Tag Archive for 'diary'

To Bug Is Human, To Debug Divine

Published on April 1, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments

Debugging is a pretty tiring job. More so if you do not exactly know where you have erred. I spent half the day today debugging my code. Hopefully, it does not have any more bugs.

A day earlier I thought I was done with my BTP coding. I tested the code for small inputs, and the results were as expected. Happy with my work, I wrote a script to let it run a few times on inputs generated following the poisson distribution. When I woke up the next day I was shocked to see the results. They were nothing like what I had imagined. The results had deviated highly from what was expected by theory. Damn! A day’s hard work gone waste.

I sat down to remove any bugs. To elp in the debugging process, I had generated 4 log files – log.xml, run.data, plot.data, miss.data. Poring over these log files and simultaneously running the gdb was a strenous work. I had no idea where the errors were being reported. The aberration becomes observable only after my code has executed for some 10,000 times. It was simply impossible to dry run the code for so long and zero-in on the bug.

I tried a smaller random input, hoping to catch the bug. Luckily enough, this data set produced the error. The deviation was not too obvious, but a hard look at the log files, and I could narrow down the error to a few functions in my code. However, to find the bug, I had to eventually dry run the code for this smaller data set. This took another hour.

All’s well that ends well. I have rectified the error. Basically, I was forgetting to reinitialize an important parameter on the occurance of a particular event. With that done I am hoping to get good results when I wake up tomorrow morning. A good night’s rest is what I deserve. *A pat on my back*. :)

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My Paranoia Self

Published on March 27, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments
I’ve always been this paranoid guy who never trusts the people he cannot see. It was the primary reason that I avoided the social networking sites and was reserved while chatting with people I hadn’t met in a long time. However, things changed the last year and I started opening up. I did the most foolish thing of publishing my contact information over online. Contact information includes my phone number and email id’s.
Due to my foolishness, some unknown person has managed to forward all his calls onto my cell phone, and now I am being annoyed by someone I do not know. Damn ! This is the second case of my foolishness, of my letting the guard down over the net. Never again shall this happen.
I have decided to once again revert back to my paranoia self – never trust a person you cannot see. I am removing all my contact information, setting up strict privacy filters and actually pruning the friend list. The whole operation might take a few days to complete as I’ll have to scan all the places where I might have left any information whatsoever. If you are a friend who knows me, then you’ll find some way of contacting me.
Phew ! Some work to do during the weekend.
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Case Of The Forwarded Calls

Published on March 27, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments

An interesting event occured to me yesterday. I do not know if it is the sheer genius of the other person or an honest mistake on his part. Either way, I have had to deal with an angry sales person the whole evening. The whole affair is described below.

It all started in the evening. I returned back to my room after the evening snacks. As I sat down to work, my phone rang. An unknown number – +919334461925. I pick up the phone. The conversation was in hindi.

‘ello. Who’s this?

When will you return my money?

Excuse me, but may I know who am I talking to?

******, when will you return the money you owe me !

I suppose you have dialled a wrong number. Which number do you think you have dialled?

I got a call from you on this number, asking me to recharge the number +9198——– (I do not remember the other number) for an amount of Rs 3500, with your word to repay me today. When do you intend to pay me back.

I am sorry. I repeat once again, I think you have got the wrong number. I am not the guy you are looking for.

*******. I dialled your number +919002341426. This is the number you called me with. Now ****** tell me your address so that I can set you straight.

I hang up. But immediately the phone rings again. The same number. Damn, he redialled

Hello?

******. Why did you hang up. Afraid of telling me your address are you?

So eager for a fight are you, come on. I am in RK Hall of Residence. Wanna set me straight. Come here. I shall be waiting for you at the gate.

Who the **** do you think you are.

Afraid are we now, huh?

Pay back my money and I’ll let you go.

Dial the correct number first and you’ll get what you want. My number starts with 99, not 90.

Smart chap eh? Tell me, how did you tweak the connections of your mobile phone, that I dial your number on 90 and it goes to your phone at 99.

