Its good to be back

After observing a flurry of computer crashes, I made a study of the planetary alignments and after consulting lead vaasthu shaastrists, I came concluded that this april was an inauspicious month for computers and the internet. I personally came across 2 motherboard crashes, 2 RAM burnouts, a couple of SMPS problems and 2 harddisk crashes !!! Even i was a casualty with a harddisk crash, and it hurt real bad, I lost more than 65 GB of precious data 😦 , most of which was very close to the heart…. The irony of the incident was i had removed the hdd to back the data up when it crashed!

The past one month however just rushed by with the project up for the final reviews. The project kept me busy with loads of documentation and the final presentation to be done. I managed to pull it off without my trusted system but ofcourse with a little help from my friends(Thank you !). The project review approached fast and we prepared feverishly anticipating all possible questions, fixing faults and brainstorming to avoid possible drawbacks of the project. The day of the final review dawned in no time and we waited feverishly for our turn. The guys waiting at the airtel super singer trials would have felt less nervous. The judges there do a pretty good job of criticising and dissappointing the participants. We were just hoping it wouldnt be the same here.

Our turn came up in no time. We went inside and started off confidently, only to find the teachers uninterested! Even the external examiner was flipping thro the project report with a very bored look on her face. We didn't mind and continued, only to find some our teachers sitting near the external imitating our actions on stage! We were flabbergasted and tried to continue explaining our concept when they just asked us to skip over most of our presentation and get on with the conclusion. We protested and fought (We hadnt even gotten to the crux of our project by then!), finally they let us present for five more minutes before they kicked us out! So much for 2 months of hard work and preparation!

Neways, managed to get a new hard disk! Now i am back, up and running. Hope to make more posts this month!

Keep Visiting,

Bye

Nitroboost your XP experienze…

Posted Originally on LApstrEz BLoG – http://www.Journalhome.com/lapstre

How many of you uses XP on a 128mb/256mb RAM, Think your OS is slow(Despite it claiming to be 36% fater than 98)? A sure way to get your system running faster is to kick out all unnecessary services running on your xp. And thats exactly what this article on Techtree helps you to do… Click HERE to read the article…

Most regular LApstrEz BLoG readers will remeber i posted a similar link to another PC World article a month ago for christmas, The text went sumthin like this …

Is your PC too slow, Think it’s time to upgrade? Think again, Have you ever wondered how fast your pc was when it was new? If u thought it was just old age that ur pc is workin slow, you can’t be more wrong. As time passes by we tend to fil our computer with a lot of programs we think might be useful to us, then promptly forget about it. All these small programs you install tend to startup with your computer, running background taks and updates. YOu can boost your pc speed 100%(No kidding, Well unless ofcourse you have a well maintained system) just by gettin rid of these programs. Wanna know how? Pc world presents this guide on how to get ur Pc up and running faster than ever. If you ask me what i do to keep my PC up and running, I simply follow the boring old routinue of Msconfig, spybot and Registry Cleaner…Read the PC world Gunk Busters article here.

For those who missed their chance to fame on the Microsoft Code4bill contest, Heres our very own IIT kharagpur’s BITWISE 2006.

We had a go at this contest last year and managed to solve a couple o questions. We figured we would be somver on the top 20 bcos of the toughness of the questions and the 750 only crowd. Just when we we’re ready to savour our first real victory in the ubergeek world, the programs which compiled on our compiler(Turbo C++) didnt compile on their GNU compiler. So if u are attending this contest a work of advice , get the GNU C++ compiler and learn the differences and usage… and if u do register leave a comment here.

Hoping for a better contest this time atleast, but am afraid we wont be able to make it bcos of the training up ahead. Last time we called ourselves…%*^(^$ i really don’t remember what we called ouselves last time. But this time around we are calling ourselves Deranged Programmers (Pretty apt some might say!). I got the questions up somewhere on the hard disk, I’m just hoping i dint format it along with my collection of over a hundred bookmarks the last time i did a format. Will put it up here as soon as i find it. But they’re probably there on the site(i din’t bother to look there yet!).

