A lot of things are happening in my life lately. Professional responsibilities have increased a wee bit, and monetary worries have increased enormously. I will ride the wave, I hope and come out on top. Hell, its not a hope, its whats going to happen 
Filed by Carthik at 1:06 am under Livejournal No Comments
I bought a green Nissan 200SE SX coupe car today, for 2950 dollars, from Ms. Rupa Pandya. I pray that it gives me good service. Abdulla financed the purchase. I paid 300 dollars, and he paid the rest, which I have to repay him as soon as possible (before the beginning of fall 2003, anyways)
Filed by Carthik at 11:25 am under Livejournal No Comments
From the annals of
If you are in a land you weren’t born into…
If you are there as an immigrant, as a worker or as a student,
If you love to know new people and learn
If you have a cross-cultural marriage or relationship
If you have (or love to have) cross-cultural friendships
If you miss home
If you hate home
If you feel frustrated because your people want to stick to their own kind alone
If you have reasons to stick to your own kind
If you miss your family
If you came here with your family
If you feel alone
If you feel that you have your best social life
If you deal with foreigners and immigrants in your own home on a daily basis…
If you feel all of these or some of these…
Then you are WELCOME!
Filed by Carthik at 7:56 am under Livejournal No Comments
For
Filed by Carthik at 4:15 am under Livejournal No Comments
I made some changes to my website
I now have it hosted at ICDSoft’s server. I really like the service. After searching for a long long time, I might just have found the perfect host. I get 333 MB of space, and 5 GB/month data transfer, with all the add-ons like unlimited emails, 5 sub-domains, and so on, for just $5 a month!! I think their customer support is what got me. You get replies to support questions in 3 minutes! Its just the best.
I installed Coppermine, which is a php based photo album on the site. The album is at photos.carthik.net. Coppermine requires the ImageMagick ‘convert’ program, besides a lot of other requirements, and the support guys were very efficient in telling me whats there and whats not and installing what was required. All this in 5 minutes!
You can upload your photos to your own album on my website, and could also use it to host your images, after you register at my website. I thought it might be handy for someone who wants to post pictures on LiveJournal, or just store images/pictures for later. Of course, for now, you need to be a LiveJournal or real-life friend of mine to have your own album, ’cause I dont have unlimited space or bandwidth on the server.
What I have’nt gotten around to doing is filling up the “Personal” , “Academic”, “Interests” and “Friends” links on the website 
. That, I think, is the hardest part of creating a homepage - writing about yourself!
If you have any problems creating your albums or dealing with the album(s) , do let me know.
Also, if someone needs space to park some data online (FTP/mails), just drop me a line, I have some space to spare/share.
Filed by Carthik at 12:12 pm under Livejournal No Comments
Happy Birthday , !!!
Filed by Carthik at 9:30 am under Livejournal No Comments
The reason for my brief hiatus was the Challenger Cricket tournament organized by the Indian Student Association at UCF. We did not survive till the finals, but even then, I had to be the umpire and the scorer, so the last three days were cricket-filled. I have a dark tan now, all of winter’s work in making me fairer now undone, not that it matters.
AT&T wireless cut off my connection, due to a billing dispute. They want me to pay a security deposit and pay for my long distance calls. I dont have to do either, and I have faxed them, but these losers suck majortime. They disconnect me on Friday evening, just so that I cant use the phone for two days, and I have to wait till Monday to do anything about it. “Customer is King” - my posterior!!!
Filed by Carthik at 12:58 pm under Livejournal No Comments
Kening lent me his bicycle. My bike is not working, and I was pleasantly surprised when he let me borrow his bike till I got mine fixed. His bike is a Schwinn too, possibly newer that my Schwinn, and the gears and all work fine on his bike too.
I just phased out yesterday night, and went to sleep though I had a lot of work to do. I guess I needed the break. Its been a week and more now, and I was tired of RFCs and X.509, and CPSs… dont even bother thinking what those are. They are just documents that I have to go through, to survive.
The cricket tournament at UCF starts tomorrow. Its a three day event, I have to shore up my energies for that. Thankfully, I will be done with the write ups today, and will be free for three days.
Filed by Carthik at 10:30 am under Livejournal No Comments
My friend and co-Ph.D. student, Kening Zhang, had lots to tell me about China. The Yunnan Province is very beautiful. Some of the photographs I saw left me breathless. Lijiang is a city in Yunnan, where there is the old city of Lijiang, also known as Dayan Town. There are a lot of foreigners here, he was telling me. They all come to Lijiang and never leave! They run bars and small shops or just laze around. It seems one can get around with a knowledge of English in this town, unlike other Chinese towns.
