After a long time…

Its been a very long time since I posted anything here. My well of thought totally dried up following a lot of events. Currently, I am doing my M.S in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University. Classes commence from the 31st of this month. Currently I am chilling out with my bro in Austin. All the procedures to get myself in the U.S have totally made me search for time and I also couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to post. So, here is this one to break the silence.

So far so good! U.S has been a great place. I am living with three other guys in an apartment called Cherry Hollow in College Station, Texas. Coming early to College Station has helped a lot in getting to know the place better because things are totally different here. I have no clue what these people are trying to achieve by not confirming to standard norms. I mean, everything is different (including the spellings of measure units that follow). The world rotates in another direction here. No more grams and kilograms, no more liters, no more meters and kilometers. I know what people meant when they said I had miles to go and not kilometers to go! I find myself reading mile boards and keep converting it to kilometers. I guess it takes a while to get used to the convention. Why go that far, there are conventions even to write this post. There is a rule that the weakest argument comes first and strongest comes last while writing an article! Preposterous is the term.

The people, I have to mention, are great here. They greet you every single time you walk on the road. You get so much of respect from people. No more honking horns and no more “veetle soltu vantiyaa paradesi” types. This makes you feel as if you are a very important person on the road!

The Convocation of our batch at NITT just got over. I saw all the pics posted on FB and it looked like a mass re-union! I was unlucky enough to miss it. Anyways, I wish everyone all the very best in their future endeavors.

P.S. I’m making this post using Windows Live Writer. Try it out guys. Its simple and great!

Brahma's Day Out...

Asya SrI-bhagavata:mahA purushasya vishNor AgjnayA pravartamAnasya aadhya brahmaNa: dviteeya-parArdhE SrI-SvEtha-varAha-kalpE, vaivasvatha-manvantarE, kaliyugE, prathamE pAdE, Jamboo dveepE, BhArata varshE, Bharata: khaNDE, SakAbde:,merO: dakshiNE pArSvE asmin vartamAnE vyAvahArikE,
PrabhavAdi shashTi samvatsarANAm madhyE Sarvadhaari Naama samvathsare
Dakshinaayane greeshma rithou kataka Maase Sukhla Pakshe Pournamaasyaam subha thithou sthira vaasara SravaNa Nakshathra...

This should not be alien to many people for it is the initial sankalpam which precedes all the religious events and ceremonies. All rituals, performed by a Hindu, auspicious as well as inauspicious, must have the following as an introduction:

•Identification of the exact moment of the ritual by acknowledging the position of the planets
•Identification of the object of the ritual. i.e.,what worship he is about to perform.

How does one determine the exact moment of the ritual? The exact moment is determined with respect to the beginning of Brahma's life. Some arithmetic before this is put forth to further analysis:

1 Human Year = 1 Day for the Devas. This is referred to as a divine day.
1 divine month consists of 30 divine days and One Divine year consists of 12 divine months. The lifespan of the Devas is 100 divine years which is equal to 100 * 12 * 30 * 365 = 1,314,000 Human days or 36,000 human years.
The Vishnu purana defines the above in a different perspective with its own jargon:
1 Ayanam refers to 6 human months. Hence 2 Ayanams form a human year which is in turn equal to one divine day. The concept of 'Yugam' is introduced here. There are four Yugams. Each yugam is equal to some number of divine years. There are four yugams:
a. Krita Yugam
b. Treta Yugam
c. Dwapara Yugam
d. Kali Yugam

Kali Yugam spans for a period of 1,200 divine years which is referred to as 1 charanam which is equal to 1,200 * 360 = 432,000 Human Years.
Dwapara Yugam, Treta Yugam and Krita Yugam each span 2, 3 and 4 charanams respectively. Hence the total of all the yugams leads to 1,200 + 2,400 + 3,600 + 4,800 = 12,000 divine years. This is referred to as One Mahayugam. Hence One Mahayugam is equal to 12,000 * 360 = 4,320,000 Human Years ( 4.32 Million Human Years).
Now 1000 such Mahayugams form one Kalpam = 4.32 Billion Human Years. This forms 1 day in Brahma's life (Day here refers to day alone, not the night portion of a day). 1 Kalpa is also equal to 1000 Chatur Yugams. Since a day is composed of day and night, one day in brahma's life is equal to 2 Kalpams = 2000 Chatur Yugams = 2000 Mahayugams = 8.64 Billion Human Years. ( ain't he bored?? ).
Now the life span of brahma is said to be 100 brahma years = 311040 Billion Human Years.

Now a manvantharam is defined as 71 Mahayugams. Each manvantharam is ruled by a Manu and is followed by a Sandhi Kalam which spans 4 charanams. Hence 1000 Mahayugams is the occurence of 14 such manvantharam and sandhi kalams. So this is how the exact moment is determined with respect to all the jargons used above.

Referring to the portion that is in bold in the sankalpam given above:
Dvitheeya Parardhe : 'Parardhe' refers to half the life span of brahma. Hence we are currently in the second half of the current brahma's life.

Svethavaraha Kalpe : The current Kalpa or Brahma's day is referred to as Svetha Varaha Kalpam.

Vaivasvatha Manvanthare: Within the Svetha Varaha Kalpam, we are in the seventh manvantharam. Six have elapsed already...

To be continued.....

What comes first?

I'm ridiculously bored here in college. The hostel is almost empty - a concomitant of the super special combo of 'no classes + saarang + three-day weekend'. I have nothing to do at all and hence i decide to put up a post. I put up here things that come first to my mind when i think of something or someone!

1) Mess- The spot in campus where magnetism is at its peak; so high that people are repelled.

