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.