Monthly Archive

I just finished reading “Just for Fun” by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond and thought it would be nice to record the two paragraphs that I liked most in the book.

“What makes programming so engaging is that, while you can make the computer do what you want, you have to figure out how. Within the confines of the computer, you are the creator. If you are good enough, you can be God. On a small scale.” — Wow!!

“A lot of people believe in working long days and doing double,triple, or even quadruple shifts. I’m not one of them. Neither Transmeta nor Linux has ever gotten in the way of a good night’s sleep. In fact, if you want to know the honest truth, I’m a firm believer in sleep. Some people think that’s just being lazy, but I want to throw my pillow at them. I have a perfectly valid excuse, and I’m standing by it: You may lose a few hours of your productive daytime if you sleep, oh, say, ten hours a day, but those few hours when you are awake, you are alert and your brain functions on all six cylinders. Or four or whatever.” — Surprising, because this is the reasoning I give whenever someone complains that I m sleeping too much

Yeah, its not Salaam Kalam ! but Welcome Back, Professor ! when the country’s most popular President ever returns to Anna University tomorrow after serving as the First Citizen of the country for the past 5 years. Damn, he left Anna before I joined and is coming back after I left Anna

I came across a well written post about APJ and could not help but post some bits of it here…

“…. Then, even before the editors could respond, the President came up and sat cross-legged on the edge of the stage as a stunned audience watched. The president of India was literally sitting at the feet of the country’s media denizens.”

“…. Nor is Kalam a khadi-clad hermit in an ashram, but rather uniquely someone who has the hairstyle of a rock star and the mind of a scientist ! “

“…. In the past presidency was about the grandeur of a Mughal Garden. In Kalam’s India, it became about the novelty and excitement of a herbal garden, of flying a Sukhoi, of being in submarine or sharing a meal with jawans in Siachen.”

And one of the comments to this article - “Its really unfortunate that, more than 80 percent of citizens of INDIA wanted him back as president, we can not do anything except just seeing the tamasha of politics.”

And here comes the last poem from Kalam as President of India,

When you wish upon a star,

Makes no difference who you are

Anything your heart desires

Will come to you

My friend and junior at college, Aravind got an offer from MS and had written about it here.

Had a great weekend !! With half the office leaving (I dint !) for a movie on friday afternoon, I came home at 6 pm and slept till 8.. Hold on!! Its 8 am, the next morning !!!! After a long day at office on saturday, I started reading HP7 that night - Yes, I read it only after the official release - and finished it on sunday evening !! And monday was only better with no bugs biting me.. Also i got a prize for my MVC project..

Read the title as “Yet Another Crazy Code (Rule) in CEG !” ….

Until last year, the rulebook read, 1. 75% of attendance is mandatory for a student to sit for the semester exams, 2. Internal Assessments account for 50% and Semester Exams account for another 50% for all theory papers.

Now I came to know that there are some new rules in force — “Internals account for 40%, Semester exams 50% and Attendance 10%” — yeah u read it right, “ATTENDANCE” !!!

I am quite sure that this new rule will not be accepted by the student community - past or present ! Surely there are other ways to encourage students to attend classes than enforcing such silly rules !!

I was all along thinking how and what to write about how we had a blast of a day until i got soaked in the 7 pm rains that has become a daily routine in Chennai. I wonder how it starts raining exactly at 7 like magic !! Perhaps because its the 7th anniversary of HeyMath! and the rains like us

So, its the 7th anniversary of HeyMath! today and we celebrated it with an outing at MGM Beach Resort. Technically, thats it ! But, If I conclude the post here saying that we had great fun and enjoyed a lot bla bla, my smart friend VC will immediately ping me and shout - “Explain everything in detail!” like he did for the Foodfest So here we go…..

We went there at 10 am and the plan was to enjoy ourselves by playing a lot of games, and of course WIN !! We got split into 3 teams and played some 9 games until lunch and any guess who won ??? C’mon its pretty simple, its the the team that I was in - “Knights” These games included some weird ones like bursting balloons, filling water in buckets using glasses with holes in them, some Ctrl+F stuff which needs some brains (we won it hands down !), some races (there was a piggy back race and no points for guessing who rode on Satya) and the Great Tug of War !!! And to be fair, I remember only the games that the Knights won !

After lunch, its time for a great game of Cricket on the seashore. This time though, I was not that lucky cos I was not able to get into my rhythm and was pretty much the main reason that my team lost But again it was a nail-biting last ball finish !

Generally, it was great fun with songs, dance and all that stuff.. I had never got such an experience ever before and hated to come back; but then all good things must come to an end and we have got so many great years coming up for us to celebrate !!

[P.S: It was raining like hell by the time we reached office back at 7.30 pm, and all of us got wet as if we dipped into the Bay of Bengal, which they dint allow us to do !]

How many languages does a web developer need to know ? Check this !!

Hmm, lotsa things are happening without me blogging about them… The blog hits crossed 2000 silently I have replied back to Juno that I wont be joining them. SL murdered BAN once again. And I have been enjoying my life as usual..

Being a professional (though the tag is just 1 month old), I will try to be polite in this analysis. Any statements perceived by others as angry outbursts are unintentional and will NOT be regretted.

Today early morning, someone from Google, Bangalore called me up and politely (yeah, he was polite!) told me that they have a problem with my blog post in which I have put up my interview questions and told that they would appreciate if I delete it. I was not in a mood to ask him why and all that and just replied (politely) that I will do so.

I have indeed deleted that post, but let me ponder over my thoughts !

First of all, I did not sign any form of agreement or whatever for attending their interview. Its just sending a resume in early December last year and a telephonic call in April and a Thank You letter few days later. So I cannot understand what policies the guy talked about. If I had known before that I should not tell others what they asked me in the interview, I would have squarely refused to attend it. (And If my memory serves me right, Google does not even possess a hard copy of my resume.)

Second, Amazon had not prevented me or my friend Rave who got an offer there a few months back from putting up the interview questions on our blogs.

Third, Google is not interested in determining the content of the 6,740,000 results i got (even if an abnormally huge number of results, say 90% of these results are of the type “Please someone tell me what will be the questions that would be asked in google interviews”, the rest is still a huge number) when i searched for “Google Interview Questions”. Perhaps they are concerned about my blog stats !! Surely, my blog post on Google’s interview questions is a major hit, if i go by the blog stats given by WordPress.

Fourth, I think Google should not forget how it became a verb !! Information Retrieval is the foundation on which Google survives and I could not understand why they prevent information sharing.. If they are going to prevent anyone from letting the interview questions out, its an IMPOSSIBLE task !! Even if they are a giant in the market and make MS kneel in front of them, they cant prevent the Internet Users from sharing information.

To conclude, I think this quote by Franklin P. Adams will do good: “I find that a great part of the information I have, was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.”