Test results are out !!

What follows is the very rock-bottom that you can hit when you take the global personality test at similarminds.com. I assure that it is a complete coincidence that these results should appear in my blog. :D

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion 30% Stability 36% Orderliness 33% Empathy 23% Interdependence 56% Intellectual 30% Mystical 43% Artistic 50% Religious 36% Hedonism 10% Materialism 70% Narcissism 23% Adventurousness 23% Work ethic 16% Self absorbed 50% Conflict seeking 36% Need to dominate 36% Romantic 36% Avoidant 70% Anti-authority 50% Wealth 36% Dependency 70% Change averse 56% Cautiousness 30% Individuality 36% Sexuality 36% Peter pan complex 90% Physical security 76% Food indulgent 30% Histrionic 50% Paranoia 36% Vanity 83% Hypersensitivity 63% Female cliche 30%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

In case you didn't have the sense to figure out the meaning of Peter Pan complex here is something to enlighten you.

Guess whoz back...

...No prizes for guessing. Had an interesting week off DA-IICT. Went to Jaipur, thinking I'd go to Delhi. Ended up staying there and watching two movies, and reading two books. The movies I'd rather not talk about and initiate another ceaseless bout of trauma. The first book I read was Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan. This 'satire', is science fiction only in name imho. it's about God and our purpose vis-a-vis that God. According to one theory proposed by a very important character in the book (who incidentally is trapped forever between the solar system and Betelguese due to his sojourn into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum), on a faraway planet, there was a race of people searching for a purpose to life. Whenever they found one, it was deemed too lowly for them and was assigned to machines made for that very purpose, who of course fulfilled that purpose better. Eventually having found no purpose befitting their existences, they decided to kill everyone without a purpose (read themselves). And for this too they built machines, since they did this job too better. Needless to say, these creatures were wiped out from their home planet, and only the machines remained. Numerous millenia ago, a candidate representing the cream of these machines was sent towards a particular galaxy with a very important message, only to be opened on delivery. But unfortunately, his ship broke down, and he had to crash-land on Titan (one of Saturn's moons for the uninitiated). Now all that the ship needed to take off and continue the journey was a single spare part. Phew! Now comes the actual "theory" part of the theory: The purpose of all intelligent life on Earth (read doped dolphins & castrated bloggers) was to get that spare part to that creature ASAP !!!

Sounds a lot on the lines of Hitchhiker's doesnt it? I guess it must have been an inspiration for the latter. But I'm pretty sure this stuff goes a lot deeper: read it to believe it.

Not content with a minor regional skirmish involving a superpower and a wannabe (Dragonstrike), and annihilating two perfectly innocent nuclear babies (Dragonfire), Humphrey Hawksley, the renegade BBC correspondent with a penchant for writing history before it occurs, gives us a ringside view of what apocalypse would be like in The Third World War. Make no mistake: as the title would have made it clear, there is no escape: Thou art nuked, and nuked wilt thou remain. This time though, Mr. Hawksley has attempted to portray characters instead of just a sequence of events. But it rings hollow for some reason. Maybe he should stick to what hez good at: annihilating millions in the name of realpolitik. And yes, the novel is packed full of post holocaust/biological attack images (its a doomsday novel!), special forces missions, diplomacy (?), the works. The biggest question that was bugging me throughout the whole gore trip was what is he going to write next ? He's done with the whole world now! After finishing I realized that there was always the scope for the unavoidable "sequel". Man I wish he'd killed off every human on the planet! (Maybe sci-fi would have followed...eek!)

Just returned from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Just watch it for the visuals. The rest of course, is all comic book stuff (read crap); except Padme (Natalie Portman who kept reminding me of Garden State), Yoda, and a host of animated characters and droids, who showed better acting and modulation skills than some actors playing primary characters. All the same: thank god its over!

N.B. - For those nosy bastards who have nothing better to do than mind other people's business, I watched Jo Bole So Nihaal and Waqt in Jaipur. The latter was tolerable in parts; the former I wouldn't recommend to a sworn enemy.

Semesterly Review

aXe's blog ["A Scanner Darkly" is a terrifying trip through the dark worlds of drug abusers - a contemporary classic by the master of all things unconventional: Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly) ] gave me an idea of writing out what I experienced or did throughout the last 4 mths in the college. After all, this is a milestone, and it demands a review. we'll see about the analysis later.

the semester began in early jan (too soon as it turned out), but I didn't notice anything till SLM and the SEN project happend in my life. Besides these two regular irritants, I was busy trying to determine ways of getting addicted to "Farmageddon". For those not aware of what "Farmageddon" was all about, ask some member of #ashLab. He'll never look at rabbits the way you do; ever again. Sci-fi was the minor irritant towards the fag end of Jan because I had to copy paste and create a presentation about a book known as Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (Again thx to aXe for guiding me to it). Writing (duh...copy pasting) a critique of this book didn't turn out to be as boring as expected, but doesn't compare with the actual experience of reading it. And like any good book, or movie, once you pick it up, and start reading (or watching, for a movie), you won't put it down, till its over (its very short). More importantly, the experience enhances itself everytime you do it. If you're interested in epics, this is about the most concise and entertaining epic u'll lay your hands on. I'm really sorry that the dude who wrote it has passed away. the guy was a freakin master.

