How we came along?

No, this is not about how the human race came along. Though I would really like to know, if Adam and Eve were the first humans and if Kane killed Abel(thus killing 1/4 th of world's population), then how come we came along by the regular laws of marriage?

If you "Stumble Upon" the old family photo album, a happening which is highly unlikely since in all probability it hasn't been digitised. You will see that the people there are wearing pretty much the same dresses no matter what generation they belong to. A couple of generations up the tree they wore the same, read the same, listened to the same, saw the same, etc. etc. . So how come from there we got to here where you can't imagine listening to dad's songs or wearing mom's dresses? A few days ago I happened to watch an episode of "James May's 20th century" a series which you most probably haven't heard of. There James May, a popular television personality( some X Jockey, fill in X as you want) of GB tries to find out how the teenager and young people in general came along.

Not so many years ago what differentiated you from your mom and dad was primarily your age, apart from that there wasn't much else. Here are a few of the things that according to James May brought us along:

1. Nylon - It is a synthetic something that bearded people at Du Pont made to make your teeth whiter. Fortunately some fellow used it to make stockings and nylon took off . If you were a girl in the early forties you no longer had to wear the same type of stockings as your mom did. How cool was that?, really cool( or else we wouldn't be talking about it)!! Soon the started making clothes out of nylon and other synthetic stuff, you did not look like your dad any longer. You never needed to iron them and you could store them anywhere.

2. Nothing differentiates us from our parents more than music, so how did we get our own music? - In the early days listening to music was all about sitting around the radio(which were bigger than today's washing machines) with the family and listen to the local stations. Then came along rock and roll, but it needed to be carried you couldn't listen to rock and roll and your dads music at the same time. Along came William Schokley with his three legged insect, the transistor, it made radios smaller and you could carry around your music and listen to whatever was right.

Another great invention was PVC which made records smaller and finally led to the CD, which led to the Walkman.

One great milestone was the electric guitar, coupled with a kick-ass amplifier it was all that was required to make music. Music which shocked the world and shook it to the drums( or whatever)

, music which our parents can never appreciate no matter what.

3. Horsepower - This we Indians cannot relate to very much. For maximum of the early part of the century horsepower really meant horse power but that all changed when they started making cars, but that is not really important to us. What is important to us are Japanese two-strokes, they liberated the world they did, the Honda 50 Super Cub was what the world desperately needed, so did young people. Where it was sold it could be bought for little money and was enormous fun, sadly though it never saw the light of India( or rather roads). For the Indian youth it was much later that the Yamaha RX100 and the RD350(Rajdoot) came along, things were going fine till some idiots got licensed and our roads became miserable and now parent would not buy their children motorcycles.

This is all i remember for now... till next time.

YASFbQ

I have always maintained that Facebook quizzes are stupid and pointless, some which are worth taking are badly designed (or broken). So I have stopped taking Facebook quizzes and found other (equally meaningless) ways of passing time.

Coming back to the topic some Facebook quizzes are biblically stupid, here are a selection of the few... if you have any in your mind leave a comment.

1. "Are you smarter than Paris Hilton" - I know if I am smarter then Paris Hilton and I don't want a stupid quiz to ascertain the fact. I didn't have myself taped while having sex and distributed it over the net (most probably she thought the www was a joke and no one uses it), so I know I am smarter than Paris Hilton.

The above quiz was attempted by Avishek Basu Mallick..

2. "Are you gay?" - Say, you are gay. Then would you ever take such a quiz and post the results to your wall? Then the results of the quiz, it returned " you are x% gay", how can you measure sexual orientation in percentage. So, if you went to a pub or something and depending on whether the gay side of your brain is well nourished you would go back home with a guy.

The above quiz was taken by...no you guessed it wrong... Kushagra Udai.

3. "How sexy is your zodiac sign?" - The results usually hint at you being very good in bed and stuff like that. After taking this quiz if you meet a girl who you know uses facebook, you introduce yourself and quickly tell her your zodiac sign.

I can never take the above quiz for I have forgotten my zodiac sign. :(

4. "What stupid facebook quiz are you" - i will keep me mouth shut on dis one, yea!

5. "What are the odds it's not your baby quiz" - :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0

6. "Which serial killer am I" - hmm...if I don't like the result can I kill the quiz maker?

Since, I have given up on facebook quizzes a long long time ago please leave comments.

Rubik's Cube

Recently we had ANK'09 in our college. It was a technical fest organised by Maths 'N' Tech Club of which I am a member. Apart from many events we had flown in John Louis from south india, John Louis is sorts of authority in memory events in India, he has won many memory championships the world over and has held several records related to speed calculations and stuff. One of his most amazing skills is speed cubing which is solving a Rubik's cube as fast as it is humanly possible. It is a game where you solve the Rubik's Cube (that multi-coloured brick sort of thing you used as a paper weight till your 2 year old nephew dismantled it) using pre decided algorithms as fast as your fingers and hands would allow. The current world record stands at 7.08 seconds( approximately the time it would take a normal person to pick it up and decide which face looks the best).

