And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

Okay so this guy from FedEx calls me up.

“Sir”, he calls me (immediately kindling my interest ), “You have a package from the States”.
“Ah! yes. I’ve been expecting it.”, I shout happily.

My friends Jerry and Pradeep came along with me to the local FedEx office. They gave me a book shaped package tightly bound in a white, synthetic, plastic-like cover.

Yes, I knew it was a book!.

Google had sent me a gift to congratulate me on my acceptance into the Google Summer of Code Programme.

I hastily unwrapped the package and showed off my book to my pals with a huge smile on my face.

I had been sent ‘Beautiful Code’ from O’REILLY.

I held it up proudly. This was proof of a dream come true.

Its a song by the great Muhammed Rafi. It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan.

I chose this title for a post on the better things in life like friendship, books, footbal, calvin & hobbes ………
I’m gonna be highly irregular here. I’m writing without a compass and I’m writing on few things that make life worth all the trouble of breathing while I infest the dilapidated rooms of my college hostel.

Once in a while I go on “cynic” mode. But even then some things never loose their charm.
Like this Calvin & Hobbes cartoon………….

God ! I wish I could draw like that. The man who made those strokes is my hero. He is Bill Watterson.

I guess Hobbes has summed up pretty well how low I’m feeling right now.

How beautiful would it be sprawled on the grass, amongst trees, reading your favourite book, listening to your favorite music, eating french fries off a plate delicately balanced on your chest. Ah! that would be the life……..

You know what I think I can give it a try. I might be able to at least give it a shot.

I’m gonna get my pens and colors tomorrow and make some sketches andthen I’ll scan them and post them. Wait.

Following my Python Blog. I’m also announcing the release of my next literary + coding venture :

Swirl with Perl.

Thats a Weblog too. Its destined to contained my more rash experiments in Perl.

But for now I think I’ll Just let it carry details of my Google Summer of Code project , that is, implementing full text search for Bricolage.

I think either my mentors at Bricolage will be pleased or I’ll have my ass kicked out to the Antartic

Hi all.

For the sake of those who did not know, I am quite in love with Python.

So I decided its time I showed more devotion. So I’m launching a Python Blog

check http://pythonify.wordpress.com.

I shall qoute all I write on it over here but I’m putting all major articles on Python over there.

I’ve not decided on whether or not to put toons on that blog. Overkill, do you think?

I burn a lot midnight oil when I’m working on something. I work late, though not necessarily hard, and I find it find that brain works much better in the dark. Curious isn’t it ?, how something I could never achieve on the eve of examination seems like child’s play when you do something that you love. ( And that doesn’t mean I don’t like exams, mind you )

There are some unique advantages to working late. Your brains starts working at speeds that you didn’t think was possible for one. You are able to roam unharnessed around the cloaked hostel grounds and the college campus, which in a manner inspires creation. And then there is always the fact that the night air does wonders for skin texture.

It was dark, and I had decided a stroll at 3.a.m. would certainly revitalize my tired circuits. I was working on something and having had little success, sleep was not an option.

I got out of the hostel and turned right, heading for the college campus. There was a figure some distance front of me. I peered. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear and purring away in the mouth piece.

An aching heart ; I smiled.

Turning away from our friend with the aching heart, I walked on towards the hostel mess only to find one more estranged soul perched on the steps with (yep!, you guessed right) a mobile glued to his ears.

Hokay!, weird. Wondering how these guys could actually stay awake talking I moved on. Only to be
confronted by yet another mobile-talking-wonder!. My eyes sweep around, taking in the hostel and its premises.

My jaw dropped of its own accord; the window-sills, the door steps, on top of all the bikes were sitting patient listeners, solemnly enduring their loved ones’ crooning. ( I even found one up a tree! ).

What is with these girls anyway? How they manage to wake up at these ungodly hours and keep whispering into their phones is fairly beyond me. It would take nothing short of an act of God to have me doing that at this hour of the night, ……unless…….yes!………..its……..my phone……..and its ringing…..

All you windows users out there, I know you are old hands at being infected so this may not sound intriguing at all.

