Random Thoughts (and videos ;) )

It's been a while since I've regularly posted on the blog. Times are quite busy this 6th semester of mine. So much to do, so much to learn, and so little time.

There have been so many tests over the past few weeks that the major part of my time is spent lying sideways with a book on my face looking surprised when my folks wake me up in the midst of my blissful sleep. Kinda like this:

                                          " Who me? Sleeping?? Can't be! "

Besides this, I've applied for a few internships, some of them quite difficult to get. Now in the strange position of having to decide which one to go for, lol. A paper of mine got sent to Japan by IEEE's Madras Section, cos it was full of awesomeness :P (alright, not in those words, the reason they told me was that it came among the top 3 entries they'd got this year).  Sometimes things go your way a bit too much. Enough academics then, lets talk something else.

I have this affliction - giveaway-addiction. I love giveaways (well, who doesn't?). But, well, I go looking for them on the net. Looking, searching, googling, going through pages on forums, even Yahoo Answers. Yeah, sometimes I'm just nuts. The disease however does have a few upsides. Namely stuff I've won which include:

This disease has got me on twitter and facebook like never before. Most of these contests require you to have a twitter account where you endlessly restate (the exact word is retweet) their posts proving that you will gladly give up your dignity to win the giveaway :D . Then there's good ol' youtube, giveaways abound there too, though I've won none of them there. Like you can see I'm yet to win anything really big (as in uber-expensive), though the Office 2007 copy I won does have a legal retail price of Rs. 15,800 ($300+).

All this has been aided by the constant connectivity my phone, an N79, provides. Granted, Symbian 60 isn't too great (personally I find no big problem with it) but when compared to my old phone, well:

                                              "Get it away, get it away! "

Yeah, even my dog doesn't want that one. Sad :(
This same dog however is no one to complain, because he'll gladly demean himself for other stuff:

                                                "In the hope of Ice Cream"

All this youtubing (aye, I invent words :P) and googling has led me to some pretty interesting videos like these:


Baby Panda scares the crap out of Mum



An amazing rendition of a game's soundtrack. Bloody awesome guitar playing.

Do not leave your girlfriend in the cold and play on your console, if you do, then be ready for this happening "Yo!". ;)


Then there was this site called www.kittehroulette.com which shows a new cat video each time you refresh the page. Damn cool way to waste time if you love cats and other animals in general.




"When cute puppies attack (read: lick)"


Alright, so it isn't all cinema, but atleast it provides a welcome break from the non-stop nonsense that the news channels spew on TV. What began as a tiff between these two:

had unearthed so much dirt that the IPL can never really claim to be clean ever again. Match fixing, betting, extortion, dope, benamis, shadow companies, fronts for personal gain...  the allegations fly thick and fast, and upto THREE different government organizations are continuing the job of digging up more dirt. One of the two persons pictured above has lost his former job already, the other looks to be following suit soon enough. And rightfully so, given his colourful past.

Some technically wonderful videos that distracted me from all the DLF maximums and Karbon Kammaal Catches:



The video starts off rather tamely with some cool, yet not really awesome implementation of head and face tracking. But the later part of the clip shows how the entire Iron Man HUD is built up around the person and how well it moves with change in head orientation. Try it out, all you need is a webcam.

Something a bit more useful:


The Adept Quattro is a really really really quick robot. The platform you see moving randomly is controlled by a Wiimote, as eratically as a human can. The robot however adjusts to this random motion rapidly on-the-go. That's just insane at the speed it's placing and replacing the chips which themselves are the same size as the holes they are placed in. So the robot needs to be incredibly precise. Cycling at 300 times a second, the Adept Quattro is one of the world's fastest robots.

Speaking of tech, I got a new phone, a Nokia X6. Capacitive touch screen, 5MP cam, 16gb onboard memory... the works:

It's actually for my dad though, not for me. :( Oh well, maybe I'll win a HTC Incredible or a Desire in some giveaway. Yes, highly unlikely, but a man can hope can't he?



And thus I end this day's post with an obligatory kitty pic:

                          "Thanks for reading, now leave me alone while I drift off to Dreamland"