Am I expected to laugh at your joke, because believe me, I’m not in the mood for it.

I’ll complain to the police.

I’ll thank the gods for putting some sense into you. Please go on and do so.

I just want my money.

Can you talk properly first? ‘Coz I do not see this conversation heading anywhere.

[a few minutes silence]

When will you return back my money?

As I have already told you, you have got the wrong person. I am not the guy who asked you for a recharge. Please redial and check with the right person.

How can it be? I dialled the correct number.

May be a cross connection. You might perhaps want to try after a few hours.

Or a simpler solution is for you to return my money, ******.

Mind your language.

I hang up again. He called me again and again, but I let the phone ring.That was all for yesterday. In the morning today, I got another call. A different number – +916542325507. Again the guy was asking for someone else. Something is definitely wrong, I thought. I told him the same thing, that this is a different number and hung up. But something came back to my mind immediately. I thought I had seen an arrow mark on my screen beside the number of the caller. This never showed up before. Something is definitely wrong.

I went to my neighbours room, Rohit. I asked Rohit to call up the 90 number. The call was on my mobile ! But there was no sign of the arrow mark. Was it my mind playing tricks on me? Was I imagining things? All my screen showed was Rohit Calling. Unless …

I went to Dhangi’s room. Now Dhangi is not added in my contacts list. I made him call up the 90 number. And voila ! There it was, the arrow beside Dhangi’s number. And it immediately occured to me what the whole thing was.

The other person has set up call forwarding on his mobile. Whenever you try to call the 90 number, it gets forwarded to my mobile. All the time the sales person was dialling the correct number. I did not know what to do next. Dhangi suggested I call up the Airtel customer service and tell them.

I called up the Airtel customer service at 121, but I managed to get only one reply -

I am sorry sir. We cannot help you in this matter. Airtel is a service provider. All our customers are equally important to us.

Damn it fool, even after listening to the whole story can you not think out of the box and actually do something. I know you have been taught to blurt out the same response and you are doing a pretty good job as a bot. But don’t you see there could be something fishy here. I suspect a foul play. Can you not for a change use your brains and do justice to the money Airtel pays you.

I am sorry sir. We cannot help you in this matter. Airtel is a service provider. All our customers are equally important to us.

Oh my darling, this is India. Why do they even have call centers here, I wonder. The guy on the other side would have done a better service to the nation pulling a rickshaw. And to think that the Americans outsource all their work to be done by these damned creatures.

So be it. I am going to do nothing in this affair any more. If the sales person calls up again, I’ll tell him to go to the police. Let him fight for his money. Let Airtel value their customers so much that they annoy them. If only there was a way to block out all the forwarded calls.

So ends the Case Of The Forwarded Calls. I shall post any new developments below. But I do not think there will be any.

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Opening Up

Published on March 13, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments

Its amazing how monitored ragging can positively effect your personality. In a few days you find yourself transformed into someone you always wnated to be but were hesitant. Instead on relying on the others, you now start to believe in yourself.

Being an engineering student and staying in an hostel, it is no secret that I have had to undergo ragging, or rather the politically correct term being used ‘orientation period‘ or OP. Fortunately though, we have the OP in our second year as compared to the first years else where. The first years are more vulnerable. But when you are in the second year, having already spent an year in the campus gives you a lot of confidence to face anything thrown at youself. Also to quell your fears regarding OP, let me mention that the OP is conducted in a very controlled manner and within restrictions. The sole purpose of OP is to gel with batchmates and instill a sense of belonging to a particular hostel.

But then this post is not about OP. Its more about how a few days of OP can change you forever.

Earlier I was this shy, introverted guy. I hardly used to talk to anyone. I remember back in the school days, I was to be interviewed by a lady from Times of India. She introduced herself and started by asking me to tell her something about myself. I went blank. After staring helplessly at people around myself, I replied, “Could you please be more specific. What do you want to know about me?” When asked to introduce myself, I couldn’t come up with anything.

