Merry Christmas, y'all!!

It's quarter-past-one in the morning on Christmas Day.. it's chill.. the crackers light up the sky.. the world as a whole celebrates Christmas.

I think Christmas is one of those few festivals that crosses religious, cultural and caste boundaries.. Maybe it's the snowy, cold weather or the atheistic Santa Claus that transcends those boundaries uniting the world into one celebrating unit.

No partying or anything for me.. I'm stuck at home playing Exercise 55 of the Classical Guitarist's Guide and then blogging about it. In another 4 hours, I'll be at church for the early morning service.

I'm in a rather warm mood actually.. wondering how kids in poor or broken families would celebrate Christmas.. that the poor become magically rich and that broken families re-unite.

Are you thinking, "What is this heartless computer geek think he's doing?".. Wonder what's inducing it?

Maybe it's The Fray's music.. maybe it's because I like ideal, perfect situations without misery and sorrow deep down inside me.. even though I might put on an outwardly show of uncaring coldness..

This post should've been about the new Web 2.0 site that I recently found or the new software algorithm book I'm reading.. but it's not. Rather, it's a view deep down into me, a human.. not a computer geek or a pessimist.. but a human.

I've got a few admissions to make too. Firstly, that timetable I made isn't being followed. Secondly, I've spent a bit too much time on learning Ruby and Python, trying to get good at guitaring, chatting and contemplating a relationship when I should have been following that timetable. Thirdly, I know I'm going to mess up what I resolved to do properly.. atleast at this rate of study (0 pages/day).

It's not that any of those activities weren't productive because.. Ruby and Python are languages that I can make useful stuff with.. Good guitaring can calm a person down even in the darkest of situations.. I've learnt, if not helped, during those conversations with my friends.. And contemplating that relationship has made me a more mature person on the whole.

I want this post to be an enlightment for someone like me who's lost his focus and priorities. It's not meant for the already perfect person.

Recommending 'Little House' by The Fray along with all of their other alternative rock songs, I abruptly end this post, a jumble of unrelated thoughts lacking context or flow..

Windows Live Writer.. Not bad..

I'm writing this from Windows Live Writer since the Technical Refresh of Beta 2 of Word 2007 doesn't seem to work with Blogger Beta (although it works perfectly with Spaces). It just spews out this misspelled error message (sic):

Word cannot egister your account. The provider where you are trying to publish is unavailable. Contact your provider for assistance.

However, I googled the problem but couldn't find similar symptoms experienced by anyone else. Maybe the RTM version won't have the problem.. atleast not the spelling mistake.

Anyway, Windows Live Writer is not bad at all.. the Web Preview and Web Layout views come in real handy when you want to know how a post looks from a visitor's point of view effectively removing the post-edit-repost iterations that typically occur when aligning pictures and stuff..

The fact that it works with almost any blogging platform, not only Microsoft's Spaces, with almost no caveats, is surprising considering that both products (Spaces and Writer) are under the Windows Live brand.

Anyway, I'm switching to Windows Live Writer for my future blog posts.. atleast until someone comes up with something better.

Edit: Oh crap.. I can't label my posts through Writer.. now what?! *Sigh*.. Back to the Blogger editor..

My Yamaha CG-101

I removed my classical Yamaha CG-101 from its case after around 4 years now. It was still in the best of shape with the strings intact and all but totally out of tune. I learnt how to tune the thing and it's in perfect playing condition, now. So, if I turn out to become a lead guitarist instead of a software developer (specifically, kernel architect), attribute it to this day.. ;-).. After all, kernel architects get all the glory among software developers but lead guitarists get glory from software developers and plebeians alike.

Plebeians? I've been reading a bit too much Julius Caesar.. maybe that timetable I set is paying off even before I write my exams.. :-)

That said, I've got another song to recommend.. It's called "Summer Song" and it's a piece of magical guitaring by a magician of a guitarist, himself.. Joe Satriani.. Maybe I can hire him as a mentor.. :-P.. After all, Kirk Hammett (Metallica) and Steve Vai (G3) were among the prodigies he's produced..

"The Prestige"

While studying for Chemistry, a friend (Deepak) IMs me asking me whether I would be free for a movie the next day ('twas the last exam). Having almost never entered a theatre in my life (this was to be my fourth time), this was certainly going to be a new experience for me.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like what they show at theatres or anything, it's just that I feel guilty when I set aside time for doing something that's not exactly going to be productive i.e. something that's not going to help anybody. Again, it's not that I normally spend 20/7 doing constructive, productive work.. I'm sure I spend atleast 15 hours of my day in addition to the 4 hours of sleep doing nothing constructive.. stuff like playing with my little sister, browsing, chatting, talking on the phone, other kinds of social networking (think: orkut), thinking about stuff that I shouldn't be thinking about, etc.

Anyway, I reached Garuda Mall (yeah, I somehow located, without a map, a place that most of my pals could reach blindfolded) at around 3:10 in the evening. Now, Deepak asked me to be there at 3 but he didn't arrive until around 4. Luckily for me, someone (Siddhant) was actually there on time. We sat on the parapet around the pavement for a quarter of an hour until boredom hit. We then, on Deepak's request, bought 5 tickets (remember the number) for the "5" guys who were also coming along.

