is also used extensively under this project). Do let me know if you’re ever in the vicinity of the Controls and Computing Lab there.

In my spare time, I’ve been working on a pet project in the Siemens High Voltage lab at my alma mater VJTI (feels funny calling myself an alumnus considering I was a student there just a few months ago). This involves automating the control of the Pulse Transformer there- something that can easily be extended to other equipment in the lab and elsewhere. Both projects are fairly interdisciplinary and immensely satisfying.

I haven’t been attending as many events as I had been while I was back at VJTI- so this weekend’s Barcamp turned out to be a welcome relief, if only to remind me of the hustle and bustle of VJTI. More about that in a future post.

I’ve also been following some very interesting projects and endeavours at VJTI- There is a LOT of good stuff happening. Some efforts are fairly visible, while there are a few gems in the shadows.

While I’ve been away from this blog- I’ve been trying to maintain an “aggregation” blog where I post everything that’s between a blog post and a tweet. I’ve found posterous to be a great way to conveniently share stuff online.

A couple of months ago, I was asked to write an article for the Times Group on what one could do if one was benched at work or had his/her placement deferred. It was published in Mumbai and Bangalore Mirror.

Today I found out that I was featured in an article last year- I hadn’t a clue. The article was about the Mumbai Terror Attacks that I’ve written about earlier.

I really hope I blog more often now. I’m getting tired of doing comeback posts. Got something you think I should talk about? Email it in to ‘ideas’ at this domain.

#mumbai- Role of Twitter during the Mumbai Terror Attacks

Aditya Sengupta — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:51:03 +0000

Last week, I wrote an article on the role of Twitter during the Mumbai Terror Attacks that was published in NewsCorp’s Australian news website, news.com.au (on the front page at the time!). It started off with an editor from the website getting in touch with me (through a feedback email address listed on this very site) regarding the Twitter marathon I was on at the time. Here is the text of the article:

#mumbai: three days as a Twitter journalist

LAST Thursday’s terrorist attack in Mumbai in which more than 180 people were killed was a watershed moment for citizen journalism. City residents published minute-by-minute updates to the internet using social media platforms like Twitter, providing the latest facts along with local detail and context as the atrocity unfolded. Major news outlets could not match the detail and pace of their reporting. Aditya Sengupta, a 21-year-old Mumbai student, was one of them. Here, he reflects on the attack and the role of citizen journalists in the event.

I had just gotten home from a very long day at college and was going through my recent emails and social network updates when I saw a couple of very shocking messages.

A quick search through the web and a couple of frenzied phone calls confirmed the start of what was going to be one of the bloodiest and most horrific days in Mumbai’s history.

One of the most interesting things to have emerged from last week’s terror attacks in Mumbai is the significant role played by social media in the coverage of the tragedy – particularly the micro-blogging website Twitter.

While chaotic, disorganised and unverified, Twitter provided fast and helpful updates to the carnage that was underway in the heart of the city.

Updates started appearing on Twitter several minutes before those on local news channels and roughly an hour before they did on CNN and BBC, with Twitter users speculating about loud blasts emanating from various places in and around Colaba, South Mumbai.

Reports of gunshots at several places soon followed, sparking speculation of a clash between gangs and police. Subsequent updates about grenade attacks, fires and hostage situations at other locations made it clear that this was no gang war.

Because of the nature of Twitter, updates were passed on by “retweeting” them – reposting someone else’s update and, ideally, giving credit to the original author. Because of this the information was spread far and wide very fast indeed.

After the initial incredulity and shock, and after the news channels had well and truly caught on, a lot of speculation and guesswork gave way to more accurate updates, largely sourced from various local news channels.

Several constructive actions and initiatives were taken by Twitter users, such as publicising the descriptions of one of the terrorists, the cars that they were said to have carjacked and the fact that they had even carjacked a police vehicle.

Other useful information such as links to video streams of local news channels and lists of important phone numbers (helplines, embassies and consulates) were quickly posted and disseminated.

The human face of Twitter took on another dimension when local users offered to try and call the friends and family of foreigners. What started on Twitter eventually grew into the Mumbai Help blog. I remember trying to call the phone numbers that a commenter on the blog said belonged to Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg. They were eventually found dead at Nariman House (Mumbai Chabad House).

Scans of the lists of dead and injured obtained by a blogger were sent to and posted on the Mumbai Help blog. A request for help on Twitter resulted in the images being transcribed into searchable text and republished. Calls for donations of specific types of blood were also posted and widely retweeted.

In a very short while, several websites and blogs collated much of the information on Twitter, the mainstream media and other websites to create pages that served to be real-time compendiums of information – such as those at Pinstorm, my own website Vignetting Life and of course, Mumbai Help.

Twitter users, photographers and bloggers Vinu Ranganathan and Arun Shanbhag posted several first hand photographs of the event, which were eventually used widely by the mainstream media.

As the hours wore by, the importance of attribution of one’s source of news for each tweet became clear when rumours started spreading through the micro-blogging site. One particular rumour spread very far – that the terrorists may have been accessing the internet and the Indian Government had asked Twitter users to stop reporting.

The appearance of the tweet on the BBC website added to the confusion, since a number of Twitter users cited the same BBC article as a source of their information, creating something of a circular reference. Subsequent rumours were quenched quickly, with Twitter users correcting other Twitter users and providing references.

The truth to the speculation as to whether Twitter was actually used as a source of information by the terrorists remains to be seen. Most Twitter users sourced a majority of their tweets providing information about the siege from the mainstream media and by retweeting others who had sourced their posts from the mainstream media. Furthermore, many Twitter users showed a substantial amount of restraint regarding operational details and troop positions, despite the fact that such details were broadcast on some news channels.

While the primary source of information on Twitter about the Mumbai attacks, the #mumbai search, had a substantial amount of redundant, unusable and irrelevant information, it nonetheless provided for a lot of important updates and clarifications. While Twitter might not necessarily be a reliable source of information, it sure is a quick and useful one.

One reason I put the help page on my blog and started going on a Twitter “marathon” was because of the desire to use the resources at my disposal in the most productive manner I could.

Another reason is the fact that I used to study about 10-15 minutes away from most of the attack sites back in junior college. Most of them are places I have been to and have some familiarity with. I would regularly frequent the British Council library which is pretty much in between the major attack sites.

Most of my updates regarding the attacks were sourced from several mainstream media channels and from other Twitter users I trust.

[original location]

It was originally meant to be an article for the Technology section. So you can imagine my surprise when I received a flurry of messages saying that my article was on the front page of the website. I was in college at the time and knew that it would not stay there for long. So I asked my friend Kushagra to get a screenshot of the page for posterity’s sake:

Shot through the Heart

Aditya Sengupta — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 01:34:05 +0000

Final Edit 00:20 Nov 30

Please note that the following post applies to an event that is currently underway, and may not be updated. This post may be modified as time passes. Visit http://twitter.com/Sengupta for the latest updates:

edit 14:35, Nov 28: NSG head: Both terrorists at the Oberoi/Trident have been killed. Oberoi/Trident under army control.