Well..hm where were we? Oh yes, no more ads for the books I read for the science fiction course: all of them are gems/classics (thats why they were chosen)). Meanwhile, anyone interested in a comprehensive mindnumbing can read William Gibson's Neuromancer and explain the ending to me. I'd be most obliged. (btw the last two books mentioned are in the college library)

As is quite apparent, the normally much neglected open elective held a considerable amount of interest for me. My brain told me that Marketing would be much more useful, LAC would help me improve my deteriorating language and communication skills (which weren't a lot to speak of earlier anyway), and Devy would be...well I don't know. As it is, there were only 4-5 ppl initially who were interested in continuing with the course, and it would make a little interesting story about how ASF was Saved (and me I think).

My SEN project (Travel Portal team#12) was eventually done in the last 2 weeks before submission. It was fun initially to learn Flash, but really, the kind of work I did, was too mindless and labour-intensive for the fun factor to hang around for long (but Flash is GOOD, mind you: probably only in terms of interest for us wannabe engineers (sheesh feels weird). I was lucky to find a team, which had no personal issues (as far as I know...and care) with each other. (With apologies to Orwell) As usual, all the team members worked equally, and as occurs even more often, some members worked a lot more equally than others (eg. Taneja & GVC) . I myself knew all along the maximum grade I could achieve considering my class participation and pop quiz attendance, and had decided to work accordingly (next to nothing). But I guess Flash was too much fun :) Of course, Bakrji didn't like the Flash(s), but who gives a fuck about HIM?

I had high expectations from my algorithm course, and they were only partially satiated towards the end of course, when my interest had already used itself up twenty times over (ask Gladiator about Amin). I guess my attention span is just too freakin' low.

My expectations were mixed with nitroglycerine, attached to a lighted wick, and shoved up my you know what, in the case of MMC. I mean holy 3 credit courses! By the end of the course, we were supposed to know things about the major types of Lossless encoding (various types of huffman, various modifications of the lempel-zip including the lzw used in winzip), perceptual encoding, the JPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, mp3 and low-bit rate voice encoding, MPEG-4, MPEG-7 formats, Multimedia OS (isn't as simple as it sounds like: a whole course in itself), and of course, networking for MM (this topic alone had around 4-6 research papers and request for comment (RFCs) documents. It might sound like i'm cribbing; in fact it is. Well yes, for a three credit course, I couldn't do justice to it (fucked up my project completely). And as long as i don't get a D or an F, I will be satisfied completely with this course. I mean...fuck SEN!!! (how can u learn scheduling/management from a guy, who can't make a fucking exam timetable!)

MCS of course, isn't worth talking about (except for the rare occassions when 'Doo showed up in the lab, and gave flashes of his brilliance in all things M-CS). I guess i'm just too pathetic (as was evident throughout the course from SLM's attitude). My last (but definitely not the least) disappointment in these 4 mths has been regarding what I started the discussion with. Due to the nature of this semester, or for some other reason, nothing productive took place (from my side) after the first month. Well, now I have three months to rectify that (I hope).

In between, of course, there was Synapse, which stoked the fires of CS back into me. But the composition of my elite clan (for the uninitiated, it was known as (ugh) Use & Abuse and it had ChuckRaj as its reluctant captain, Bobli, yours truly, and of course...ahem the dynamic M duo of Moorthy & Movva) didn't quite work out (our debut match against $cr was the high point of my CS this sem though; nowadays I only play with medium level bots : ). Anyway back to Synapse, I was soooo fuckin disappointed that neither S4 or DEW won the fuckin 2nd prize!! shit man!! It was little solace that the team which kicked (nay raped, humiliated, annihilated is more like it) us out of contention, was a team of lil school going kids, who formed the second string of the actual clan (geez! reality dawneth). but really, MA showed us all what pr0nezz was all about. heheh...Oh yes!!! one more thing about Synapse; it was about Nihar getting rejected by the original fashion show team, and then winning the Best Male Model prize of the event (lol). I mean c'mon he deserves it (who can forget the striptease on Sex Bomb? fuckin hilarious). The fashion show was also about our seemingly voyeuristic self-appointed paparazzi, which bombarded the boy's hostel with photos and vids that lots of ppl had fun watchin alone (:D).

Note: It is a sad fact that all I remember about the annual technical festival of our college, is a gaming event, and a mindless fashion show (no offense to organizers/participants) which had no right to be there).

Holy shit! I just remembered I sat on the PC to complete one or two outstanding assignments! neway, Blame it on aXeBl0G.