Well, ask me the same question now, and I’ll go on for quite some time about who I am and what I like, well,  depending on how interested I feel you are. Moreover, earlier I used to avoid any contact with strangers, would leave a conversation hanging dead, and got lost touch with almost everyone from school.

All this changed after my second year. I am now trying to get back in touch with everyone. I do not feel the need to make new friends ‘coz I have too many good ones, but talking to a stranger does not bother me now. Back at home, I now socialize. Earlier I made it a point to avoid any party or social gathering, but now I am like bring-it-on, lets meet people.

The change though was slow to come about in my case. I still have this tendency of reverting back to the old habit of isolation. But there is always a constant effort on my behalf to change myself, to make myself more presentable. It is for the same reason that I love the sitcom Dexter. Its all about how you want people to look at you, and I’ll get there some day, sooner than later.

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I Wanna Run Away, Never Say Goodbye

Published on March 10, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments

Exactly what I feel at the moment. Another day crawls to an end. I lie here in my room tired of boredom. Joblessness is the worst punishment you can dole out to any body.

It’s not as if I have no work to do. There are a lot of things I have to do, and frankly speaking, I am running out of time. If I continue postoponing, I’ll have to work extra furiously towards the end to ensure that the deadline is never crossed. But recently I have been distracted and not able to concentrate on my work. Coding is impossible at the moment, and so is thinking about any proofs. This in essense rules out BTP work!

Also I was trying to learn PERL by myself. But then once again there is this lack of motivation because I do not have any immediate use of the language. I am pretty happy with C and dont feel the need to know yet another language. So that is on hold for a while.

By any standards, the TV series have become boring and the movies left for me to watch demand high levels of concentration on my part which is currently not possible. I am more in the mood of some light comedy, yet none of those nonsense-watch-me-and-forget-me movies. Pirates of Caribbean describes exactly the kind of movie that I would want to watch. The last good movie that I liked was Bedtime Stories.

I need to brush up my Java once again. I received a mail from Fair Isaac confirming that Kashyap is going to interact with me during these days before I join FI. Although Navin says that C is an acceptable coding language, I shall try to switch to Java because bulk of the work done at FI has been using Java, and also so that I get a platform to master the language. However, I still think I would have preferred C++ to Java.

Perhaps the best thing for me is to go to sleep now. That way I might feel fresh after a good nights sleep and might actually feel like working tomorrow onwards. But please do not read much into these ’cause I have been feeling the same for the past 3 days !!

There’s this soccer match between Chelsea and Juventus, and also the fourth ODI between India and New Zealand airs day after. Good, something to look forwards to. I am eagerly waiting for the Formula 1 season to start.

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A Fun Bitwise

Published on February 9, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments

So here it is, now that the Bitwise 2k9 is over, everyone feels so relieved and obviously happy. Everything went smoothly and happily. There was no hitch (well, compared to what are generally expected, we had the minimal of all the problems). And all the while when the contestants were busy cracking the questions, we were having fun in our own way.

Not just in India, but anywhere in the world, you’ll never find an event start on time. So why should we be an exception [:P].  Now since Bitwise is an international competition in which participants from all over the world take part, I put up a timer on the right hand sidebar, displaying the server time. This time would be used by the contestants to synchonise their watches. The event was to be begin at 1220 hours IST. And I was prepared, in the event of us getting delayed, to slightly change the server time – not that we finally needed it. The event started right on time. Actually we were all ready for the launch ten minutes earlier. The countdown began and just when the timer showed 1220 on our site, we released the problems.

The response was enormous !! The server was heavily overloaded. Many complaints started pouring in about the site not loading up. But in a matter of few anxious minutes, these complaints died down, and we took a sigh of relief.

Just when we were all getting into our new roles of maintaining the system and responding to all the queries, the first shock hit us ! No, it was no fault, no breakdown of system and certainly not of the server going offline. A team had actually solved a question, easiest though, and scored full. We couldn’t believe it. Naresh (Shenoy K) actually pulled out the file from the system, compiled it manually and checked with the test cases himself to make sure that the evaluator had not made an error. The problems team were bewildered. They wondered if their problems were not as good enough as they thought earlier. There were a few nervous smiles, trying to defend their claim that the questions are indeed though.