Pranab Mukherjee, External Affairs Minister: Elements from Pakistan responsible for Mumbai Terror Attack. Proof cannot be disclosed. New Delhi is expected to take this up with Islamabad. The mobile phone captured from the terrorist indicates calls from Karachi. via TimesNow.

edit 11:10, Nov 28: Excerpts from the press interview by Lt. Gen. Thamburaj: One terrorist is moving between two floors of the Taj Heritage building- has shut off electricity to the Dance floor, two terrorists killed yesterday evening in a firefight, almost all the guests and staff have been evacuated. Possible that this this terrorist has 2 or more hostages, or that there may be 2 terrorists. Some of the hotel guests may have locked themselves in. We’re not blowing opening the doors even after having identified ourselves, for their own safety. The NSG commandos have suffered some casualties. I’m not in a position to elaborate on the casualties (fatal or nonfatal). Operations had to be deliberate and slow as the lives of the hostages were at risk. Don’t want to suffer casualties because of a hurry. Cooperation from the Police, Air Force and Navy. First people to respond were the MarCos- Marine Commandos. Able to put together an ad hoc Crisis Management Center, coordinated by Gen. Sisodiya and Gen. Hooda. Media role commendable. Should be able to wrap up things in a few hours

It’s been about 8 20 24 35 odd hours (as of this post) since a huge siege of Mumbai began, with gunmen ripping through several iconic targets in the heart of the city. Details are sketchy coming out right now, but from what I’ve been able to gather from several news sources (primarily the CNN-IBN and NDTV news channels), the sites that have been hit are:

The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower (Persistent shootings, grenade (and possibly RDX) explosions, fires on a number of floors and a hostage situation)

The Oberoi/Trident Hotel (Shootings, explosions, fire and hostage situation)

Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus/Victoria Terminal (The final Train station/headquarters of the Central and Harbour railway lines in Mumbai)(Shootings, explosions)

Nariman House (a Chabad house owned by Chabad Lubavitch an orthodox Jewish movement) (Persistent shootings, explosions, hostage situation)

Cama Hospital (Hostage situation, gun-shots)

Petrol Pump in South Mumbai (Grenade explosion)

Leopold Cafe (Heavy gunshots)

Metro Cinema (Shootings from carjacked police jeep)

South Mumbai Police Headquarters (Shootings)

Vile Parle (Explosion in car)

Mazgaon Docks (Explosion)

Several other possible situations were reported at a number of locations like Napean Sea Road, Borivali and Santa Cruz. As of the final edit, these situations have not been substantiated, but are widely believed to have been rumours.

More than 80 125 160 individuals were reported to have been killed, and over 250 327 injured. ATS Chief Hemant Karkare, encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar and ACP of Police, Ashok Kamte were reported to have been killed, along with several other high ranking policemen. NSG personnel are reported to have been killed as well.

A terrorist outfit called the Deccan Mujahideen is reported to have claimed responsibility. edit: “Intercepts show terrorists speaking in Punjabi,” GoC- Army, via NDTV

Westerners, primarily Americans and Britishers are said to have been the primary targets during this siege. They were apparently rounded up from their rooms at the hotels listed above and held hostage. The status of the hostage situation, as of this post is not yet known.

The terrorists have had hijacked a police vehicle and one or more civilian vehicles and have not been apprehended yet. Indiscriminate firing was reported from these vehicles.

Some important contact details: via Pinstorm’s guide, Mumbai Help, Mumbai Police and Twitter

Hospitals:

St. George Hospital: (022) 22820242
J J Hospital: (022) 23735555,
Bombay Hospital: (022) 22067676 extn 216
K.E.M.Hospital: (022) 24137517
G.T. Hospital: (022) 22630553

Blood Donations:

J J Hospital Blood Bank: (022) 23739400
Cama Hospital Blood Bank : 022) 22611648
St. George Hospital Blood Bank: (022) 22620344, 22620242

For Foreigners:

Canadians:
Foreign Affairs: 1-613-996-8885 from Canada, 1-800-387-3124 from elsewhere

USA:
Help line number US: State Department number” 888.407.4747 Foreign Affairs: 1-613-996-8885

United Kingdom:
Forgeign Office Emergency Telephone Number – 0207 00 800 00.

Brazilians:
Brazilian help line +919820686143 (C)

Australians:
In Mumbai1800 002 214
International +61 2 6261 3305

France, Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Ministère des affaires étrangères
+ 33 (0) 1 45 55 80 00

Nationals of all European Union countries who need assistance in Mumbai can go to the consulate of any of the 27 Member States to receive assistance, announced European ministers in Brussels. (via Briskette’s comment below. Original source here)

Other embassies and consulates in India: http://www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-in/India

Hotel Helplines (via Twitter):

Taj Hotel: 1800-111-825
(022) 66574322
(022) 66574372
(022) 6665 3366

Trident Hotel: (022) 23890606 (20), 1800 11 2122, International numbers

Oberoi Hotel: (022) 23890606, (022) 23890505

Other Helplines:

Police Control Room: 100
Fire Brigade Control Room: 101
Railway Police Control Room: (022) 23081725, (022) 23007476
Naval Control Room (022) 22663030
Intelligency Bureau Control Room (022) 26522631, (022)26520055

Some thoughts:

One of the most interesting things to note has been the speed at which information has been spread using social media sites, particularly the micro-blogging site, Twitter. You can find my updates here: http://twitter.com/sengupta. Updates on Twitter appeared over an hour before it CNN began covering it. More thoughts on this later.

Useful Links:

Lists of dead and injured (scroll down to find a sortable list embedded in this page). Final Edit: Please note that this list is the one that was initially posted by n to Mumbai Help:

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5

Final Edit: Here are the latest lists of deceased and injured.

To find what people are currently saying about the issue, this might be a good place to begin: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=mumbai

Another useful source of information might be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26_November_2008_Mumbai_attacks

Pictures from the site: http://flickr.com/photos/vinu

Arun Shanbag has been posting pictures as well: http://arunshanbhag.com/2008/11/26/mumbai-blasts-taj-is-burning/

Map of attack sites (via Wikipedia):

Sortable list of dead and injured:(via Mumbai Help)

List of evacuees from the Trident/Oberoi (via CNN-IBN)

Please feel free to add details and make corrections in the comments section.

My New Document Scanner

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:28:49 +0000

Here’s what you can do with a cellphone with a good camera, a telescope stand and a bluetooth connection:

First they ignore you…

Aditya Sengupta — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:22:28 +0000

I was reading this article over at Slashdot about Chandrayaan-1, India’s moon mission which is scheduled to be launched next month. I was going through the comments when I came across a familiar one-

First they ignore you…

then they laugh at you…

then they fight you …

then you win …

This is a very famous quote attributed to Mohandas Gandhi. I first came across this quote in a Red Hat presentation I attended a while ago. They started off with this video, something that’s stuck with me for a while now-

(If you’re reading this in a feed aggregator, you might need to click through to read be able to see the video)

World’s best presentation

Aditya Sengupta — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:17:01 +0000

Winner of the world’s best presentation this year over at Slideshare:

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

Blog Aggregator readers might need to click through to the post.

