This blog seems to resemble a College Fest review as the past few posts have been ‘fest’ related well P.A.C.E., M’lore hosted their first Inter-Collegiate fest today. I had to be there mainly because my good friend Ashri was one of the Chief- Coordinators

Day 1 was fun! we(Me and Rasion) qualified for Wordgames but lost the 2nd place to Rajat and Vigneshwar because of that Damn Tongue Twister Round “Larry sent the Latter a Letter Later”.
Our DC performance was unexpectedly good.. Its our best so far, in my opinion.
“Are you smarter than a First Year” saw Rajat and Karthik walk away with the First Place.
Execute had 2 of our teams in the 2nd round and even Gaming saw our teams move to the Next Level.

Tomorrow There’s Pot Pourri and DC finals for us.. hope they go well too..

Now There are a couple of things i did today that i am proud of

• Me and Rajat hitched a ride in Their all Girl’s(normally) bus.
• Spelt out ‘T I T S’ on stage at the Word games final round.

ha ha ha ha!

Mario’s sister s wedding was on Sunday. I didn’t go to Elias s house that night. Dad would not give me the permission anyways but that night me, raison and rajat did gang up and ask his permission to stay at elias s house the next night. With the permission got, i spent most of the day at home packing and then went over to raison s house. We started work on the contraptions that night and worked well into the morn. Last thing i remember is falling asleep at around 5. Waking up , i found rajat and pc had already left to college. Ashank, me and elias were left to do some work. At around 12 ashank went home to pack. I reached home much later at around 2:30 due to traffic. After this i had to pack and email a write up to the shaastra hospi ppl. Due to all this i was still at home at 3:30. The train left at 4:00. Now began the panic and also the last minute junk. Finally at 3:40 i left for the station in a rick and was so tensed about getting there in time. After some tense moments and a ‘run’ for it, i finally reached the compartment. The ‘run’ involved that i race carrying my heavy suitcase across platforms and across an overbridge racing against time. I was so damn exhausted by the end of it and it took me some time to settle down. In the course of time i forgot notify people that i’m leaving and also couldn’t return calls that i had missed taking or unknowingly picked up. Plus there was the paranoia of roaming charges, this was the first time i was using my cell out of the state.

The train journey wasn’t eventful. We spent most of our time adjusting to the seats, taking lessons in photography and doing nothing in particular. We were a bit spread out in the train. The bulk of us were in the same compartment while 4 of the others were about 5-6 compartments away. People shuffled between these two places. Food was eaten and my first forays into roaming calls started when my cell msgs were not going out. I think we slept around 11 after the sleeping system had been agreed upon., for eg. Who sleeps where and all that. Morning saw me getting up groggy at around 7 and not finding any tea on the train. Now i need tea to start the day, call it my poison.

Even after alighting down from the train i couldn’t find any tea. Avoiding porters and also thinking about our travel plans we made our way carrying our heavy luggage to the main entrance.

Finally with the help of the tamil speaking and understanding minority among us we were able to get a matador to drop us to the IIT campus spending about 1300 i guess. Karthik used to stay nearby when he was in Chennai and that helped us get familiar with the place and also to move about.

Seeing spotted deer was a pleasant surprise. In the IIT campus, wildlife lived in harmony with the interfering humans and even though the campus was within a national park we could see deer munching on accumulated garbage. One problem we faced was again transporting our luggage from the gate to the hostels which were quite far away from the IN gate. But with 19 of us that was not a problem for long. We invaded the next bus and got most of our stuff in it. We reached the hostels by 11 i guess. People went to eat and karthik went to wait in line for our hospi regs. That was one long reg line! Finally at around 2 i think we got our rooms. Until then you could have found us languishing in the hot sun outside Mahanadi with our luggage. We also met certain people we knew, from earlier fests or colleges.