We entered the theatre and as usual, I entered last. Now as we entered, the guy at the door who checked our tickets mentioned something about 5 tickets and 6 people. We ignored him. As we got into our seats, the first five guys sat down but the sixth seat (to be mine) was already occupied by someone else who had a ticket with that seat number. I bought another ticket and the guys made a whole row push one seat to the right so that we all (including me) could sit contiguously.

One drama had already just been played out right there in the audience.. but the real one that we all had come to watch was just about to start. It was a movie called "The Prestige".. a good one, too. I'm not going to play a wet blanket and spoil the suspense for you, so if you've reached here, you can safely read on. Although one with a somewhat complex plotline, it included HOT Scarlett Johannson in its cast who certainly melted the harsh, cold atmosphere prevalent throughout.. :-)..

All in all, I had a great time and watched a great movie.. Thanks, guys..
No regrets regarding any loss of productivity since it was productive enough to spark in me the extrovertedness that I'd lacked for the past decade.

Also, while I was writing this, I was listening to 'Layla' by Eric Clapton.. I love the main riff.. Recommended!

My Modus Operandi

Until this year, the net effort put in for me to get through each of my exams was either not studying at all (english) to one hour of practise (for math) to around 4-5 hours (for other subjects)..

All in all, I was able to do well enough to keep my parents in check and spend the bulk of my time in stuff like coding, IT and even in a wee bit of electronics.. Around 5^th rank in a class of 55.. And 25-30^th rank in a standard of around 450.. Crappy, yeah, but not outright pathetic..

But the latter half of 9th and the whole of 10th was a whole different ballgame..

The first change in the game were the competitors: there were the hardworkers and/or brains type, the I'm-happy-with-being-average type and the carefree type who almost didn't study at all.. But the new breed were the tuition-goers, some already hardworking, others turned hardworking and the rest who didn't study even if they were paid to..

The second change might be unique to me.. It is one of the evolution.. of my brain.. Earlier, I'd never felt the need to practise Math or Physics problems; but now I do.. not because the problems themselves are harder.. on the other hand, it's because I don't have time enough to think of a solution on-the-fly at the examination hall AND do manual calculations.. rather, I now at least need to know the type of problems I'd have to encounter at the exam.. And being innately careless/bad at doing calculations with large numbers especially when under a time constraint hasn't helped at all.. Also, earlier I used to be able to complete studying portions well within the time on the day before an exam.. But now, it seems almost impossible for me to complete all the required chapters in the 4-6 hours I have before an exam.. Throughout, my retentivity levels grew to accomodate for the additional input.. but they either seem to have reached an unbreakable threshold or I'm expecting too much from them since the amount to study 10th has certainly grown exponentially from last year..

Whatever said and done, it seems official that my brains can no longer support me in successfully studying 10th standard subject matter within a day before the exam and expect to get even somewhat 'respectable' marks..

With that said and considering that I don't have tuition teachers tugging at my rear making me solve a 100 problems/hour, I've prepared this rough schedule that I hope to force myself to follow in the weeks to come (click to enlarge):

And here is a more polished version (click to enlarge):

Use Messengers for IMing, e-mail for e-mailing and scrapbooks for scrapping.. Thank you!

Any idea why MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk are called instant messaging software?

Well, I think (and so should you) they are called so because of the purpose they serve -- the title being more than self-explanatory -- they are used for "instantaneous" messaging.

A conversation is like public speaking with a limited number of audience members. The members of a conversation are generally *involved* in it i.e. there's always someone talking. You can't have a conversation with your mouth shut, can you? It's the same thing with an instant messaging conversation. You don't answer someone after an hour. Rather, you answer instantly. But to answer, you need to be "involved" -- you need to have your IM client running showing your availability to take part in a conversation. So, IM = one-on-one conversation. Let’s term this kind of conversation an “actively participated conversation”.

Contrast this to e-mail. E-mail is like snail mail. You don't have to be online to receive e-mail. Similarly, you don't need to be at your post-box to receive snail mail. You don't need to be actively involved in any conversation -- you can reply as in when you check your mailbox; you don't need to wait at your mailbox for someone to send you an e-mail and reply to it immediately. So, e-mail = snail mail. And let’s term this kind of conversation a “passively participated conversation”.

Right... SO?!

Well, Orkut has this concept of online scrapbooks... a concept that I think is rather misunderstood. A scrapbook is meant to be a place for a “passively participated conversation”. This is not a very widely shared view though; there are some people who scrap in anticipation of a response (the level of anticipation being proportional to the number of times (s)he hits the refresh button). You want to converse actively? Use an instant messenger.

End T-ran(t)-smission. Thank you.

Grrazr.. Why crash on me?

Okay.. I just typed in a post only to delete it (the RAZR did it). No, I'm not pissed off at all. It's all just a part of the new experience of moblogging with my new RAZR. Yeah, right! I had just written about a hundred words detailing what I'd done yesterday and what I'd be doing the rest of today. Anyway, I think I've out-grown the.kid.who.hacked.in and need to switch to something else. Constructive suggestions will be gratefully accepted. Anyway, it's getting late and sleep is coming with a higher premium every passing day. So, ciao.