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Aditya Sengupta — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:13:03 +0000

This is one of the best videos I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s a lecture by Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Also known as The Last Lecture, it was delivered on September 18, 2007 to a packed audience at Carnegie Mellon about a year after he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. It addresses three things- his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and the lessons learned- how you can achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others.

(If you’re reading this in a feed aggregator, you might need to click through to read be able to see the video)

Randy Pausch died from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008.

WTF Picture of the day

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:11:23 +0000

This is a picture I captured on a train a while ago. My apologies for the fuzziness. For the benefit of those who don’t understand what’s on the poster, it says, “The cure to Cancer/Aids now exists”. An Ayurvedic Hospital called “Lavanya Kayakalap Anushandhan Kendra” purports to have the cure to cancer and AIDS. Funny I didn’t catch that in the news lately. They even have a website for your benefit.

Add some Calendar-Fu to your life

Aditya Sengupta — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:37:43 +0000

One of the best things about Google’s service is the fact that most of them are nicely integrated with each other. Google Calendar is no exception. It meshes really nicely with Google’s GMail. Surprisingly, despite being an online application, I’ve found it to perform better than mainstream desktop apps like Windows Calendar.

Now Google Calendar is a pretty powerful tool. You can use it to create custom events (such as repeating events, shared events, etc) without having to spend much time trying to figure out how to do it. Anyone who has tried creating custom events in other programs will appreciate Google Calendar’s simple yet powerful approach to calendaring.

Here’s a run-through of how I put up my semester’s time-table on Google Calendar and then synced it back with Windows Calendar (You know- for all those times when you don’t have internet access)-

Go to Google Calendar and create a new account. If you already have a GMail account, you should find the direct link to your Calendar at the top of the GMail page.

Use the ‘Add button’ on the left to create a new calendar. Give it a creative name, like ‘College calendar’. There are other options on the page which we won’t concern ourselves with for the time being.

Now with this particular calendar selected, create a new event using the link to the left.

We’ll call this subject DSP-ANC (My subject and professor code. Give it a name you’ll understand and remember). Fill in the appropriate date and time. In the “Repeats” drop down box, select “Weekly”.

In the “Range” section, under “until” select the date your term ends. Mine ends in October.

In the options section, you could have Google send you a reminder. Via SMS even. I’d suggest disabling this unless you want a reminder before every lecture for the entire semester.

Hit the save button.

Now repeat the above procedure till you’ve covered all your subjects. Once you’re done, select the week view (upper-right), sit back, and admire your new calendar.

To sync this with your Windows calendar, go to Settings> Calendar Settings> Calendars> “College Calendar” (or whatever creative name you’ve given to it). Under “Calendar Details” scroll down to Private address and select ICAL. In the pop-up, click on the link and download the file that appears (basic.ics). In Windows Calendar, go to File> Import> (Folder where you downloaded the file)> basic.ics. And voila! You’re done. (These instructions are for Windows Calendar in Vista- other systems and apps should have similar instructions).

Now you can go share the calendar with your class by going to Settings> Calendars> “Name of your calendar”> Share this calendar> Make this calendar public. Go back to “Calendar Details”, scroll to the bottom of the page, and under “Calendar address” select “HTML”. Copy the hyperlink that pops up and send it to everyone in your class. If you have a blog or a website, you could use the Configuration tool to generate an iFrame that you could paste to a page on your blog. Like this

Happy Calendaring.

(If you have any problems viewing the images above, right click> “view image” to see the image in its entirety)

P.S. To add SMS reminders to your Google Calendar (which can be really handy at times), go to Settings> Mobile Setup. Follow the instructions there. You’ll need to enter your phone number, after which Google will send you a verification code. Put that verification code in the field provided in Google Calendar, and you’re done.

“I Tried Everything…”

Aditya Sengupta — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:01:55 +0000

…said Federer, ” But look, Rafa’s a deserving champion”

Still magnanimous after his defeat in a match that ended in near darkness 7 hours, 15 minutes after it began (4 hours, 48 minutes of play) after having been interrupted twice due to the rain in what’s been called the greatest match ever seen. And when it’s coming from John McEnroe, that’s saying something.

I’ve never been a huge fan of tennis, nor has the game been one I’ve ardently followed, but about halfway through the match I knew I was watching history in the making. And boy was I right!

From The Telegraph:

Tennis fans caused a massive surge in electricity demand after Nadal took the Wimbledon title because they were glued to their seats during the epic match.

A 1,400 megawatt spike – equivalent to 550,000 kettles being boiled – was recorded at around 9.20pm, as the Spaniard lifted the trophy. The surge shows millions watched the match.

National Grid spokeswoman Isobel Rowley said the surge was huge because fans were so transfixed by the tennis, they could not move from the sofa to switch the lights on until the end.

If you missed it, I strongly suggest you catch a rerun. Here are some highlights (one of my favourite points is played between 3:19 and 3:46)

Did you know: Rafael Nadal’s been blogging about Wimbledon? Wish I’d known about this sooner. Although he admits in his final post that writing is not his strong suit:

My job is not to write but to play tennis and that’s what I do better. Definitely writing is not my best thing. I suppose you noticed it.

[The link comes via GAS and is mentioned on the Sports Journalists' Association site so I have good reason to believe it's authentic.]

If you do decide to check out the blog, do not forget to read the Questions for Rafa series. Some responses are hilarious.

Reenter the blogosphere

Aditya Sengupta — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:34:58 +0000

Welcome to my new new blog!

It’s been a while since the last time I blogged- December, ‘07. I had to stop back then more for the lack of time than anything else. Since then, I have meant to get back, but I did want to start afresh. This blog is an attempt.

This is the first post on this blog. All the other posts you see listed as older entries are simply posts imported from the previous blog, My Easel. Before you ask, and although it’s listed on the About page, here’s what Vignetting means:

Vignetting- vi·gnette (vn-yt)

n.

1. A decorative design placed at the beginning or end of a book or chapter of a book or along the border of a page.

2. An unbordered picture, often a portrait, that shades off into the surrounding color at the edges.

3.

a. A short, usually descriptive literary sketch.

b. A short scene or incident, as from a movie.

tr.v. vi·gnet·ted, vi·gnet·ting, vi·gnettes

1. To soften the edges of (a picture) in vignette style.

2. To describe in a brief way.

[French, from Old French, diminutive of vigne, vine (from the use of vine tendrils in decorative borders); see vine.]

This site’s been up for less than a week as of this post. There still are a couple of bugs to be sorted out, which I’ll try and get to as soon as I can. If you find any bugs, such as dead links, or misdirected URLs, let me know.

Send any feedback you might have to feedback (at) vignettinglife (dot) com.