2) Hugh Laurie- Amazing actor. I fervently hope that he wins more awards.

3) Books- This is no time to think about them!

4) Slumdog Millionaire- The cast of the movie fades except ARR.

5) ARR- Should win atleast one oscar. Totally deserving candidate.

6) Simbu- '9' seems to be his favourite number. Guy should learn to stand and dance instead of
lying down and dancing!

7) 8th Semester- Fridays off! Every week is a three day weekend.!

8) Math- Something that i'm currently using only to count the number of movies i'm watching out of boredom!

9) Aamir Khan- 6 + 2 = 8 = Added hype. Do you get the math in this?

10) Prince of Persia- Half-done. Doesnt run properly in my laptop! :( No idea why Ubisoft wants so much of graphical support! Duh..

10) Kangana Ranaut- Madame Tussauds museum is spared of some wax! Tragedy seems to be her word!

11) Villu- = Kuruvi = ATM = Pokkiri = Thirupachi = Sivakasi = Eveything else in Vijay's filmography. He is a great dancer but can't really occupy screen place only because of that! Running out of stuff!

12) Tamanna- tantalizingly beautiful. A nice wallpaper for the desktop! Happy Days!

13) Time- something I'm doubtful about. Doesnt seem to be ticking at all at the moment! That reminds me that i have to go now!

Fedora 10 - A Report

For the past one year, I have been trying to install every linux distro in my laptop just to realize that there is some problem or the other. Hence, no linux installation has lasted for more than a week in my laptop. Ubuntu, the people's favourite failed to impress me. As a matter of fact, I have always hated ubuntu for its colour. But there was ubuntu studio which had better colours and made the desktop look beautiful. Still i faced all sorts of problems pertaining to graphics. The first distro that has lasted for above a week in my laptop is Fedora 10 - 'Vanilla' as they call it. As i try to confess why i liked it a lot, i try to bring out the things which i had to do in order to get other distros working and hence the stuff that i din't have to do in vanilla.

Firstly, i have never got sound working right in any of the distros. An update of alsa alone has never solved the sound issue. I have always needed to google everything and copy all those lib files from one folder to the other and keep restarting endlessly until i have it working at some point of time miraculously. After lot of slogging, I feel great that I got it working finally just to figure out the successor of the current OS is out already! On the contrary, an update on alsa solved all the problems in vanilla. People might argue based on the newness of the OS and all the updates that are available in view of this. It may not be out of place to mention here that i could not get sound working properly in Intrepid Ibex which is the latest release of Ubuntu!

Secondly, I liked the appearance of fedora 10 more than any distro. I have no idea why but the colours were way better than its contemporaries, esp Intrepid Ibex. It had a better wallpaper collection to choose from. Before my encounter with fedora 10, I really liked the appearance of OpenSuse 11. But surprisingly, except the appearance, nothing else was available in that distro! A bundle of problems.

Most important of all, as you catch a glimpse of the screenshot, you might realize that i have installed a lot of softwares. In the general case, I would feel a marked decrease in the speed of the OS. But vanilla is as stable as it can get. To add here that i have not been able to install so many softwares in any distros because some prob would definitely pop up and hence the OS would slow down. Hence I never got an opportunity to make a complete software package until fedora 10 happened.
As I have explained why i liked it and hence its features, let me move into the problems i faced with it which were meagre. I had a few problems while connecting the laptop on to a TV. This works precisely in windows. But there is some issue which i have to look into. Other than that, everything else is configured properly.

Some problems with previous distros:
1) OpenSUSE 11 - Touchpad working was based on the mood of the OS. It will work when it feels like working. At other times, you switch on some music and it would start working miraculously. Yup! Music does exalt moods.!
2) Ubuntu 8.04 - I never got my pen drive to auto mount in this version of Ubuntu - Hardy Heron. I had to plug it in and give it a restart which would take ages!

A point to note. I installed 1248 packages totally in the beginning which is inclusive of java development packages and a few more. The size of the OS was 4 gb which i guess is a little on the higher side for a linux OS, but i m not sure about the bandwidth occupied by other versions.

Verdict:
Instead of wasting time reading reviews of Vijay's Villu, try this distro out. Don't worry. You wont miss out on anything. You already read this review for his previous dishyum-dishyum movies. Its the same thing!!!

If you have already tried it out, let me know your verdict too!

Thuglak

I happened to get hold of Cho's Magazine Thuglak yesterday and was absolutely impressed by the subtle style of writing.

I was held up in a bank, had nothing to do. My dad is a fan of this magazine. He is an ardent reader from the time i can remember. He had bought this magazine, left it to me and was involved in a conversation with a bank employee. Absolutely nothing to do, I started reading this magazine. The magazine has got a lot to do with politics and other stuff. But a political magazine has never been so interesting. No other magazine has interested me so much.

The front page had a cartoon featuring Manmohan Singh and Karunadhini being involved in a conversation which went like this:

Manmohan: "What?? You want me to blame Jayalalitha for the Mumbai Blasts?? Who do you think will believe?? Everyone will insult me.
Karunanidhi: "Nothing like that would happen. Summa ula ulakattiku sonnen nu sollidunge. Everything would be resolved."
I fell down laughing reading the front page itself.
The highlight of the magazine is the Question-Answer Section. The editor Cho provides answers to public queries. His flair for witty retorts has no shortage in every answer that he provides.

Another excellent section titled Hindu Maha Samudhiram garnishes the Hindu Religion in a story format. This section of the magazine was started 3 years before by Cho himself.

My suggestion: Those who can read Tamil well, please catch hold of a copy of it and start reading. A mini coffee at Saravana bhavan costs the same price as a copy of the magazine!