We convinced ourselves that this was just  one-off instance and that not all the teams will find the same question this easy to solve, that perhaps it was more by luck that talent that this team had cracked the first question in ten minutes. This we did only to be proved wrong in another quater of an hour. Submissions for the same question started pouring in and there were quite a good number of teams with full scores. We just kept our fingers crossed.

But then that did remain a one-off question. Apparently the second question had been changed just hours before the question. The original question was too tough to be solved in such short  time, and the problems team decided to put up a modified version which was easier, evident by the fact that the score was halved. The second question, the one to be solved first, carried just 75 marks, while the other questions were rated for 200s and 300s.

India vs. Sri Lanka cricket match was being aired the same time. We got busy watching the match while at the same time answering the doubts of the contestants. Ghoda (Birendar S Tiwana) had this brainwave the previous day of letting the teams add us on their gtalk id and contacting us over the IM in case of any doubts. The idea was a hit considering the number of queries I had to answer. I was asked all sort of things – from being pestered for hints, to suggestions that the questions were too tough to be solved by a final year student of engineering, to being told of that the sample cases we provided were wrong !

There were a few highlights of chatting that I would like to mention. A girl came online – nita..sharma.niit (obviously name changed to protect identity). She mentioned that the Enigma quiz was a great idea, and that she was enjoying it. Immediately Tharki (Arpit Kumar) got working. He told her that the whole of enigma was his brainchild (he mentioned it was of Arpit’s as a third person), and proceeded to give her his email id so that she could contact him to thank him personally. And she did !!! Her next message was – thanks for the id. I have added him on  GTalk. Tharki left the station and returned to his computer to attend to more pressing business [:P]. Apparently they have become good friends.

We had lots of fun answering the queries and chatting away. We dealt sternly with a few guys, having to tell them that we provide no hints and loved talking to a few who challenged our problem makers – a few of them really made Sudip (Roy) and co. ponder over the boundary conditions. Only a minor changes were made to one or two questions.

Aritro (Aritra Sen) was the server admin making all the changes to the webpages. Tension clearly showed when he occasionally lashed out at anybody suggesting he was slow in updating the  webpage (which he was not). Mallu Da (Vinu Rajshekhar) was the busy man firing away sql queries when we had to sometimes manually check if the file submitted contained malicious code. Naresh and Mallu were our goto guys when in doubt. Akshit (Sharma) and KT (Kaustabh Tripathi) ensured that none of us were hungry. They arranged for snacks and lunch, half of which they ate themselves. Shashi (Narayan) took charge of the feedback. Ghoda was the responsible person, always reminding us that we should not toy/abuse/insult/behave irresponsibly with people while chatting, that we should seriously answer their queries and never mislead them – this suggestion was too hard to follow. Karishma (Kapadia), Nisha (Kiran) and Chuski (Varun Sharma) were there as well, taking rounds in helping everybody out. The problem team members Anvesh (Komuravelli), Ashish (V), Bhuyan (Pramit K), Sumeet (Singal), Ruteesh (K) were obviously present to help us answer the queries.

In all, it was a great day. Everyone was tired by the end. I actually dozed off six hours after the start of the competition. Arindam (Sharma) had come in the evening afer his GATE exam. It was one of the best days of my stay in Kharagpur. Not having slept for almost 40 hours, I bid them goodbye and left for my room.

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A Forgettable Train Journey

Published on February 3, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments
Kharagpur's Railway Station

Kharagpur's Railway Station

Well, I had taken a break from kgp for the last week of January and had been to Hyderabad. One of the reason was that I had an eye checkup scheduled for the 30th of January, but then also I did not want to be here for Spring Fest. The days spent at home were the typical ones, mostly sleeping and eating. Finally it was the time to return back home – back to kgp, where I belong.