PS. Tomorrow (today technically) is Gelato day (Thanks for the heads up, Zai). Gotta get to bed soon! More to come. Cheers!

A Directorial Début

Aditya Sengupta — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:31:38 +0000

The annual VJTI Alumni Meet was held in the institute quadrangle on Sunday. What started as a typically stuffy event ended with a rather interesting twist.

The event began early in the evening with a special private function for the silver jubilee batch. As this ended, the main even, open to all alumni, began at about 6pm. It began as a formal affair, with dignitaries like K. Venkataramanan and Dr. Vijay Khole taking the stage along with the Director and the Alumni Committee chairman and vice-chairman. The speeches were informative, although a bit long-drawn from what I’m told- I spent a fair bit of time managing the back-end and could only make it to the quadrangle intermittently.

The subsequent entertainment programme proved to be a respite. It was well balanced with a number of talented performers in traditional as well as western acts. It was capped off with a brilliant performance by the band, that had amongst its executants present and past VJTI students. The finale stood out for having achieved something that I’m fairly certain is unprecedented:

Now, the director of the institute is not known to be impulsive and is reticent and reserved by all accounts. It is to the band’s credit and the committee’s gentle persuasion that this happened:

(The director is in white. The men in suits are the Alumni Committee members. Some of the band members are not visible.) If you can’t view the embedded video, click here.

BEST TV

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:19:57 +0000

I’m back!

Here’s an interesting thing I saw today. Something I didn’t know about although it has apparently been in the works for over a year now.

The other day, it was late in the evening and I was heading home from college. I was really tired that day and I knew trains would be really crowded at that time. I thought of taking a bus home when voilà- there it was- a tantalizingly empty bus that would take me right home. I decided to take the bus- not an easy choice mind you. A 40 minute train journey home translates to a 2 hour bus ride.

I noticed them as soon as I sat down. 2 TV screens at the front of the bus. Small but nice. And probably quite expensive- LCD TVs:

(click through and mouse over the photographs in my flickrstream)

These TVs primarily show advertisements- for current movies mostly. There were also intermittent messages about various routes that the buses ply on- these were too rapid to read and generally pointless.

The TVs are hooked up to the Wadala bus depot and are used primarily in buses that are on longer routes. Which explains why I’ve haven’t encountered them earlier even though I take about 3-4 buses daily- all on short routes.

Another thing I noticed was the presence of CCTV cameras at entrance and exit. The TV screens and CCTV cameras have both been installed by a company called EMNET. The bus operator, BEST intends to earn some revenue out of this arrangement. BEST is pretty ambitious about this project:

“All buses will be equipped with LCD display screens. Commuters will have the choice of viewing anything, right from news, music videos, advertisements to even cricket matches,” said Uttam Khobragade, general manager, BEST. The administration has targeted to install these systems in all of its 3,350 buses by late 2007.

What do you think?

An Arterial Conversation

Aditya Sengupta — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:07:14 +0000

I’ll skip the part where I apologize about the uncharacteristically long delay since my last post. With the term coming to a close and my exams around the corner, I probably won’t be able to post too often for the next few weeks either.

—

This appeared on the front page of the Times of India today. And this was a feature piece inside:

Two weeks ago- October 11th to be precise, I donated blood at a drive in my college. They coupled it with a free Thalassaemia checkup- something that is normally prohibitively expensive.

The drive was carried out by the Think Foundation in association with the State Blood Transfusion Council. It was managed by a group of doctors from KEM Hospital and by student volunteers.

Vinay Shetty, the Vice President of the Think Foundation, a non-government organization that organizes voluntary blood donation drives and helps create awareness about thalassaemia, oversaw the drive. I got the opportunity to have a long chat with him.

Mr Shetty happens to be an alumnus of my college. Mr Shetty has been involved blood donation drives ever since his college days. He organized his first drive at the age of 19 when he convinced his old high school to hold a blood donation drive on their grounds. The folks from the hospital who came to collect the blood came prepared with enough blood bags for just 50 people. They arrived to find a line with many times as many people waiting. They had to send someone back to the hospital to get more blood bags. Needless to say, at the end of the day the lady in charge was gushing with joy.

A few years ago, the person in charge of the blood bank at Breach Candy hospital noticed him- he had accompanied a number of donors to the hospital. He told her about his activities in blood donations. She asked him if he had ever heard of thalassaemia. When he responded in the negative, she directed him towards a society that works with people afflicted with the condition. Ever since, he has been working towards spreading awareness about the genetic blood disease. (In fact, when he came over to my college for the blood donation drive, he went from class to class delivering talks on both issues- blood donation as well as thalassaemia)

An issue he brought up during our conversation was platelet donation. This is something that isn’t very well known. I had never heard about this before, and from the look of things, neither had anybody else I spoke to about this later, save one individual. It is a life saving procedure that helps patients with problems that arise due to platelet dysfunctions and low platelet counts- basically helps people undergoing chemotherapy, those who have AIDS, aplastic anemia and a number of other diseases.

Though the actual donation takes more than an hour, one can donate again after as less as 3 days, unlike regular blood donations, which require a 90 day gap between consecutive donations.

To this end, the Think Foundation has helped establish the ‘Lifesavers’ Club‘, a joint collaboration with the State Blood Transfusion Council and Doctors For You, a group of doctors from KEM hospital.

Beyond his work with blood donation, thalassaemia awareness and platelet donation, Mr Shetty has also been involved in organizing inter-school chess championships and chess championships for the visually impaired. Does the Bournvita inter-school chess championship ring a bell? He’s the man behind it.

A Ton of Fun at the MUN

Aditya Sengupta — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:22:43 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. I haven’t had much free time on my hands so far and I don’t have much now either. An interesting incident will have to do for now. More elaborate posts at leisure.

Now these MUNs are pretty interesting events to attend or participate in. The link is fairly descriptive. Go through it if you have no idea what it is.

It should suffice to say that a fair bit of research is involved in preparing for a MUN. You do not want to be in situations like the one I’m about to describe:

I was at a MUN at some college. A friend of mine was assigned the country Israel. Now the agendas (topics to be discussed) of most MUNs are usually predecided. In the MUNs I’ve attended so far, it has been customary for delegates to begin with speeches that state the position of the country they represent on the topic at hand. Questions or comments by other delegates often follow the speech.

The topic for this MUN was essentially the Middle-East peace crisis. My friend delivers a pretty good speech on his country’s position. The floor is open to questions. The delegate of Lebanon stands up and asks him, somewhat sternly I might add, “What is your stand on the Sheba farms dispute?”

He looks at the Lebanon guy quizzically for a moment. It’s clear that he was taken off guard. Everybody’s waiting for what he has to say.

He tries to take the safe route: “We are neutral on that issue.”

Big mistake. At this point the Lebanon guy looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm: “You’re neutral on that issue?!! Your country has occupied out land… blah… blah… blah!!!!”

Mr Israel attempts a come-back at this point: He replies, with a very straight face, [sic] “Well, it’s not ours, but it’s not yours either naa.”