I have a Windows XP installed on my box. My brother insists that it is much simpler to play Need For Speed on Windows ( wonder what gave him that idea ) and thus by forcing my hand via the long arm of parental law has managed to retain the XP alongside of my Debian Etch installation.

My friends also use Windows on my laptop.

The other day, on return from a most gratifying visit to the hostel mess, I found my machine with XP booted up, unmanned, anti-viruses flaming with protests of some security breach. I sat down to see what was wrong and found out that some nut called Ahsan had taken over ( God!, I hate mentioning that crack-head’s name! ). Check out my friend Anil’s blog for the gory details.

Well it takes one crazy guy to catch one. Anil did catch this virus which had stumped most of us and some of the more common safe-gaurding softwares. And he has posted on how to get rid of you-know-who.  I really love having ANF to do what needs to be done.

All right folks I finally saw a movie that is re-watchable: IRON MAN

It is worth getting myself to the theater once more just to watch all the cool “tech” stuff featured. Man!, would i like to get my hands on some of those.

I had a few friends with me. And all the un-awoken engineering spirit was kindled within their souls at the sight of those projected future machines. It is funny,  how what man has already achieved is always so trivial next to where his mind now soars. Sometimes I wonder if this “developed intellect” is not, after all, a curse.

The constant drive for something better is quite a thrill, I admit. But forget not my friends who quote Frost’s famous lines, “..And miles to go before I sleep“, when asked to slow down and breathe for a while
, this poem titled LEISURE by Wm. Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

My friends informed me, after watching me “painstakingly” piecing together another one of my little doodles, “Whats the big deal? Anyone with a good drawing tool could do that”;

Hmph! I strive to remain unconcerned.

“What then?”, I haughtily ask, “What then, do you propose?”

“Animations, dude! Thats where the money lies. Can you make any one of your drawings move?”

All right. I take up the challenge: The Gimp gave me this after a few tries -

That looks all right. Now I try something bigger.

Its pretty simple actually, to create animations with the Gimp. Heres how to do it

This one was much more satisfactory to make

All right. So I’m hooked. I think I’ll put in more animations in here.

Footnote: By the way, did you notice that the last three of my drawings looks like they are vector illustrated? Actually I used Kolourpaint to make these drawings and then I used this simple tool: autotrace. [ autotrace drawing_file >vector_drawing_file ]. But if I were you I would use it only for those sketches in black and white. Colours don’t go well with autotrace.

I’m still trying to get the Pencil tool to work on my Debian box. I’ve all but given up. If anyone out there has overcome this particular hazard or think that the actual hazard is my innate stupidity, please enlighten me.

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
- Friedrich von Schiller

The world is still round, the sun is still shining. All seems bright and beautiful. My internet connection is back!

All the cables had been cut! Yes! Some cruel vengeful soul had cut the cable lines that carried all the bytes of data I wanted to transmit from my room. I would have forgiven that dilapidated being, had they been able to repair the problem on time. But the fates were conspiring against me; it took them a never-heard-of-before FIVE days before I could check out my mail.

And as a result I had to spend my birthday ( that I share proudly with Rubin “Hurricane” Carter ) climbing up trees in my hostel compound, kicking away at a random football and eating my way through what would have fed an entire army.

I was absent from the world wide web for a few days.

My absence was due to some end of the term work I was forced to finish.

What was I up to these three days? Well, among other things we got a campus radio up and running. It was something on the spur. We had an open house exhibition at our college [Govt. Engineering College Trichur] and we hosted a campus radio using the college LAN and Icecast.

Visit our community: here mail us: gecRadio@chipmonks.co.in

The whole thing was a smashing hit. We had speakers installed at all our listening points in all our labs. Requests for songs and phone calls came pouring in.

But this was just a temporary set up. We plan on continuing the radio on a more permanent basis. Maybe we could get permission to transmit our radio via FM. We’ve been talking to the authorities and it seems we could get through the necessary formalities in a couple of months.

We are going to need a lot of help setting up this radio. Anyone who can help please leave your contact details as a comment and I’ll get back to you. Or please mail me at kpnunni@gmail.com.