With the airbag inside the car, and everyone ready, we set off to the station. Dad started a conversation on the new railway coaches that have been introduced recently, the ones which have 9 seats in a group instead of the usual 8. He was narrating his experience and his opinion was that these coaches should be removed and the railways should revert back to the 8 seats per group coaches. I got drawn into a debate suggesting these new coaches are meant to accomodate more passengers, which is good considering the number of people travelling these days. As usual we never reached a conclusion, but he ended saying I will understand the troubles only after facing them.

He couldn’t have been more true. Unfortunately, I was alotted a seat in one of these coaches, and it was then that I realised how crowded the place looked. There was no room to fit the baggage, and the seats somehow appeared over-crowded. People who had come in groups were unhappy as the new seating arrangement meant that they were divided. Everyone was complainig while also trying to get seats exchanged.

As if this was not enough, I was seated amidst 8 retired bongs ! All of them old people, and they started chattering in bangali the moment the train started. There was only one thing left for me to do – plug in my discman, pick up my rubik’s cube and pretend I did not exist !

This almost sums up my whole train journey, except that the next morning a twist was introduced into the play. A small kid, maybe 2 or 3 yrs of age, came by and looked earnestly at my cube. I tried striking up a conversation with him. But he wouldn’t come nearer unless I give him the cube, and he wouldn’t stay if he got the cube. He made those cute convincing faces that kids make to get their work done. I had to part with the cube. Now with the cube gone, I was left with nothing to do and almost 4 hours to spend.

Luckily the train was not late and I got off before I could go mad sitting there all alone by myself. Truly a forgettable trian journey it was, the last one I hope it was from Secunderabad to Kharagpur.

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A Feel Of Things To Be

Published on January 21, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments

Things have returned back to normalcy at IIT Kharagpur. This report is with regard to one Mr. Anuvrat Singh, who is a final year student of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

A young boy, happy with his placement at Fair Isaac, Bangalore had been behaving oddly these past few days. Sources close to him tell us that since the start of the spring semester, this being his final one, Anuvrat had been attending all the classes. This was an unexpected change in a guy who never attached much significance in being present during the lecture hours. He had this weird theory of – Why attend classes if you don’t listen to the professor anyway. Time would be better spent sleeping then and later on doing something constructive. And he stuck to this absurd notion of his for seven semesters.

However, what changed his mind at the beginnnig of the semester continues to be a mystry. He won’t talk about it. When confronted, he simply tries to change the topic. His wing mates and friends were highly concerned for his well being and health. They were troubled by the possibility of attending classes having an adverse affect on the young boy’s health. To get him to bunk classes, they suggested he watch movies along with them late night, go for a walk at 2 am, and what not. But it was all in vain. Classes, apparently, had become his priority for the semester

His friends had given up as a lost cause. And then it happened ! This morning he had a double lecture at 0730 hrs – Foundations of Cryptology. Anuvrat woke up at 0725 and the very thought of a double lecture, that too of Cryptology, scared him. For the first time this semester he was afraid to go to the class. And then he did what he does best – pretend as if he doesn’t have a class at all. Yep, he woke up, got fresh, had breakfast and watched Two And A Half Men for the next four hours. This was the first class he skipped (not missed, but bunked) this semester.

And if the rumours are to be believed, he is leaving Kharagpur to visit his parents in Hyderabad tomorrow. It is a 2 weeks planned trip – away from classes, projects and any work. And he feels quite good about it. Things certainly are starting to look well for this lad once again. He was seen enthusiastically involved in a conversation to plan a trip to the Sundarbans in the second week of February with his wingmates.

Get lost, Ha ! Now its me, Anuvrat. Look, whatever the reporter has written is crap. I wasn’t demented to attend the classes everyday. It was all part of a plan. A plan that has already been put into action. The classes were to give me an advantage in attendance, so that I can now skip many more classes without being worried about  a drop in the percentage of attendance. Thats all from me. I am a bit busy right now – lots of trips to plan. See ya :)

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The Final Semester

Published on January 5, 2009 in Anu. 0 Comments

Yipee, yahoo … the final semester is here !! Life couldn’t have been better. Since I have already been placed, I do not have to worry about campus placements. I have no interest in applying for a phd which obviates the need for me to score a very high CG, a decent one ~8.8 should do. And to add to it, I have chosen subjects in which the professors do not really care about the attendace. Yeah ! Thats it .. my final sem and i shall make it my happiest four months.