Needless to say, that golden statement just made everybody’s day.

In his defense, I must say that he was assigned his country on the day of the event and had earlier been given a different country. Circumstances did not permit him enough time to prepare. All things considered, I think his comeback was pretty good actually.

How have you been lately?

Aditya Sengupta — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:43:34 +0000

I’m known to use a lot of long-winded, verbose sentences in my writing, but even I found the response I gave when a friend asked me how I had been doing (or something to that effect) rather odd:

Don’t ask! Got back from a MUN yesterday only to get an eye infection today when I’m supposed to submit a yet unprepared bio tomorrow for a bunch of interviews next week while simultaneously preparing a presentation for a TPP (Technical Paper Presentation) competition which is to be held at an undetermined time and to arrange for a quiz and another TPP competition, both of which are to be held at uncertain dates. I’m pretty sure I’m missing somethings here, but the meds I’m on don’t exactly facilitate good memory.

How have you been?

Of Exams, Monk, Birthdays and Shock and Awe

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:50:14 +0000

My apologies for the recent hiatus. I’ve had my mid term exams this past week.

The exams began in a rather interesting manner. Now during our mid-terms, we are given one hour long 30 mark papers with 3 questions to attempt out of a total of (usually) 4 or (less often) 5, each question being evaluated for 10 marks. On the first day, we had a paper with 10 questions for 100 marks. Very unexpected. The distribution of marks (number of marks to be alloted to each question) was not specified. So naturally, everyone starts complaining to the invigilator.

Well then the genius, assuming all this is a big mistake, takes back all the question papers. About five minutes in, the professor who teaches this subject and sets the papers, walks in and tells us to continue with the paper. We only have to attempt 8 questions she says. We get out papers back. At this point everyone is so stressed out, they barely read what’s being asked, they attempt whatever they think is simplest. Big mistake. Turns out, some of the answers are barely 4 lines long, some 4 pages. Of course, there’s no mark distribution, so no one can make proper choices.

At the end of it all, they collect our answer sheets on schedule. No extra time for all the extra questions. No extra time for the 5-10 minutes lost when they decided to take the question papers back at the beginning of the paper, only to have to return them soon after.

The professor promises to, and I quote, “take care” of the whole situation. We’ll be waiting eagerly, prof.

Needless to say, this was not a very pleasant beginning to the mid-terms. They didn’t end too well either. Diagrams for two questions were interchanged. The first two at that. After having spent a half hour trying to figure out why the values didn’t seem to fit, or why the two sides of the equation weren’t equal, I decided to move on. Very bad habit of mine. I really have to learn to give up sooner. Good grief, I can’t believe I just said that!

This professor promises restitution as well. What joy!

**************

More positive news, Monk’s started again. This is the fifth season.

I just love this show. From the first episode I caught, it seems they’ll be digging a bit deeper into his psyche. Intriguing. This particular episode involved Trudy’s death. Touching.

The last couple of episodes of Boston Legal have been amazing. If James Spader wasn’t my favourite actor earlier, he certainly is now. Be warned though, I probably don’t have enough of a perspective. The only role I’ve seen him play is that of Alan Shore.

**************

Many thanks to Kushagra for a very memorable birthday treat this Saturday. A wonderful meal at Spaghetti Corner. Perfect way to recoup from a rather imperfect exam week. Made all the more enjoyable with a tad of beginners’ luck in my first game of bowling. I should do this more often really.

**************

I’ll end this post with a quote I found very memorable indeed:

Mindful that abroad people tend expect shock and awe when Yankees arrive on the scene, we shall leave you with two small, but lasting words.

Denny Crane … eh?

Stayin’ alive

Aditya Sengupta — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:52:18 +0000

I found these very touching videos through this blog, which in turn I found a couple of hours ago through someone else’s blog. The blog itself is highly recommended reading. It’s not often I ask you to read a blog without having followed it for a while, but the posts there, the first few ones at least, are captivating.

(For those who haven’t figured it out already, the title is from the song by the same name by the Bee Gees, again- highly recommended)

Google: 9 Notions of Innovation

Aditya Sengupta — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:17:41 +0000

I found this great podcast on iTunes U. This is Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, talking about what she calls the ‘9 Notions of Innovation’. I found a video on Youtube as well:

Here is a gist of the main talking points during the presentation:

Ideas come from everywhere
Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team
Share everything you can
Every idea, every project, every deadline — it’s all accessible to everyone on the intranet
You’re brilliant, we’re hiring
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience
A license to pursue dreams
Employees get a “free” day a week. Half of new launches come from this “20% time”
Innovation, not instant perfection
Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely
Don’t politic, use data
Mayer discourages the use of “I like” in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics
Creativity loves restraint
Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines
Worry about usage and users, not money
Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow.
Don’t kill projects — morph them
There’s always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged

Anyone who knows me or has followed my blog (I’ve posted on life at Google earlier) will know just how much I respect the Google culture. I find it unsurprising that an entity that follows such a path towards innovation gains so much success and respect. My personal favourites are #2, 7 and 8. Although each point is one that I think should be followed everywhere, I see a particular need for these points to be highlighted amongst the people I work with, or don’t, or can’t. You get the idea. I wish this approach to innovation, and the Google philosophy, were more prevalent.

Here is the original stream. Click the play button below:

To attribute this as best I can: this cast is hosted by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

K9 Express (part 2): Encounter of the first kind

Aditya Sengupta — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:18:29 +0000

A fair bit has been said in jest about animals that roam the halls of engineering colleges in Bombay. Here is proof. From my own class. No kidding. This dog strolls in during a lecture and decides to take a bit of a nap.

Well, the dog wasn’t alone. These guys didn’t mind taking 40 winks themselves:

Methinks this does not bode well for the professor. To be fair, it was the fag end of a very long day

The Real Fake Steve Jobs

Aditya Sengupta — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:00:26 +0000

The latest buzz on the blogosphere is the unmasking of Fake Steve Jobs- the anonymous blogger who, for more than a year now has assumed the self-interpreted persona of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. A very creative interpretation at that.

‘The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs’ is one of my favourite blogs- the kind one looks forward to each day. Funny, nay- hilarious in its parodical portrayal of Steve Jobs. And the blog is popular too. 700,000 hits last month. His readers have included, at one point or the other, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs himself. The real one.

Well, I’m not too happy about the fact that he’s been unmasked. I enjoyed the intrigue. And from what I can see from the post that did the dirty deed, not a lot of people are happy either. Read the comments.

So who is FSJ? Daniel Lyons. A reporter for Forbes. Read this for a more thorough account. His real blog is here. His colleagues at Forbes have been having a blast through all this.

Through all this, I hope that this does not dilute FSJ’s voice. He claims it wont. He promises to come back ‘badder than ever‘. Well, in FJS’s very own inimitable style, peace and love. Namaste!

Math Puzzle

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 15:34:56 +0000

I’m usually pretty good at pointing out the flaws in mathematical puzzles that give contradictory answers… the types that give you results like 1 equals 0, you get the idea.

