Personal 2010 in Review

2010 has been kind of a special year of joy and happiness and at the same time, an year filled with some mistakes paving way to my slow learning curve. It started out with a high flying midnight rush to release the saarang 2010 portal amidst the jamming network for the new year wishes. It ends with a peaceful quiet day(hopefully one that does not involve a server crash in the midnight). An year where I returned back to my old studious ways and shutting out extravagances, yet achieving some small things along the way that should keep me away from disheartening.

Dot Language

One of the best softwares to keep a tidy tab on the graphs is the graphviz. Useful in writing customized digraphs and not fall back on paint and other drawing tools. It utilizes special DOT language syntax which is intuitive.

Songs over the Ages

Listening to songs may be the favorite pass time of many and especially people of my age. With the growing size of the hard disk space one can really put all the space constraint out of the window and even with all the high end utilities, a FIFA 10 game or high end graphics games, one can stack more than 1000 songs easily. Easily that is the case with me. But then i started analyzing the pattern among my songs= the year(as in old, semi-old, semi-new, new), the lyrics, the genre, the quality of rendering and noticed a real shift in some areas but yet certain things are constant.

Gossips Galore

Ever wondered what the life of IITian is before entering IIT? IITians are widely regarded (by ppl who know IIT which in itself is a low percentage :o) are people 24 x 7 with books and (in my case they say) in front of a laptop. So i would like to unearth one of the multiple sides of many IITians, Gossiping.

Wild yet beautiful campus

Its been 2 years now since I have moved into the wonderful campus of IIT-Madras. Till now I have wandered into the many lanes and sidewalks of this campus without really realizing its very beauty and uniqueness, when looked upon now makes me feel really really gifted to be present there to enjoy it. Well the major inspiration for this article came through an unusual source, a CD, made by the GCU an unit comprised of seniors who are supposed to help(do they really?). It did take my memories back and the first thing anybody will like to think when they hear IIT-M its the campus.

A semester that wasn't

The 4th semester has moved along at such a pace that I realized that it was moving, meaning that it was not so fast, but yet it moved at good pace and the end of it i feel relieved and yet it turned out to be a fruitful one at least for my cg coffers.

I have always felt that summer has brought out the best in me. The sunny vibes are intolerable at times and in chennai it becomes as sultry as it had just rained and made me drenched. But there is something in the rays of the sun that stimulates my body to cope up with the stuff.

The semester started on a high note with web operations engaging me in quality time. In totally different circumstances I became the Paper presentation coordinator of Exebit, CS department technical festival. The first round screening of papers was looking a real big mountain when we got to know that we had 180 entries. Phew!, saved just in time by what AT termed as 'endless vols'. I kept referring it as 'we' which includes srinivas and myself. Both of us should be blessed to have some of the best 9 pointers AT and swarun as our vols but ofcourse what they were expecting people to comment was their dedication. All hail AT and swarun!!

By the time all the department festival stuff wrapped up the semester had moved along rather smoothly. I was especially pleased by the reduction of assignments from the previous semester when we were bombarded by assignments every week subjects alternating. But halfway through the semester things started getting rather busy with very important decisions, ones which will have impact throughout the life. I was very fortunate have the guidance of my close friend srini who helped me decide what suits me best. But i have fallen into the same old pattern of turning a deaf eye to things I should have been a bit more careful but thats history.

I took up two extra responsibilities which has nothing to do with an intern. I hope I never regret this. But that is what I am trying to do never regret. I have taken up things which are more than capable to increasing my knowledge than an intern with far less pressure but if I get successful all hail my plan otherwise just move on.

Everything has to come to an end and the semester as always ended with the end semester. The endsem week which is usually the nightout week went with several nightouts but the follow up mornings were the decisive turn. The course which gave me lot of satisfaction and in which I had the most fun was undoubtedly German II. Success follows when you start enjoying something that is exactly that I like to take away from this. My second summer semester which went good but I hope to break the jinx of the winter semester. More to follow (not in this topic but on a different note)

© Rakesh Ramesh

critical analysis

Blogging would never even be on my menu list if I hadn't been bored to the extreme by one of those occasional first weeks of the semester. My friend told me that blogs are meant to write arbit stuff, stuff really vetti people read. But once again my self-acclaimed ego would never let me write arbit so I dug this crazy topic, a topic that psychiatrists would like to see. So any psychiatrists reading this are kindly excused.