IV To Ooty :)

Just a small poem about my dept IV. I haven't gone into any specific details of the trip, just an overview :)





The IV started on the 9th of July,
Into the sky did the crackers fly;
Our industrial visit was to Ooty,
For it was finally time to party!

An hour before midnight we started,
Into two big buses were we seated;
The drive at night didn't scare us,
Cos all the dancing made it no fuss.

It was drizzling when we saw our hotel,
Ah, the chilling climate had a lot to tell;
All day we were shivering under the sky,
Yet somehow all our moods were on a high.

All the places we saw had their own view,
I cannot fathom how fast the time flew;
We all danced to tunes, even the shy ones,
The questions session involved many a puns.

With many sighing hearts did the buses return,
The trip to ooty cannot easily be forgotten;
The co ordinators had done one hell of a job,
Remembering reguar classes all I can do is sob.

Square Root Of 3

This is a direct rip from the movie Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. It is a poem recited by Harold in the climax. I know it sounds geeky but hell, I like it :)

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three
A three is all that's good and right
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath a vicious square-root sign?
I wish instead I were a nine
For nine could thwart this evil trick
With just some quick arithmetic
I know I'll never see the sun
As 1.7321
Such is my reality
A sad irrationality
When, hark, just what is this I see?
Another square root of a three
Has quietly come waltzing by
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer
Rejoicing as an integer
We break free from our mortal bonds
And with a wave of magic wands
Our square-root signs become unglued
And love for me has been renewed.

News? Do Not Kid Me!

We live in times were almost every news seen/heard is manipulated so much that the very reason for those news channel seems to be in no longer delivering news but getting more ads. Here are few such instances.

*)What They Reported :

"American President advices Americans to not travel to India". Mr.Chidambaram "talks tough" saying "We will ask their government to retract their statement as India is a secure country".

I saw this news and was amazed for such a statement from their President would do no good in improving the relationship between the two countries. Then they showed the actual videos of what the two people had said.

What Actually Happened:

American President tells Americans in India to be always alert and keep a low profile due to the recent terrorist activities in our country. (No mention of "Don't go" there). Our Home Minister when asked about this said "I am not aware of any such statement. If they given such a statement we will tell them to take it back".
After a few hours the "If" part was cut out and only the "Take it back" was shown. And they ran this piece for the full day!

*)What They Reported :

"Dhoni loses cool : The Sehwag Injury Fiasco"
"Sehwag hid his injury on his shoulder from the BCCI and the Captain and it was akward for Dhoni when details of the injury was asked. This happens after Dhoni reportedly clashed with his Vice-Captain Sehwag.Dhoni then lost his calm..."

Then a video where a reporter blamed Dhoni for leaking the news. Dhoni - coolly - asked him "Are you blaming? No, you just said I leaked the news in front all these people. So are you accusing me?..." Ofcourse after an hour all this was cut out. Only the "Are you accusing me" bit was shown with other videos of ppl diving in the recent IPL. Hmm

What Actually Happened:

Sehwag got injured in IPL. Everyone hoped he would recover in time. He didn't. So the injury was revealed. So all that happend was an injured player was sent back to India. This piece of news ran for quite a few days!

*) I got this as a forward in my cell :)

"Sun News has put this as a "breaking news" : 'Masilamani is great hit' in their channel. Is this really a news? What a pathetic situation."

Thank God there a few -very few actually- who still try and deliver the actual news. Cheers to them for honesty and others for imagination.

Iyyo Iyyo

This is a conversation my dad overheard in the bus when he came from Chennai to Madurai to visit me. It was during the err 'Alagar going around the city festival' when a group of people spray water on who ever they can.

...
Guy X : Ya, I am new to the city.
Guy Y : This is a big festival sir. You know me and my parents have lived many years in Chennai. But the crowd here is so much more than in Chennai ( The "crowded" place was looking like a half empty Ranganathan street!).
Guy X : Oh, I didn't know Madurai was such a big place.
Guy Y : It is sir. After the next turn is the Kamarajar Salai. It is the Madurai equivalent of Mount Road (Whaaaaaaaat???). Its as long as Mount Road. Maybe longer(Omg!). There is also new complex coming in that road like that Spencer Plaza...