I just found this one that has had me stumped:

First we set:

x=0.999999999…… (infinitely recurring)

Multiplying both sides by 10, we have,

10x=9.999999999….. (infinitely recurring)

subtracting the first equation from the second one,

10x – x = 9.999999999…… – 0.999999999…….

Therefore,

9x = 9

We divide both sides by 9 to get,

x = 1

so do we have, from the first statement,

1 = .999999999….. ?

Apparently, this is true! No kidding. Yeah, I was pretty surprise as well. I expected to find a hitch in the proof, an inconsistency of some sort. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I looked it up online even. You’d be surprised how popular this issue is on the web. Amongst mathematicians at any rate. Wikipedia has a pretty exhaustive, and somewhat exhausting article about this here. The image you see at the beginning of the post is from there. So is the alternative proof that follows:

Oh, here is another interesting piece of information I found while looking up this puzzle. Though quite a few of you probably know about this: Any recurring (non-terminating repeating) decimal can be converted to a fraction. Use the method in the first proof.

Here is a related page with some other elegant examples.

(Update: I hit the publish button before I meant to post. Here is the ending)

This puzzle illustrates the somewhat philosophical issues in our interpretation of mathematics. While we inherently believe that the number .999999999….. has a last 9 at infinity, one must realize that there is no last 9 and that the expansion of the number never ends. Stating that there is something at infinity is meaningless. We often treat infinity as if it were a number, or a location (a point on a number line). This is something we need to get past.

This entire discussion curiously reminds me of a particular strip from Calvin and Hobbes. This one:

Über-geek love song

Aditya Sengupta — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:56:16 +0000

Here is an awesome and hilarious a cappella song written and performed by a group calling themselves “The Klein Four“.

Lyrics here.

Gosh, I actually understood about 80% of the song! And I’m not even a math major. I really need a long break.

Meow…. Uh Oh!

Aditya Sengupta — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:50:46 +0000

Here is a story that has caught everyone’s attention. Oscar, the cat that lives in the Rhode Island nursing home, apparently has the knack of predicting the death of patients there by curling up next to them. The staff start calling family when this happens, because the patient usually dies within hours.

This story has become quite popular in the last few days. Reuters, CNN, CBC and Yahoo News have all covered it. Darren Barefoot thinks the cat is knocking off patients when no one is looking. Ze Frank has an interesting title to the rather frank (pun intended) entry on his blog. What’s more, even the New England Journal of Medicine and WebMD have covered the story.

(Photograph courtesy I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER)

Ref: Mumbaiya guide to Harry Potter

Aditya Sengupta — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:22:30 +0000

Here is a great post from fellow blogger and student Karan Desai. It is the Mumbaiya guide to Harry Potter: A hilarious guide for someone who hasn’t read the Harry Potter books and doesn’t understand English. It’s transliterated from Hindi, so international readers won’t get this. But Mumbai locals (no pun intended) will really enjoy this.

One from the guys:

Aditya Sengupta — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:10:33 +0000

As a follow up to my previous post, here’s the kind of forward I might enjoy:

I’ve gotten this email a number of times, but it’s never failed to bring a smile to my face. It also illustrates my knowledge on the subject, or the lack thereof.

Finally , the guys’ side of the story.
(I must admit, it’s pretty good.)
We always hear ” the rules ”
From the female side.

Now here are the rules from the male side.
These are our rules!
Please note.. these are all numbered “1″
ON PURPOSE!

1.Men are NOT mind readers.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport.
And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1. Crying is blackmailing

1. Ask for what you want.
Let us be clear on this one:
Subtle hints do not work!
Strong hints do not work!
Obvious hints do not work!
Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every
question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s
what we do.
Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a Problem.See a doctor.

1. If you won’t dress like the Victoria’s Secret girls, don’t Expect us
to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are.
Don’t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways
makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one

1. You can either ask us to do something
Or tell us how you want it done.
Not both.If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during
commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say “nothing,” We will act like
nothing’s wrong.
We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, Expect an answer
you don’t want to hear.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape.Round IS a shape!

Many thanks to Ankit for sending it across.

Fwd… or Not!

Aditya Sengupta — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:16:57 +0000

Dear All,

I get a LOT of email forwards everyday. While I appreciate the concern some of you seem to have about my lifespan, the lifespan of my mother/father/brother/sister, my love life, my wealth, the safely of my computer system…, I beg that you act with some discretion before you hit that ‘forward’ button.

Why should I care, you ask?

Well, there are some people who get hundreds of emails a day. Yes such people exist. These people have to spend a significant amount of time and effort going through their inboxes weeding out the bad emails. There is so much more one could get done if one did not have all that spam to go through.

Bandwidth costs and Disk space.

One of the ways spammers aggregate email addresses is by sending out these forwards. So all those people who are so concerned about that poor girl with cancer dying suddenly find themselves the recipients of tons of spam.

Recognizing a chain letter

Chain letters and most hoax messages all have a similar pattern. From the older printed letters to the newer electronic kind, they all have three recognizable parts:

A hook.
A threat.
A request.

The Hook

First, there is a hook, to catch your interest and get you to read the rest of the letter. Hooks used to be “Make Money Fast” or “Get Rich” or similar statements related to making money for little or no work. Electronic chain letters also use the “free money” type of hooks, but have added hooks like “Danger!” and “Virus Alert” or “A Little Girl Is Dying”. These tie into our fear for the survival of our computers or into our sympathy for some poor unfortunate person.

The Threat

When you are hooked, you read on to the threat. Most threats used to warn you about the terrible things that will happen if you do not maintain the chain. However, others play on greed or sympathy to get you to pass the letter on. The threat often contains official or technical sounding language to get you to believe it is real.

The Request

Finally, the request. Some older chain letters ask you to mail a dollar to the top ten names on the letter and then pass it on. The electronic ones simply admonish you to “Distribute this letter to as many people as possible.” They never mention clogging the Internet or the fact that the message is a fake, they only want you to pass it on to others.

Why People Send Chain Letters and Hoax Messages

Only the original writer knows the real reason, but some possibilities are:

To see how far a letter will go.
To harass another person (include an e-mail address and ask everyone to send mail, like the Tommy Hilfiger email).
To bilk money out of people using a pyramid scheme.
To kill some other chain letter (e.g. Make Money Fast).
To damage a person’s or organization’s reputation.

What to do when you receive a chain email:

If it sounds ridiculous, it probably is. Delete it.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Delete it.
If you’re unsure, do not send it out. Verify it’s authenticity. Snopes and Hoaxbusters are great places to do so. Google will work fine in most cases as well.
If there is no contact information, it’s probably fake. Legitimate warnings and solicitations will always have complete contact information from the person sending the message and will often be signed with a cryptographic signature
Even if there is contact information, be wary. It’s quite easy for anyone to get back at someone they’ve got a grudge against. One common way seems to be to send out emails asking for blood donors. These emails often have the name of a person with their phone number. Most of these people go through hell dealing with the phone calls they get from concerned strangers.
One way of stopping yourself from getting annoying chain mails is by using the ‘reply-to-all’ button with a link to Snopes. The humiliation that follows generally stops the other person from ever forwarding emails. Use this with the utmost care.
If you don’t want to risk losing friends over this, send a private reply to the person who sent you the email and include a link to Snopes.