My friend Kening’s ultimate ambition is to settle down in Yunnan, and open a bar. He said he will serve drinks free to all his friends. This was very unexpected, I always thought he was a very professionally ambitious, pragmatic kind of person. I really am warming up to him a lot, these days.
In China, its not unusual for tourists to go on long walks. He tells me that the best way to see Yunnan, or for that matter, many places in China is to travel by bus to some scenic spot and then walk, for days on end. This is not too common in India, I guess.
Point of the matter is, now I have a new place I want to visit. (sigh!, if only I were really really rich or something.) He has told me that maybe we can go together. I hope we do, for sure, but somewhere deep inside I know that I will not. It is such a beautiful place…there is a place there that is said to be the Shangri-La, it seems.
Filed by Carthik at 12:43 am under Livejournal No Comments
I got a one year subscription (56 issues) of Time Magazine for just $3.95. I wonder how the economics behind this work. Just the postage would amount to more than that. This way, i pay 1/14 of a dollar for each issue. Thats 7.14 cents per issue. The same amount of toilet paper , or newspaper would be more expensive!!
My project mate, KeNing, led me on to this. I got it thru www.dealsea.com . Somewhere deep down in the page is a list of magazine offers, just in case anyone is interested.
Filed by Carthik at 9:45 pm under Livejournal No Comments
You’re Hobbes. First of all, the makers of this
quiz would like to congratulate you. You have
our seal of approval. You are kind,
intelligent, loving, and good-humoredly
practical. You’re proud of who you are. At the
same time, you’re tolerant of those who lack
your clearsightedness. You’re always playful,
but never annoying. For these traits, you are
well-loved, and with good cause.
Which famous feline are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
MADE MY DAY!
Filed by Carthik at 2:49 am under Livejournal No Comments
The major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass. We are talking about space shuttles here.
The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used. Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads?
The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the extra-terrestrial twist to the story…
When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is
slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.
And you wonder why it’s so hard to get ahead in this world…
I am reading the specifications document of the XilinX Virtex ii Pro FPGA, trying to make sense of why the multipliers are 18 bit x 18 bit and not 32 bit or 16bit, which sounds more natural….there must be some horse ass story behind this too…
The above story was from an interesting mail from a group….
Now that you have read the above, read this too. Thanks
Filed by Carthik at 5:33 am under Livejournal No Comments
This is a game where you should answer the questions with song titles from your favourite band….
Pink Floyd it is for me, this sounds an interesting thing to do…kinda challenging too…
1. Are you male or female? Any colour you like
2. Describe yourself: A saucerful of secrets
3. What do some people think about you?: Empty spaces
4. How do you feel about yourself?: The show must go on
5. Describe your girlfriend/boyfriend/interest: Lost for Words
6. Where would you rather be?: Ibiza bar
7. Describe what you want to be: Comfortably Numb
8. Describe how you live: Biding my time
9. Describe how you love: Scream thy last scream
10. Share a few words of wisdom: Set the controls for the heart of the sun
you are welcome to take the test too.. I got this quiz from the redoubtable
Filed by Carthik at 2:26 am under Livejournal No Comments
Alright, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Would you be so kind as to list you top three all time favourite albums here, please ?
I wish to listen to new music, and I intend to “acquire” the favourite albums you list to expand my horizons.
I was thinking of exploring the world of heavy metal today, but I had no clue where to start. Then I thought I should try and collect all the “all time top 50″ rock albums, but could not find a suitable list.
And then I thought I will acquire the top 3 favourites of all my friends. So please please just leave your top 3 or at least one favourite album in the comment to this post.
Muchos Gracias…
Filed by Carthik at 11:18 pm under Livejournal No Comments
You are the Low-Fidelity All-Star. You were born
with your cool, and it’s totally natural. You
run the gamut from Hipster Supreme (only they
can ingest as much coffee as you) to the geeky
hipster (Mario Kart, anyone?).
What Kind of Hipster Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
“Hipster” brings to my mind a particular kind of Churidar that was in vogue in the 70’s, polluting all the movies of the 70s, reducing beautiful women to strange looking dolls.
P.S. Kung Fu Figthing (I’ve never listened to it) , amazingly enough, has an Indian Angle to it - Biddu, the musician I love to hate, produced it
P.S. Continued …. The quiz is right about the coffee, thought
Filed by Carthik at 2:54 pm under Livejournal No Comments