We were allotted rooms in Mahanadi 548-551, the hostel which was serviced luckily by elevators of the monolingual and the bilingual kind. But surprise! The rooms were small, and by small we mean a one person only room and they expected 4 of us to fit in one. Me, raison and karthik decided to take the last room 551 which we had to share with an IIT kharagpur 3^rd year student, shrey goyal, who had come to take part in The Symposium. We adjusted to him being in the room and he told me that this is one of the better boarding facilities provided at IITs during fests and we remembered how we had been treated at the VTU fest earlier and missed the comfort already. Comparison was inevitable when you have come across something which is superior indeed. We rushed to eat lunch and then came Back to adjust to the room. No mattresses or anything yet and we still had to start work on lot of our projects. Some slept and others went exploring. We sent people to get equipments and resources and other things. Everyone would be occupied for the next 3 days  to the max.

To be continued…

now that was sad.. so heart breaking-ly sad we were so close to the fox in the first round at the 4 coded message. there were 20 messages in all of which we got 18 which was pretty good because we decided that the fox was in quite another direction after the 4th message and were quite lost. Vigneshwar meanwhile had gone for starwars prelims and after that he had quite a job to search us foxes. so it was me, raison and kk searching, running and exploring every bit of nitk campus. my knowledge of shortcuts helped. well some good arose from going there for the past 3 years. 4 teams from Nitte qualified out of about 15 for the finals. in the end our college won the 2nd and the 3rd plac; both by third years. while the finals took place me and vigneshwar were annoyed that we didnt take part in starwars more whole heartedly as we saw the most sad finals ever taking place in a discreet part of the campus with the 4 of us being the only audience. 2 of our college teams were in the finals and that was the only reason we watched the finals. 

Overall i Nitte is doing pretty good this year. maybe they have been suitably inspired by us seniors or maybe by the huge amount of stuff thats been won by the students so far in 2009. well, what to say. its been a good year. and hope i continues to be.

we left for home at around 5. on the way we decided to use the Pizza hut coupons that vigneshwar had won in some side events. we ordered a paneer el rancho and a chicken supreme back at Bharat mall and we met Narendra there with his sis. we ate and were off home.

at home guess what? there ’s biryani thats been prepared. now i wont be able to gorge down as much! so am delaying as i finally update my blog after ages ;P

the windows 7 launch party was organised by karthik in college and it went on pretty well. earlier in the afternoon i had laughed at raison and the others that you wont win any of the prizes and that was kinda was happened. karthik did not want to appear biased towards his friends and didnt allow us to win any

anyway things got sorted out eventually and i guess things are back to normal. except for the fact of raison mentioning mental stress today at Engineer

Finally after the tension of being selected came the tension of booking tickets. The 28th of September is Vijayadashami so naturally a holiday which is why the trains on that day were booked full! a Group chat on Google kinda made things clear and eventually we decided to travel on the 29th and reach there on the 30th. The cost involved with the 15 of us would be quite a lot, when you consider the accomodation, food,etc for 5 days.

This is the epitaph of the ‘going to Shaastra’ post. Well we did go to Shaastra and boy! was it good. We won Second in Simulation Championship and other teams came third in Shaastra Circuit Design Challenge and The Rising. The More Detailed post will be coming up as soon as i get time to write it

Its been a hectic start to the new semester at College; my seventh. The Final Year of B.E. life, the final year to realise our dreams, the final year to live life, to have fun and the final year to complete “the Things You need to DO while at Nitte”. The Newest checked item on my list is Having Bun-Palti with Cheese at Shashi’s. I had to Wait for about a year after i heard about it to actually taste it.

This list is more or less made of stuff that you need to try atleast once while at Nitte. Everyone has their own interests and their lists should reflect this. Me being a foodie and fun loving guy , my list essentially consists of these interests. They may seem mundane but sometimes you realise that you haven’t done that. Its the experience that s required.

Some of the stuff on the list that i have done are :

1. Visit Parapady Falls.
2. Eat Bun Palti.
3. Take part in Fresher’s orientation.
4. Ride in Toofan.
5. Visit the “tribute to rock” murals at Shabari and have a bite to eat too.
6. Eat Awesome Puri Bhaji at hut ( although i did not end up in panaji)

Well there are also some that are more like a personal achievement. Like staying real late in college, starting a club in college, being backstage, practising for events, singing in the department library, hanging out at MBA forest, watching a movie at Forever, roaming in Manipal and Karkala, studying at Sanmathi and definitely eating out at all the nearby joints and riding the College buses.

