Saturday, April 21, 2007

Ba Ba Black Sheep

Ba Ba Black Sheep: Punishing Innocents
(On Nehru Hall GC Massacre)

Black sheep: noun – A member of a family or other group who is considered undesirable.

It was the happiest moment for Nehru Hall of Residence; they won all the three Golden Championships (GCs) that IIT Sheep YardKharagpur offers for best performance in sport events, social and cultural events and technical events. They got over excited and showed off their joy in some what non-sober sense by entering into some other hostel and ridiculing them, which resulted in some dhishum-dhishum and few noses and few legs got broken.

Obviously Nehru-ites were liable to punishment, a punishment that reminds everyone not to enjoy happiness by break opening some skulls. So IIT barnstormers, uh sorry, brainstormers came up with two decisions – one, not give them any of the GCs; two, not to allot Nehru Hall to any of the new students.

First one is none of my concerns but still I think it is wrong. How easily can you scrap their one year’s fight and probably their future glory of winning three GCs alone just based on one incident which is very common in school lives? You, surely, can come up with a better punishment than that. You could ask them for an open apology to the suffered hostel or you can give them title of winner of three GCs but don’t give them the cups or give them the cups colored in black.

Whatever, it is not what bothered me much.

What made me think pity on their decision is the second part of it. No first year is going to be allotted Nehru Hall. What does that mean? To jury, it is probably a way to stop new talents going into Nehru Hall, but to second year students it is a pain spanning one year. Now, since no first year student will be allotted Nehru, more students will be allotted to other hostel. The problem is that all hostels already crumbling with students out numbering the rooms; and banning one hostel from taking new students means testing the collapse limit of other hostels’ facilities.

This decision will force more students to live with another roommate in a room optimized to live one student. (There is a possibility of putting four persons in double rooms.) Imagine a situation when one hundred and fifty students have to live in rooms which are not even sufficient for accommodating hundred.

I ask a question, who would suffer then? Nehru-ites, who are responsible, or first years, who think it’s a nice place to live…. and learn. Is it Nehru Hall which will suffer water shortage or other hostels who will have to carry one and a half times more people than the designed for?

The question is how long we will be treated as sheep? How many times will we be following the mob? Is there a black sheep (or lamb)?

© Copyrighted Nishant Neeraj. Ask before quote.

Disclaimer: Writer is a free thinker and the script is his personal view.

Genre: Real story based, Drama, Documentary, IIT Kharagpur
Type: Personal View
Language: English
Category: For ALL age group
Place and Time: IIT Kharagpur. April 21, 2007. 08:36 (PM) in evening.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Mechanical Programming

Mechanical Programming

7ou are not a skilled programmer (but never stopped boasting about 7our programming skills), 7ou have some twent7 da7s left in 7our graduation and 7ou find out 7our ke7board has got a non-adjustable vital ke7 fucked-up. What would 7ou do? (Especiall7, when all 7ou do on 7our computer is chat, read blog and search porn.) Bu7 a new ke7board! Naah!

(7ou must have guessed that the ke7 I am talking about is ‘y’, I had nonfunctional left control, tab and left shift, alread7.)


Probabl7 7ou’ll program some redundant ke7 like ‘tilde’ to print ‘wai.’ Being Mechanical Engineer b7 academics, I chose a ke7 which is close to ‘wai’ and look somewhat like it. I got ‘7’ and fitted a mechanical linkage between them. (Click the image to see it.)

Mechanical Programming

I programmed m7 computer mechanicall7 to print a s7mbol (seven) for a mechanicall7 unprintable letter (‘wai’).

PS. I used same ke7board facilit7 to t7pe m7 sevent7 pages long thesis, then cop7 pas7ted ‘wai’ for each seven from a website using MS Word’s search and destro7 tool. So it is not alwa7s ‘kewl’ to program mechanicall7, some time it sucks.

© Copyrighted Nishant Neeraj. Ask before quote.

Disclaimer: Writer is a free thinker and the script is his personal view.

Genre: Real stor7 based, Drama, Fun, Technolog7, comed7
Type: ‘KEWL’
Language: English
Categor7: For ALL age group
Place and Time: IIT Kharagpur. April 20, 2007. 03:05 in the morning (AM).

Monday, April 16, 2007

Freaky Future

Freaky Future: Fragile – Handle with care.

Most of it seems like a horrifying sci-fi novel or movie, the only difference is – it is not fiction. I am talking about a presentation by Karl Fitch, namely ‘Did you know?’ Materials are arranged in such a gluey manner that keeps you at the edge of your seat.

To me it was like confession of a completely fact freak American, but I am sure you’ll enjoy and obviously be impressed by this excellent presentation.

Being an engineer by profession and strong supporter of language unification, I liked most of the freak fact told about technology and growing influence of English world-wide.

However the best part of presentation where he talks about ‘fast growth of technical information.’ He says, “… for a student, starting four year technical degree, half of what they learn in first year will be outdated by their third year of study …” This may, probably, be true for US, but what about people who still study technologies that had been outdated half a century ago? And worse, what if it is the case of premiere institutes of a country?

Never mind! They’ll get a job anyway.