(Unfortuntately my dad had to get down on the Kamarajar Salai stop where my house is. Pity we missed the rest of the conversation)
Pride on hometown is ok dude. But this kinda "reel vudrathu" is just too much!

No Single Soul

My life for long has been so bare,
For none came to show me some care,
Life for me had once been much better,
For I got no single soul to talk.

I feel my old friends are very far away,
For they have all gone their own way;
Now I have these new people 'round me,
Yet I got no single soul to talk.

Few people did make me open my mind,
And they all seemed to be very kind;
But in the end all I feel is regret,
So I got no single soul to talk.

They seemed to find my words so funny,
Yet every word I said was said in pain;
They made jokes of my memories and so,
Now I got no single soul to talk.

What's gone wrong???

- Empty seats in the IPL matches. No jam-packed crowd for a twenty 20 match?

- Yet to see a 200 plus score in this IPL.

- Still no joy for Ferrari :(

- A debut team is having - to quote from espnstar.com - "too much brute force for his rivals to seriously compete".

- Neither Raikkonen nor Hamilton have a won a race so far this season!

- The face of Roger Federer with the Champion's cup is in the papers no more.

- Manchester United lost a semi final!

- Berbatov is running - yes running! - during a game.

- My happy-go-lucky friend says "I ve studied couple of units in SS". (And we re only in the study holidays)

- My geeky friend says "seriously me full time ipl,epl and fpl only".

- And I am suddenly having thoughts about studying during study holidays. (Hopefully these feelings will go away for they are very disturbing).

Intel 945G - Not The Worst?

I have owned a computer for as long as I can remember. And none of the computers I owned ever had one of em "dedicated"( ah, how I hate that word) graphic cards. Guess the main reason for that is my father knows good deal about computers and hence knows "graphic cards" means "hardcore-gaming". And let's face it. No father is gonna let their son ruin(are so they are led to believe) their lives playing games 24x7. Hence I have always been left to contend with the Intel 945G chipset(now that's another word I have grown to dread).

I can never forgot the times I had to sit through half an hour of solid installation only to be shown a message like this (accompanied of course by the all-too-famous Bump! sound). After a few more double clicks I would be forced to accept the painful truth.

Couldn't they just do a small test before the actual installation in lieu of wasting my time and tell me that their high-end game makes my PC a goner? Ah, fate does enjoy such petty moments I guess.

Of course few games did run on my PC. And I am very thankful for that. The better games that have been kind enough to run on my PC were Warrior Within, T2T, NFS MW and FIFA(after a lot of prayers, 09 worked) etc. It goes without saying that these didn't look at their best but hey, anything is better than that error message na. This was all before that fateful day when I was googling for fun.

For people who share my lugubriousness in gaming, I have two words. SwiftShader and 3d-Analyzer. I stumbled upon these softwares and they provided, inter alia, an option for "emulating HW TnL capabilities". My eyes immediately lit up because the absence of this "HW TnL"(no idea what it actually is) was sited as one of the reasons why games failed to run on my PC. Hence I tried to gives these a try.

The error message shown in the pic came when I tried to run Return Of The King. And being a huge fan of LoTR I was much disappointed.I tried the game with 3d-analyze and it worked! I was kinda taken aback by this uncanny behaviour showed by my PC. RoTK turned out to be a pretty decent game in the end :)

And the good news didn't stop there. A whole other bunch of games which had previously belittled my PC suddenly worked fine. The list included Splinter Cell, Portal, Deus Ex2 etc. But as with all things, they too had their shortcomings. A few other games failed too. Inspite of that, I finally decided that the Intel chipset(that word now seems ok) was after all, not the worst in the buisness.

P.S : To people who have "high-end" PCs I have this to say - "A day will come when you too shall hear the Bump! error"