So a few days ago I went and bought a Rubik's Cube which made my mom poorer by Rs.249(+1, I never gave her the change back) or 5.17 lts. of petrol( you will get the hang of it). It was made by funskool and thus followed the international convention the opposite faces colour combinations were the following - earth colours green and blue, fire colours orange and red, calm colours yellow and white. Then I went to youtube and saw some videos and approximately an hour later I solved it for the first time. Next two days were spent practising the thing and my best time so far has been 3:36, that is, in minutes. So I can go about telling that I can solve the Rubik's cube in minutes. Once you look at the algorithms to solve the cube you will understand that it is not really more difficult than brushing your teeth or driving in fact, with time it will become natural like sleeping, eating and routine like lots of other things.

So what's the use? It is better than many other things you will do in your time(which is usually free for me), at any rate it is better then attempting those YASFbQs( Yet Another Stupid Facebook Quiz, which are usually also broken) and is usually better than Omegle and definitely better than what you are doing right now.

So if you are finding it difficult to while your "time" away and want to impress people(I don't have any idea as to who that is worth impressing would be impressed) by a fast Rubik's cube solve, go to a shop and buy a Rubik's Cube and go to Youtube and search for Dan Brown's cube solving videos.

How to not get burned!

Shit Happens!! Happens all the time. Like wasting an entire day for a stupid driving test, only to find the camera is defunct.

But in NIT Durgapur and other allied national level engineering colleges, shit can happen in N no. of ways(that is an engineer's way of saying that it can happen in infinite no. of ways). Here are enumerated a few ways in which you can make shit happen in NIT Durgapur:

1.Start responding in class like a good student.. then the teacher starts expecting from you and when you decide you have had enough of studying... you are done.

2.You don't go to class thinking it is raining too much.. turns out you were the only one.. you end up getting an extra assignment.

3.You go to class thinking it is a bright sunny day...unfortunately the teacher thought the same and didn wake up.

4.You drink water from the aquaguard only to discover that the filter is in the dustbin..

5.You prepare to wash your clothes and find the water is too dirty to wash your hands. You end up wearing the same clothes and the rest for 2-3 days.

6.Some asshole doesn't return plates in the mess and you pay the fine.

7.You don't get your new ID card, cause you don't know where to pay the Rs.2 fee.

8.You go to take a bath apply the shampoo, open the taps only to find they have run dry. You are left waiting 2 hrs in there.

9.Before the exam the teacher tells everything is cool and you will pass even if you get 5. Turns out 1/3 of the batch fails the paper.

10.The junior thinks it is fun to make a prank call to the "National Toll Free Ragging Help Line", not only you get suspended your scholarship also gets taken away.

11.You cant use net cause some rodents have gnawed through thousands of worth of optical fiber cables.

12.You can't drink water cause someone stole a bloody valve.

add to these..

Banned

As the title of this note would make it clear I am not too good at naming stuff. Anyways, the government, more accurately the High Court at Calcutta decided, to ban public transportation older than 15 years on an assumption that they are more polluting. I would like the following things to be banned:-

1. TV channels like CTVN( a local channel in kolkata which has interviews with astrologers through the day), aastha etc. etc..

2.Teachers like some in our college, who make the learning process so drab and dreary.

3.The cooks in our hostels.

4.Silly fees in college like the Rs.2 deposit we have to make to get our new ID cards.

5.Newspapers which carry less news and more ads about inner-wear, sexologists and power capsules for males(sometimes females too).

6.Front quarter page ads on newspapers, especially the ones about Emergency Contraceptive Pills.

7.slow moving vehicles like the 60-100cc scooterettes (Scooty for you).

8. Drivers who have a license only because they had enough money to pay for it.

9.Reality shows like Rakhi ka Syawambhar(don't think I got the name right).

10.devices of deception like fake chinese electronics, padded bras etc. which only give a superficial effect.

I will expand this list..please leave suggestions.

Run-in.

So, I have started a blog (pointless statement). Since this is the first post you might as well be reading it, without boring you into the details of why I have done so I will tell you what you can expect after this. Here goes...

umm, since I am not too sure about that myself , let me tell you what you may not expect:

1) You may not expect Linux hacks and Windows vs Linux wars, partly because I don't use Linux(sad though, it rocks!!) and partly because I believe the penguin is a pointless animal with really small feet and funny looking hands.

2) You may not expect poetry because I am not poetic and I don't dream much(I am mostly busy sleeping).

3) You may not expect abstract writing because I can't find "point" in it.

4) You may not expect the day to day happenings of my life because it is majorly boring.

5) You may not expect long posts(No particular reason for this).

Apart from all the above you can expect a lot of information, stuff which you will find useful(only after reading them though!). Links to various resources on the web(stuff which I come across while browsing the web) etc. etc. ...

I will start by moving my Facebook notes to here... so the next few posts will be all familiar.

Till I come up with something new(don't think you will be back!).