College is ending tommorow, so time to start our projects. But i gotta lot of other stuff i want to do in mind… will blog about that later

Before i say bye, this is a quote a friend wrote on a slam book of another friend, i do believe its his original creation (I have no words not to doubt his words).

A seriously good one…

“Rose is a flower that stands for an hour,
But, Friendship is a power that lasts forever…”
-Gandhi S (Not the Mohandas Karamchand variety)

Bye

Poetry No More!

Posted Originally on LApstrEz BLoG – http://www.Journalhome.com/lapstre
Poetry No More!

Aha! the New year is here! bringing with it a sense of freedom!(our xams are finally over!) What a rebreather… I feel light and free, ah what a feeling! Two months of tension and sleepless nights(as if i sleep otherwise) all coming to an end. Guess i can be free(atleast till the next exams come up). There are a lot of stuff i wanted to write about, but couldn’t because of the exams, hope to do all that now. I still dont know why i dragged along all these years in college, but then education is the only way people recognize the potential in you. I wanted to drop out of engineering long time ago, because i thought engineering didn’t equip me enough for a professional career(I still am of the same opinion). But then , born in a middle class orthodox family, i had no choice but to follow the advice of my mom, relatives and neighbours. You might be wondering why i launched into this rigmorale, but the Rediff Special Feature on college dropouts who followed their heart and made it big gave me a quick recollection of all my old memoirs… Check out the Rediff’s Special Feature on Billionare Dropouts Here(Part I) and the Second part of the feature here(Part II) (both are a definite must see!). Reading the article i remembered one of my friends who is all set to join the list with his pet project Roast Turkey (name changed to protect privacy). Wishing him the best with his project.

My attempt at writing poetry took a bad beating due to the exams, the intial inspiration vanished and i have deicided to drop the attempt at murdering poetry(Sorry to disappoint eager fans). Time has started flying by at blinding speeds again. The software company which offered me a job has started it’s training early, and i get to juggle my project, college, and my training all at the same time. The training is interesting, with me getting to strengthen some of the concepts and learn a lot more. Just can’t help feeling good, because i’m doing what i like to do best(and for that unfortunately, i have to be thankful to engineering).

A lot of my friends we’re intrigued about the avatars I was sporting on my messenger, blogs and everywhere else i go. Instead of replying to each and every soul individually(i’ve had hell a number of queries) i decided to put it up here. The software is a simple image viewing software called Irfan View, I just used it to apply some image filters. I’m pretty sure the stuff can be done in other image editors, but heres how it gets done in Irfan View, Open the image(Obviously!), Click Image->Effects and select your effect. The one effect i’ve used for the picture on this BLoG is an Edge Detection Filter, and the other on orkut is an Emboss Effect. With a combination of effects and effort you can whip up a cool lookin image with Irfan View. To download Irfan View click Here (2mb).

I come across lot of interesting stuff everyday, but some touch the heart. I came across this blogpost by a vey good friend of mine. Twas about his work when the tsunami struck(I remember sitting in front of the TV and feeling sorry for the people, but he actually went out ot help them). Hats Off! Proud to be a friend of yours. Check the article out Here.

My schedule has become more tight now(Thanx to the training). And I dont think i can write more frequently as planned before. But however I’ve invited some special friends to blog with me here! Think it’ll increase the frequency and also give u the variety from my largely monotonous blog (I had some suggestions NOT to restrict myself to technology and geek talk). But I will remain in control of the editor’s post(editor’s post??? ), but (Attention! bad news for those who just heaved a sigh of relief!) I’ll blog quite frequently too.

I’m still at figuring out the mystery of the missing comments. I seem to get a decent hit rate on my BLoG, with some rave reviews from friends, loadsa suggestions(Thanx for those) and lots more. At first I figured the task of posting it on the blog was too tedious and made available a few shortcuts(The shoutbox), but then still people either passed messages on the messenger and a few mailed … So i’ve decided to kick the quick comment box(It’s only taking up space and increasing load time). Some of the suggestions i’ve implemented, and some i can’t, but then ur suggestions are always welcome! and hey, Check out the archives, some are dumb and some are good. Have Fun! Njoy the New Year!