PS: Navigate to beautifully written blog of Jon Revelos.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Democracy Version 2.0

BEWARE! DEMOCRACY VERSION 2.0 BETA AHEAD

It is probably the human nature or democratic sDemocracy Version 2.0 Betaystem, which makes us to do it in the easiest way possible, no matter whether it is good or bad; and then to blame it in later stages when we find that it has gone not the way we wanted. I am talking about voting power.

Weeks ago we had institute level election for the post of student representatives for vice-president, sport heads, social-and-cultural events heads and many other. The process was supposed to be like candidates prove their validity (basic criterion like semesters cleared, eligibility for candidateship etc.) then candidates go campaigning about their ideas and meet students (voters) to clarify their doubts and take feedback, then a fair election is conducted by ‘the system.’

However, this is not exactly what happens in reality. In last five years at IIT Kharagpur, I’ve realized campaigns are meant only for first year students, who are kept in separate hostel for first year and are most unpredictable. So, what about rest of 90 percent of population, you may ask. The answer is that their votes are fixed. From second year onwards students are shifted permanently in senior hostels (they are equally distributed in six hostels) and each hostel has some “pally” with few other hostels. It is a quid-pro-quo system where some hostel heads talk to each other about ‘which post’s candidate from which hostel’ and shooo; the magic has been done; now, no campaign for senior hostels and all concentration on dumb-bombs, that is first years.

So, we do all kind of stuffs, parties and provide all kind of unrealistic offers and dreams (almost same as our real life Neta ji does.) to get the maximum out of them. And on the D day, each hostel resident is informed by hostel's stud guys (except 1st year hostel students) to vote for the pallied candidates of the hostel. Residents (second year and onwards students) are informed to vote to number 2 for VP, no. 1 for G.Sec. sports, no. 4 for this, number 2 for that and so on; which is the serial numbers of ‘pallied’ candidates of that hostel on the voting sheet.

Mostly, we think, what’s the problem, after all no candidate met me, I know no one's plan and I don’t like attending soap-boxes where they put their proposal, and seniors and previous post holders ask as unrealistic and out of context question as Indian Police ask to an innocent when they have to prove him guilty. Thinking this, one comes to the conclusion that choosing a donkey instead of the other makes no alteration in the situation; and anyway, they all are nothing but a number to a non-stud guy.

So, here I am, no.2 for VP checked, no. 1 for GSec checked and no. X for Y checked – never caring about their name.

Result, almost, gets clear days before the election. It is the candidate of hostel-X wins because hostel X has pally with hostel A, B, C and D while candidate of hostel-Y looses as hostel has pally with E and F only. Moreover candidates of hostels A, B, C and D also win because of pally among them and pally with hostel X.

Same story goes for hostel student representative election with one minor modification in pally, now pally is among different wings of the hostel instead of pally among different hostels. And so the neat and clean arrangement goes undisturbed forever.

Probably, weak student representation in the institute is one of the ill-effect of this tradition of voting system. So, now, our VP can arrange cheap laptops for us but he cannot put a strong protest for heavy student intake in the institute which is causing rapture of infrastructure at every seam.

On a second thought I find we are a part of mistake too, but we prefer living in cozy rooms than knowing and if possible, making a change in the system.

© Copyrighted Nishant Neeraj. Ask before quote.

Disclaimer: Writer is a free thinker and the script is his personal view.

Genre: Real story based, Drama, Fun, Documentary
Type: Personal View
Language: English
Category: For ALL age group
Place and Time: IIT Kharagpur. April 14, 2007. 07:58 in evening

Friday, April 13, 2007

Hindi Blogging

Varnmala








This post contains Hindi fonts if you are unable to see it (and wish to see it) please follow the instructions on following web page click here for Hindi support


वाह भाई वाह ! यह एक काम गूगल ने सही किया । अब हिंदी भाषी लोग भी ब्लॉगिंग कर सकेंगे । Jhandaहालांकि अभी काफी सुधार करना होगा लेकिन यह एक उत्साहजनक बात है कि पहला कदम लिया जा चुका है जल्द ही मैं कुछ हिंदी सामग्री के साथ ब्लॉग में पुनर्प्रवेश करुंगा तब तक के आज्ञा दीजिये ।


वो सभी लोग जो हिंदी में ब्लॉगिंग के इच्छुक है तथा इसके बारें में और विस्तार में जानना चाहते हैं कृपया इस लिंक (कड़ी) पर क्लिक करें - गूगल हिंदी ब्लॉगिंग सहायता




यदि कोई परेशानी हो या किसी सहायता कि आवश्यकता हो तो निःसंकोच मुझसे सम्पर्क करें (कमेन्ट के द्वारा) ।

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Five Years at IIT Kgp







What happens when a person spends five years at IIT Kgp?
Here I am attaching a video of a maniac-you-know who has spent more than four and a half years in IIT Kgp and still trying to keep himself sane.

The poor fellow was as ordinary as you and me but you can see how aimless career threatening studies and faceless life threatening professors can convert him a into a psychologically crank monster who remains unperturbed by any interference and keeps wondering in his lunar fantasies.

Yeah meet Apurv Mathur aka Buddha aka Uncle in his newly released video "The Lunatic is in My Head"

nJOI
Naishe