While all these things do bring up fond memories there are still quite a lot of things that i have not been able to do. A visit to Kemmanu temple, The Hanging bridge, Gomateshwara statue at Karkala, Bhoot bungalow( Rajat suggested this place) and the most awaited one undoubtedly is “the middle finger” like monolith (only 23ers will make sense of this one)

So there goes. I hope am able to complete the list and maybe add some more stuff to it while am here this way.

Back to college and first thing you realise is that classes are so Borrrr..ing. Most of the subjects are theory ones and we have quite a lot of Comp. Sci. subjects too.

So here’s what i will be studying this semester.

1. Computer Communication Networks.
2. Digital Signal Processors- Algorithms and Architecture.
3. Optical Fibre Communication.
4. Power Electronics.
5. Operating Systems.
6. Real time systems.
7. Power electronics Lab
8. Vlsi Lab with Cadence.

The only interesting thing is the last one because you get to use the Solaris OS. Until i get the hang of the commands typing in it is a pain. I just had one class of it. But its worth the trouble to learn. Most of the others are just so alike that they drag you into saturation. I got sessionals in 10 days. Gotta wake up now.

Also our synopsis of the final year project has to be ready, project guide has to be chosen and basic groundwork needs to be done. In addition im planning to take part in technical events wherever possible and get some practical experience. Oh an i almost forgot that i need to organise events in college and study for CAT and GATE. With all these things i wonder would there be any free time at all. Whew!

Its about time i hauled up my lazy a** out here. its also about time i posted up the video. I dont really know if you would have read the really long post i had written way back in february about the 10th VTU fest. Well after so long i finally got round to editing the Rube Goldberg Contraption Video so that the people who missed coming along with us could have a look at what it really was. I know how tough it is to make people understand what it is. when you say ‘rube goldberg’ it doesnt conjure up anything in your mind. I usually end up taking Tom and Jerry for an example because thats something almost everyone is familiar with. Now how much they understand is left to my explanatory skills which usually are not too good. So i give a brief lecture reminiscing on bowling balls and ironing boards, cheese and table fans and hope something clicks in people’s heads.

Alrighty then. Presenting to you Our Entry to the Rube Goldberg Contraption event at The 10th VTU fest. We won the first place for this project and thanks to all the people who helped us make this happen. Enjoy!

Step 1: Get the Syllabus.

Step 2: Get all the books prescribed in the syllabus, nevermind the form(solid, electronic) in which you get them.

Step 3: Sit in the first bench and try to make (little) sense atleast in every class.

Step 4: Aim to study 7 units per subject.

Step 5: Have a look at what the seniors studied.

Step 6: Study the seniors portion if possible.

Step 7: Study units which you are most clueless about. Trick here is if you cant make much sense of it neither can the paper setters. The Questions are almost always direct or repetitive.

Step 8: Read old solved Question papers.

Step 9: Pray that the above 8 steps are enough.

Step 10: Sleep a lot less during the 2 weeks of exam and dont panic on the last day.

p.s. if  you followed the above 10 steps and are still not confident of getting a distinction. well Congrats! You’re a student of VTU!

Its at an end. The 6th sem and with it the third year. Things just went by so fast. Just some time back it was like the beginning of the year and no its all done. The memories remain, they fill up my Facebook albums and overflow everywhere. By far this is the most memorable semester in more ways than one. Weah , i havent been blogging about it all. So you people out here may not know all that been going on. Sorry couldnt helps it.
Where do i go next? thats the big question that remains now. What does the future hold? Placements have never been on my mind and there aren’t any to talk about anyway thanks to recession. Whats next? undecided i say. Entrances stare back at me yet again. Maybe i ll take the plunge and settle down for another 2 years of “higher” studies. Maybe thats the easy way out. Cushioning yourself to launch into the big wide world out yonder. So studies will have to start this hols. Only time will tell if they bear fruit.

Listening to Dave Mathews Band…Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King.

Exams begin on 23rd.