If the email is great and you’re sure it isn’t a hoax,

Whatever you do, do not send out the email to everyone you know.
Determine whether a person will appreciate the email before choosing to send it to him/her.
Add a brief message to the top of the email explaining why you’re sending the message. Don’t send it if you can’t think of one.
Delete all the email backlog before sending out the message. It’s a real pain to have to scroll down through thousands of lines of text and ugly graphics to have to read like ten lines! Copy and paste instead.

Move on if you read any of this in the email:

If you love your mom/dad/brother/sister and want to add 5/10.20 years to his/her life, email this to everyone on your contacts list.
If you don’t send this email out to everyone on your contacts list, you will never fall in love/the person you love will hate you.
in the next 60 seconds send this to all the people on ur list and
the person that u are thinkin of will do something special to show how
much they care about u! if i dont get dis back i guess ur not my
friend. If u have alot of love for someone copy and send to ur whole
list in r true love will surely come 2wards u!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you don’t send this to anyone in the next 10 minutes, you will have bad luck all your life.

I know it annoys a lot of you when your email gets slammed with jokes, hoaxes, chain letters and the like. It annoys me, too. But I do appreciate receiving real inspirational/interesting stuff from friends. All I ask is that you be just a bit more discriminate in what you send.

Most of what you forward is to your friends. Well, you wouldn’t want to threaten your friends, would you? What would you call a statement like “If you don’t forward this, you’ll have bad luck all your life”? You wouldn’t want to manipulate them emotionally as well right? It takes about a minute to check the authenticity of an email. Sending out bad emails persistently will cause you to lose your credibility.

P.S. The reason I am posting this (well, beyond the fact that I get scores of bad emails each day) is that I got an email saying something along the lines of:

“If you have a function/party at your home and if there is
excess food available at the end, don’t hesitate to call 1098 (only in
India) – child helpline. They will come and collect the food. Please
circulate this message which can help feed many children.”

1098 is the emergency line of ChildLine India, a charity. They will not come and collect any excess good you might have. There are other ways of using that food. Be imaginative.

P.P.S. Read this for another great point of view.

P.P.P.S. Some material is shamelessly copied from Hoaxbusters.

Mumbai Local: K9 Express

Aditya Sengupta — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:47:58 +0000

I almost forgot about this one. I uploaded this a while back on to Flickr, promising myself that I’d put it up in a blog post once I had gotten comfortable with the whole blogging ordeal. Here it is:

I took this photograph a couple of months ago. A dog entered the train I was in. As soon as the train started moving, the dog tried to get off. It seemed to think better of it though. It did however, stay near the door all the way. It got off two stations later. This was one trip not a lot of were going to forget in a hurry.

P.S. Notice the oddly rigid cop to the left. Here is another picture where you can see the cop better.

Shift Happens

Aditya Sengupta — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:26:20 +0000

Interesting video. Check it out:

If you can’t see the embed above, check it out on YouTube.

Google: The best place to work at?

Aditya Sengupta — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:17:24 +0000

Now, the Googleplex, I hear, is a great place to work at. Well, more like the kind of place I would like to work at.

The Googleplex has always been famous, but this photo-essay by Time Magazine gives an awesome insider’s perspective of what it’s like to work at the company that has been called, for a while now, the best company to work at.

Here are a few of the ‘perks‘:

They have a rock climbing wall.
You get to take your dog to work.
You get to work on couches. No need of those painful office chairs.
Recreation Facilities – Workout room with weights and rowing machine, locker rooms, washers and dryers, massage room, assorted video games, Foosball, baby grand piano, pool table, ping pong, roller hockey twice a week in the parking lot.
They have a rock climbing wall.
Free food. Healthy lunch and dinner- Gourmet cuisine at that. Snack Rooms with bins packed with various cereals, gummi bears, M&Ms, toffee, licorice, cashew nuts, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit and other snacks. Dozens of different drinks including fresh juice, soda and make-your-own cappuccino.
The cool 3D rotating image of the world the toggle switch that allows you to view points of light representing real time searches taking place all over the world.
Did I mention the rock climbing wall?

Hmmm…. Why oh why didn’t I take up computer science?

For all the NPoV sticklers, here is a Microsoft guy’s point of view.

P.S: Free food means free coffee right?!!

Drive by Fire

Aditya Sengupta — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:55:29 +0000

Have you ever thought what would happen if the car you’re in was struck by lightning. Find out for yourselves by watching this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve6XGKZxYxA

(Double-click on the video. This video is not embedded)

Now the presenter (Richard Hammond) says that the reason the lightning does not affect the occupants of the vehicle is that the vehicle acts as a Faraday cage. Now, I remember from what I read in a physics book a couple of years ago that a Faraday cage was mentioned in a chapter on Electrostatics. Quite simply explained, the extra charges that build up on the surface of a metallic cage redistribute themselves so that they are positioned the furthest distance apart from each other (Like charges repel).

Now lightning is a dynamic phenomenon, unlike the buildup of electric charge on the surface of a metallic cage. So do the same rules apply here?

Some don’t seem to think so. I looked it up online. They claim it’s because of something called the skin effect. The skin effect is a property that describes the behaviour of time variant currents flowing through metals.

So the jury is still out on this one. If you would like to add something here, please feel free to post comments.

By the way, here is a site that deals with vehicles and lightning. Check it out.

For those who are still confused about the title of this post, well, it’s a play on the technology term, “Drive by Wire“.

Video: YouTube’s most viewed video

Aditya Sengupta — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:14:25 +0000

This is the most viewed video on YouTube. It’s titled “The Evolution of Dance”. The performer is a guy called Judson Laipply. A must watch.If you grew up in the 70s and 80s, you’ll have a blast with this.

This is the guy’s website.

The “New” Seven Wonders

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 17:19:47 +0000

Picture from Wikipedia

Here is a really interesting post by Raghav Ohri about the whole “New Seven Wonders” campaign. I wanted to write about this campaign, but this post is way better than what I had in mind, and is better articulated. My views on the matter would simply echo the opinions expressed here.

Having said that, there are a few things I’d like to point out.

1. It’s surprising how energetically the “mainstream” media supported this initiative with flashy messages exhorting people to vote for the Taj. Even the news channels, the ones who are *supposed* to be impartial!

2. With all the coverage given to the New Seven Wonders project, all talk about revenue sharing agreements, broadcasting rights sales and the fact that the UNESCO’s World Heritage programme is not involved was very conveniently omitted from the discussion, if you can call it that.