Aise plans to bahut hain. To list a few, I am going back to Hyderabad on the 23rd (its a ten day visit, primarily for post-operation checkup). Also a trip to Dehradun is queued with a very high priority. Probably mid sems khatam hote hi bhaag jaon. Fir holi ke samay ghar jaana hai, I do not want to spend the holi with the crazy animals here. A trip to Delhi and Varanasi is planned (date not yet decided).

Ratno has been urging us to visit his homeplace Balughat. He plans to make a trip to the Sunderbans from there. I think it is a good idea and we should definitely try it. Rohit is ready to manage the accomodations if we plan a trip to Goa – yeah, Goa it is. This is one of the most desired trip.

Since this year we did not have the traditional Illumination event on Diwali, humne crackers phod kar wing mein celebrate kiya tha. Buoyed by the success (we had lots of crackers and everbody was happy), main soch raha tha ki 4 saal mein pehli baar wing mein sankranti bhi manate hain. I discussed the option and got a positive response. Uske ek din pehle lodhi hai, and we shall be celebrating that too – is baar agar Monish bhaaga Kshitij ke liye to main usko goli se uda doonga.

Aur kya chahiye. Bindaas peace life with no academic pressure – I always craved for a life like this. My final four months here, and I shall make it worth it. Enjoy. :)

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the laSIcK experience

Published on December 26, 2008 in Anu. 0 Comments

I had been very excited about getting LASIK done on my eyes. It would obviate the need for me to wear glasses all the time. Believe me, that was a big incentive. Earlier I had to carry an additional pair of glasses. And it annoyed me when I became aware of the glasses sitting by my nose. Also it would pain around the nose if I dozed off while studying, obviously with my spectacles on.

The biggest motivation was the need to feel independant. I hate depending on anything too much. It always worried me to think what would happen if I accidently broke my glasses. I would go half blind.

And thus the decision to undergo the surgery.

I read blogs on lasik, saw a video on youtube (was disgusting), and prepared myself for the procedure. But nothing could have prepared me not to be nervous on the day of surgery.

The surgery on the right eye was scheduled for 11 in the morning. I got into the surgery dress. A drop of local anesthesia was put into my eye. Apparently a drop is enough to make your eye insensitive to anything. Then I was taken into the surgery room. The room was air conditioned and I got goosebumps seeing the doctors there. I was afraid, too nervous.

My face was then covered with a sheet of paper, with a small gap where my eye was. I was told to keep both my open. I found that extremely difficult, what with lights just above my face watering my eyes. And I did not dare to move my body. The surgery started, wit the surgeon putting few more drops of some medicine. I do not remember the exact sequence of the procedure.

Most of the time it was something being put into my eye. When a suction ring was inserted into my eye, my vision faded and I could see with only the other eye. It was a bit of relief actually, not being able to see what was being done to your eye. But sadly, when the ring was removed, the vision was back. The lasers were activated and it was fun watching them. After the lasers were done doing their work, the surgeon put few moe drops of liquid in my eye, corrected the flap, washed the eye and then cleaned it.

And it was all over in a few minutes. But those few felt like eternity. I was praying for the proedure to complete before they even got started.

I could immediately open my eyes. The vision was quite hazy though. Inspection of the eye followed next. The doctor was pretty pleased with the surgery and said all went fine.

I got the next eye operated upon after a gap of ten minutes. So the whole thing was over for me in a hour and I was free to go back home. A pair of black glasses and a few eye drops were prescribed to me by the doctor.

It’s been a week already. I am happy with the surgery. I have no need of glasses now. The eye drops make the vision unclear, but the doctor says that it will clear up with time. 

But it feels good to be able to see everything without glasses. My first impression was – everything seems proportionately bigger ! I love it.

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