Saturday, April 08, 2006

Post Exam musings

1.Exams finally over gfx lab left

2.Very Very hot on the 3rd floor esp during the afternoon

3.DVD writer not working :( driver is corrupted (wonder how that happend?)

4.Got algos paper today. have a grand total of about 60. Going to get a B- :((

5.Waiting for the next India-Eng match. can't remember india thrashing 3 teams in a row like this

6.Dad agreed to but me a laptop. Now i have to wait for some relative/friend to come to india and give it. But it's a cool laptop from Hp. Intel Dual core 1.8ghz,1gb ram, nvidia7400 256mb,80gb sata,16x dvd writer,17" tft with side lamps,tv tuner :D,creative audigy4. All this for $1300=60K=awesome deal

7.Having nightmares with the agrids lab server. The damn thing just wont work with linux. Open invitation to all those champions of linux to make it work :P

8.my cell phone is on it's death bed. (dont worry it's a moto c131 yuck....) Will get a new phone by next sem

9.looking forward to the summer. Have a cool project with kannan and kamal guiding me. Will have a lotta work but then it's not everday that u get to work on things u want to work on. Also got the world cup coming up. But somehow the world cup doesn't quite appeal to me. Prefer the champions league. coz the overall quality is better.

10.Finished with The OC. have watched till 320. waiting for more episodes. Also would like to thank Firefox(manan from ug2) for his dedication to dloading stuff. U rock firefox.

11.Finally the sem is over. It has been a horrible sem becoz of the workload. But i also made my blogging debut this sem and intend to put up a last post on 12th.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Counter Halley post

About 2-3 months ago Halley wrote a pretty long and debate triggering post about the state d'affairs in IIIT. He raised more hell then good points in my opinion. I thought of writing a counter view to each issue raised. But Nirnimesh already did it. But recently Halley rewrote the whole thing(i found it only now !) so i decided to write a counter blog instead of counter comments.

1.Research: Do you expect miracles in research from UG students? The "research" work we do here is like a small taste of what research is like. It's like a "Intro to reserach" course or something. I have read people saying that honors and MSBR are useless. Well own their own they are but that's not what these things are meant for. They are supposed to put you on the track to research. And there is a limit to the amount of research and new ideas that can come up in a year so it's natural for the same things to be repeated in XoR or R&D though mind u things that are repeated are always improved models of the previous year.

2.Faculty suks: This sem i have had Prosenjit, Kannan, Kamal, PJN, and Sanghal teach us courses. I don't think any institute in India can do that. And sometimes we have Faculty members straying outside their areas of expertise to teach us courses(eg OS, ITWS) so they are bound to look dumb. But that doesn't mean they are hopeless.


3.HSSM suks:I have taken just one HSSM till date. (Industry n Society) last sem. I went to most of the classes had cool discussions with the prof(Dr.Janardhan from HCU) and enjoyed the course. i think taking a HSSM is like taking a course. You don't take dumb courses and similarly u don't take stupid HSSM's like fine arts.

4.Mess suks:If u employ private caterers this is going to happen. The institute should have it's own cooks who are like employees. This is the sytem followed by most colleges like IIT's

5.Canteen will commit suicide: This canteen is reasonable and it will survive coz the quality is ok. Honestly i think it's difficult to have a fancy canteen coz people aren't willing to spend money to eat in it.

6.Mag team suks: I have never seen the college magzine. I think the collection of blogs in IIIT does a good job of replacing the magzine. Blogs are the new age journalism tools. Blogs rock

7.Campus Life suks: Everything is in the hands of the students. We form the councils and even control the budget. But what do we do nothing? Faculty can't help us on this.

8.IIIT as a university: I agree with u. I also see IIIT as a corporate college. To be a university the institute has to sincerely encourage other acivities. This includes Cultural, Sports and social acivites. The present management sadly, doesn't see beyond academics

9.Misuse of resources: As far as computer resource allocation is concerned whoever is incharge of computer stuff deserves to get his a$$ fried. I dont have a lab PC. When i really pestered the labcom he said i have a room pc so i shouldn't demand a lab pc. Ballz. Institute is supposed to give us atleast a pc. Finally got a pc but it had no ram, no hdd and no drives. UG2 had a meeting with the director last sem to discuss the situaton with regard to pc allocation. He said he would do something but then again....this is IIIT nothing happened

10 Grading system suks: I agree. But isin't this a risk u are taking when u make ug students tutors? and by the way 70% tutors are honest. It's some guys who do some "hera pheri" but dishonesty is dishonesty.

11. Democracy suks: Well when we have elections we vote for people we know won't work once elected and then we complain how the parliament suks. The parliament is only as good as those that are a part of it. We all know how hard Pranav works for campus life issues. But i think this is the first time he is part of the parliament. This shows how irresponsibly the students vote.

I have nothing against Halley. Personally i admire u for standing out among the crowd and speaking ur mind. Hope u read this and leave some nice commets :D