3. The folks at UNESCO are the ones who actually support the various heritage sites with the funds they collect. I don’t quite remember a single advert mentioning what the NWOC (New Open World Corporation, the Swiss company that is administering this poll) was going to do with all the money it’s going to collect. For that matter, I don’t remember a single news channel here point that out either.

4. The NWOC does not HAVE to use your votes. See this.

All said and done, its your money, message away!

Aamchi Panipuri

Aditya Sengupta — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:43:26 +0000

Here is an interesting presentation I came across online about pani puris… Yup, someone’s made a presentation on the humble pani puri. Here is the site, or alternatively check out the embed:

| View | Upload your own

For the uninitiated, here’s what Wikipedia says about pani puris:

Panipuri is a popular street snack in India. It comprises of a round, hollow “puri”, fried crisp and filled with a watery mixture of tamarind, chilli and potato. The name panipuri literally means “water in fried bread”. Pani is a Hindi word for water and puri (or poori) is an Indian bread that is made by frying dough in oil. It is known as puchka in West Bengal and Bangladesh. Since the bread is served with special spiced water, it is known as pani poori; it is also known as gol gappa.

U cheks out dis site… Cheezburger… kthx

Aditya Sengupta — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 18:09:24 +0000

I found this great blog a couple of days ago. The site is called, “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?”. Each post has a picture of a cat and a humorous caption superimposed on the picture. Definitely worth checking out.

Here is a sample picture:

Taking stock of my Markets Course

Aditya Sengupta — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:30:44 +0000

So I finally wrapped up the stock market course I’ve been going to. It was a four day stint at the BSE that began on the 2^nd of this month and ended yesterday.

It was quite an intensive course, albeit at the beginners’ level. It was rather extensive as well, and was not limited to the stock markets. They taught us about the bond market and derivatives market as well.

The course consisted of a set of four 1½ to 2 hour lectures each day. Most lectures included PowerPoint presentations, with very few speakers choosing to go extempore or use the board. All lectures were delivered by professionals, each an expert in his field. This part I found rather impressive, each could answer every question thrown at him. Despite the fact that there were more than 80 students in the class, it was pretty interactive, not the monologues we’re used to elsewhere.

Day 1:

The first day started with a lecture on secondary markets by Amrut Coutinho. This was more or less an introductory lecture. He talked about the various types of markets, market players, their objectives, various terms used in the markets and behavioural economics.

The next lecture was about the BSE’s OnLine Trading system, BOLT for short. He spent a few minutes on the process of book building and trading cycles, the rest of the time on the BOLT. This is the computer network that connects brokers using a screen based trading system, unlike the open outcry system that the folks at the NYMEX and CME still use.

During the next lecture, Coutinho came back to talk about processes like trading, clearing, settlement and surveillance.

The last lecture of the day was on Dematerialization and Depositories, and the various technicalities associated.

Day 2:

The first lecture started with a lecture on Indices, the numbers, so to speak, that we read about in the financial papers. The index of choice was the Sensex, but they gave us a sufficient amount of information about various other market and sectoral indices as well.

Then we had a great lecture on Debt markets by T Ramji. This one was more or less an extempore act, with bits of humour thrown in for good measure. The speaker used various (mis)management stories to explain what one should and should not invest in.

The last lecture was on Technical analysis, which is basically the use of charts to forecast trends in the market and to make decisions based on these observations. The speaker was Hemen Kapadia, who I hear is a famous day trader and analyst. I Googled him and found a respectable number of hits. This guy is apparently a regular on a number of news channels, I could see that quite a few students had heard of him before. A lot of students were rather bored by the end of the lecture however, they could not grasp the concepts. It was obvious that without a strong background in math, calculus particularly, the subject would be incomprehensible. I found this subject particularly fascinating.

Day 3:

Day 3 did not begin too nicely for me. The train I took in the morning got stuck behind one that had broken down. I was a bit late when I got to the exchange, but thankfully, I didn’t miss much.

The first lecture was about Primary markets and book building…. IPOs in simpler terms. We went through all the key players, the processes involved, the red herring prospectus and the types of investors. The second lecture was an extension of the first, and was about the whole listing process.

The third lecture was on Fundamental analysis… this was probably the best we had. The lecture was taken by Vijay Paradkar who is, amongst other things, a venture capitalist. At the beginning he said that he would clarify the subject by confusing us. And confuse us he did. He used a bunch of great examples to explain the paradox between perception and reality in the market. He did not really clarify anything then, he had a lecture with us the next day. A cliffhanger, employed to perfection if you ask me.

The last one was on Grievances and Arbitration. Always a good thing to know.

Day 4:

The last day didn’t begin all that great either, the first speaker turned up about a half hour late. The lecture was about Mutual Funds and the speaker was this guy from ICICI. He explained the subject fairly well, but rushed through the end.

The second and fourth lectures were on derivatives… futures and options basically. Somewhat complex, but the guy did a pretty good job.

The third lecture was the second part of the Fundamental analysis series. He clarified everything during this lecture and explained all the factors to look at before investing. As before the lecture was brilliant.

Overall view:

Right off the bat, I can say that the course was great. I thank all the people who recommended the course to me. The course provided an Indian perspective of the market. The course venue was comfortable and the faculty and administration were complete professionals. The food was great (Oh yeah… I forgot to mention, they provided brunch, lunch and tea).

The flipside… I feel that the course was a bit short. They did not cover either the commodities markets or the currency markets. Both these topics were mentioned in passing, but the speakers did not elaborate. I wish that the course organizers had extended the course by a day and had included, in addition to the commodities and currency markets, topics like insurance, entrepreneurship, foreign markets, personal finance and financial planning.

On the whole… I would recommend this course to anyone who invests at present, or plans on investing anytime soon. Get in touch with the folks at the stock exchange. They are helpful, responsive and honest. Yup, they are quite honest. A couple of people did ask the course administrator whether or not they should take up any of the advanced level courses. The guy said that it wasn’t really a good idea without some work experience or some experience of having invested in the stock market.

Video: E-Commerce in the real world

Aditya Sengupta — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 17:59:53 +0000

All right… My first ‘real’ post. I found this site surfing through the web the other day. This post in particular was what got me. It’s about how the world might look if real world shopping were as difficult as shopping online. Here are the YouTube links:

Zero Results Found:

Premature Redirection:

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…

If Only Search Engines Could Understand What We Want

Enter the Blogosphere

Aditya Sengupta — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:28:31 +0000

My first post- I’ve just set up this blog. From what I can see it’s going to take some time for me to get used to this thing.

I intend to use this blog quite basically to post stuff I’m interested in and to chronicle snippets of my life as I go along. To get to know me better, check the ‘About‘ page.

Comments are always welcome here. Personal stuff you can email me at apsengupta ‘at’ gmail.

While you’re here, please use good blogging manners. Be productive, avoid profanity. Be nice, people!

Enough for now. More soon, watch this space!

P.S. I had my birthday today. Quite uneventful. Everyone’s pretty much out of town. Will be celebrating over the weekend when everyone’s back.