Thursday, November 24, 2005

Tag: Se7en

Got tagged. And that too a day after a looong blog. Anyway, three of my four exams are done now and the fourth one is four days away. So here I am, back to my blog.

What is this tagging business anyway? Tag used to be great out in the grounds. Now that we have computers and internet, we are playing tag with blogs. Guess there is a nerd in everyone. Makes me happy :).

Anyway, here goes....

Seven things I want to do in my life:
  1. Do anything and everytihng for my parents.
  2. Fall in love.
  3. Build a holiday retreat at a secluded place.
  4. Make a positive difference to a few lives, in any possible way.
  5. Learn to play any one music instrument well.
  6. Take a country-wide mobike ride.
  7. Build myself an awesome gaming rig.

Seven things I can do:
  1. Assemble Computers.
  2. Watch an endless stream of movies.
  3. Read long books and novels in one sitting.
  4. Listen to all kinda music (including languages I don't understand).
  5. Sleep - all day long and then all night long.
  6. Follow hobbies in an obsessively paranoid manner.
  7. Stay up all night bhaating with friends.

Seven things I say the most:
  1. Mar gaya!
  2. Lunch anyone/Dinner anyone.
  3. Abe kal ki class ke liye utha dena be!!
  4. Hmmmmmm...
  5. Abe mote uth jaa (courtesy Sudu whom I have to wake up all too often :P).
  6. Thanks.
  7. Chal cya...

Seven things I can't do:
  1. Stop being a geek.
  2. Stay away from forums.
  3. Sleep at an earthly hour.
  4. Keep my table uncluttered.
  5. Take a short nap. If I sleep, I'll be down for hours.
  6. Cheat/copy on tests and exams.
  7. Break traffic rules. (I wear a helmet while riding in campus).

Seven things that attract me to the opposite sex:
  1. Looks.
  2. A sense of understanding.
  3. Practicality
  4. A sweet smile.
  5. A fun attitude.
  6. Simplicity.
  7. Respect for others.

Seven celebrity crushes:
  1. Jeon Ji Hyun (My Sassy Girl)
  2. Preity Zinta
  3. Amrita Rao
  4. Avril Lavigne
  5. Meg Ryan
  6. Julia Stiles
  7. Anna Kournikova

Seven people I tag:
  1. Nitin Dhawan (Nitzee), get back to blogging man.
  2. Abhishek Agarwal (Recca Kun)
  3. Arvin Deep
  4. Indrava Roy
  5. Apratim Dhar
  6. Vivek Malewar (MatterLogic), start a blog yaar :)
  7. Gaurav Sahni (Ravemz)

Takes too much thought this thing. Good thing it came in between exams, the mind is perfectly devoid of everything and free to think. :).

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

End Sems, F.E.A.R., looooong blogging breaks, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Banks, Winter, FUBAR, Nerdcore, Graphics Cards, Goblets of Fire and the like...

It has been such a long time since I last wrote something here, that I have to look up font faces and sizes again. This is like the worst thing that could happen. Anyway, should now get back to the point. Been a really long time, almost three months, and in the meanwhile, I have been doing things that range from NULL (simply doing nothing) to actually studying seriously (imagine that!!!). Lets take things one at a time shall we?

So End Sems are upon us KGPians now. I am actually halfway through the penultimate end semester examinations of my undergraduate/graduate (Dual Degree!) life. Two done, two more to go and the toughest one is gone. But, for a change, the toughest one was not so tough. It was actually much better than expected and was in a long long time a technical examination that I attempted completely. I am now actually fearing for the two easier ones, what if they are unexpected!!. BTW, this "tougher" one was the thing that caused me to "study seriously". Worked out well in the end.

That was the serious part of the blog, now lets get to the extreme opposite. Like I was saying, I have also spent time doing ABSOLUTELY nothing. Trust me, it is BLISS. Nothing better than lying down on a lazy couch/bed in moderate weather watching the day(s) go by. Try it sometime, but yeah, don't overdo it. I almost did.

And that is how we reach up to F.R.I.E.N.D.S. The next thing to lying around all day is to put up your headphones and watch episode after episode of some sitcom. In my case, it was the ever-popular show F.R.I.E.N.D.S, and this was a second watching. Often, friends would come up behind me in my room and I wouldn't notice because I was too engrossed and also, because with the headphones on, I couldn't hear them come in.

As long as we are putting full stops between capitalised letters of a word, lets talk about F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault and Recon). This is supposed to be one of the really good games to have come out in recent times, and perhaps is the best since Half Life 2 stole our hearts. The sad part is that the game is so demanding on graphics hardware, that I don't have the heart to even install it on my computer. (Neither do I have that HDD space).

Talking of HDD's, I gotta get two of 'em soon. And that's where the banks come in. I have to have a savings account at the State Bank of India, IIT Kharagpur branch to receive my stipend, and because I didn't, I haven't received a single dime of it yet. Hopefully tomorrow (or today as it is past midnight), I will give my SBI account number in the Accounts department and get the accumulated amount of the stipend in December. Ahoy HDD's, here I come (soon).

December did I say. That's a winter month. So yeah, winter is here, and this time it descended upon us suddenly. One day all was fine and dandy and the next day it was pretty cold outside. Forced us to wear jackets and what-not. Anyway, what's another winter after 21 already, and that too a KGP winter when I have seen Himalayan ones.

OK, leave the winter aside and lets get back to games, and more importantly, something indispensable while gaming. A good Graphics card. A lot of activity has been going on in the graphics card market for the last six months. First nVidia pulls off an amazing launch day in stores for the 7800 series graphics cards, and ATi pulls off another woefully late paper launch four months later. And then again nVidia pulls of the King Killer move, launch of the 512MB 7800GTX video card, the fastest ever to hit the consumer market. Too bad it costs US$700 minimum and is out of stock at most stores. While the top end of the market has been as hot as a rocket's exhaust, the mainstream has also had reasons to cheer. Cuts in 6xxx series cards' prices, launch on ATi's X800GTO that could be easily made into a x800XT/x850XT, and then the 6800GS that redefined value for money, and now the impending launch of the 7800GS that should make the market more crowded then ever. Too bad that the prices the cards are available at in India are way way more than their market prices in the US. Do you know someone who could get me a good card from the US???

Enough of the Graphics cards and stuff. Lets talk something more geeky. Here comes the NerdCore. It is one of the newer genre of music, and is becoming really popular among nerds and geeks. Combine Gangsta Rap and Geek terms and you get the Holy Grail. Monzy's got a good Drama in the PhD going on. Check it out.

Well, this is about time that I start running out of things to write in this blog (and remember the countless things I missed about an hour later). So here are the last two things that come to mind.

Petrol : Prices have been shooting up like bamboo grows, and looks like I should get back to my bicycle instead of riding my bike.

FUBAR : While I was writing this blog, I noticed the yahoo messenger status message of a wingoo. Upon asking him what it meant, I was enlightened with some World War II lingo, F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition. I'll leave the rest to you all.

Oh! By the way, the new Harry Potter movie "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" is out and it is off to the talkies as soon as eaxms end.