But this time, I didn’t search for shelter. I didn’t try get home as fast as possible. I didn’t grab a useless textbook (like there are any other kind of textbooks) and shield my head.

I sang. Soft enough so that only I could hear. And walked home slowly in the rain.

It lasted maybe 4 minutes, but felt like a long time. Maybe because of the song I chose. Maybe because how I was feeling today. Or maybe just because I had never really done it before.

But, it is wonderful. You should try it sometime.

It has been true in all my school life, and increasingly, my college life too. Guess it’s time I break it.

Maybe.

But then again, nope.

College is fun, but it sure as hell ain’t what I want to be doing

India?

Wait. Scratch that.

A couple of us over on FriendFeed were just wondering if anyone could prove that girls exist. Anyone?

This is the relevant part of the conversation. So, proof instead of faith, anyone?

Nickson the Terror, by YuviPanda.

A good friend of mine at college. Awesome guy, unfortunately ends up on the wrong end of many a joke

All bitching aside, how is my college life? Afterall, I get to live through it only once!

It’s been fun. But a different kind of fun than my usual fun. My usual fun consists of coding something new, testing it out, and learning something in the process. If I get a few graphs out of it, so much the better. It’s geek fun.

But the fun I’m having at college is more like the normal-non-geek fun. Going places with friends. Txting people sitting a few rows nearby. Teasing people about stuff I can’t blog about without getting teased. Showing people to blog. Getting teased. Teasing more people. Listening to music on the bus. Joking with teachers (about the management, none the less!) Singing along. Playing Dumb Charades versus the girls (it’s darn fun, lemme tell you. You get a nice excuse for making fun of them). All normal-non-geek fun.

And, it’s been okay. I guess more than okay – my SMS usage has gone through the roof. Who knows, I might even start having a social life!

And ofcourse, because of the fact I chose the college I chose (with the criteria of ‘leniency’ and ‘freedom’) I get to have some geek fun too. Hunting down Python Memory leaks, writing scraper framework, learning new design patterns, presenting on the DLR, becoming an MCP (yeah, I’m a Microsoft Certified Professional now), making GoodFather opensource (or rather, rewriting it and making that open source), getting drafted into the college’s technical club as the sole fresher (thanks to an Indiblogger blogging for students event), learning R, etc – it’s been fun on all sides

And, this blog has been neglected – due in large part to twitter and friendfeed. Fear no more – I’m back! Due to various reasons I can’t talk about right now (that always sounds right, doesn’t it?) I’ve got to be an active blogger And writing this just made me get that aaah-I-love-blogging! feeling back

I’m back, folks! And talking about college!

From here.

Anyone? These aren’t mathematically generated – They are actual readings of something.

Advice?

Which is better, the photo above, or the one below? Which would you say speaks more as “ugly” and “unclean”?

Photo Credit to Sudar, who took this while I was unsupectingly on my way to the Barber’s. I post processed it to make it look more, uh, ugly?

Using GoGrid.com for all my stats, and loving it so far. Customer service is awesome Full on review coming soon…

1. Have a server running on GoGrid. You can access the machine ‘coz you know it’s IP address and hence no DNS is involved.
2. Login to said server.
3. Ping Google.com from said server to grab Google’s IP Address
4. Enter Google’s IP Address in address bar, and watch with elation as it works.
5. Ask Google to solve the problem.
6. Google Answers
7. Blog about your nerdiness.

The shorter, not-so-nerdy-but-still-geeky way:

1. Find your Network connection properties, and then the TCP/IP v4 properties (I’m not telling you how – remember, this is still the not-so-nerdy-but-still-geeky version)
2. Use the following DNS Servers (Donno where they are from, they work (and worked even when OpenDNS didn’t) – 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 (No, ain’t kidding. These WORK!(Easy to remember as well)))
3. Bingo!

In other non-tech news, I ain’t dead – it’s just that I was caught up with college stuff. Now that it’s over, I’ll be back

P6150581, by Sudar Muthu.

Photo from my Cousin Sudar. Pics from me will be up soon

Anyway, I’m off to the Chennai Photowalk. See you there!

Almost Death, by YuviPanda.

I love night time photography Especially the one that just produces masses of beautiful colors with apparently (and actually) no meaning. Just somewhat pretty to look at and give weird titles to

Shillika, by Ravages.

Awesome DOF from a DSLR that had me drooling over it.

Pic from the IndiBlogger meet, which I too attended. Report coming up soon!

Update: Oh noes, I’m not the Paperazzi! Atleast, not here - my dear Sano (that’s what I call my cam. Desperate, ain’t I? :P) is totally useless indoors. This is the tottally by this totally awesome photographer.

I’ll be going with my cam, and coming back with lots of pictures Coming?

It’s been ages since I’ve had to explicitly specify the type of something, and even in those cases, it was due to the early (.Net 1.x) "custom collection" classes, which are thankfully few and far. Wonder how I’m going to fare in Javaland if I ever have to go there?

…which I confirmed a few minutes ago:

I’m the first Indian on the Techmeme Leaderboard! Yay!

You can grab the CSV file showing all the sites that have been on the Techmeme Leaderboard, for “atleast” one day. I checked all the sites manually, and The Statbot is the only Indian site there. Yay!

I’m making a big fuss of this small thing, simply because this came at a right time – I could present this too as “proof” of extracurricular activities when I’m submitting my College Application to SSN.

Update: No, Om Malik doesn’t qualify – He’s an American Indian (Update #2: NO, I didn’t mean a Native American – In India, Indian-born American Citizens are called American Indians )

I know it’s a problem on my end (DNS sucky), but still funny…

Not that this is goanna last long, but….

…I just went past Louis Gray!

(Shuts up, and goes to sleep)

Never thought I’d be there this fast, eh?

Thanks to LouisGray for noticing it way before I did. He must be part of a collective working for him…

Thanks fly out to all people who made this possible (Rob Lagesse, Louis Gray, Sudar, Rory, and those I missed)

This goes into my Extra-Curricular-Activities-That-Can-Help-Me-Get-Into-Good-College folder

Twhirl duplicates the original twitter messages to Jaiku and Pownce, and the Friendfeed duplicates them again. Unwanted noise, which is different from just noise.

1. Go to anyone’s FriendFeed Page
2. Click on Page 9
3. 9^th Page of updates appear
4. Click on Page 12 to try go to 12^th Page of updates

Expected Behavior:

1. 12^th page of updates appears

Observed Behavior:

1. 11^th page of updates appears. Trying to access ANY page past Page 11 gives me just page 11.

Now, can someone PLEASE fix this? Thank you.

Blaaast!, by YuviPanda.

I love late-night low light photography out of fast moving vehicles

Hiiigh Court, by YuviPanda.

This one is like, a few feet from our School. I often stay after school, so this one was during one of those days…

Anyway, I somehow managed to come out alive (though not mentally unscathed), and last week (yes last week. I am lazy), I got my marks. Here they come!

YUVARAJ PANDIAN T ( 675154 )

There you go. Those are the “numbers” which will impact my life pretty heavily. I have ’bout 94% of marks, and a Science Cut off (Physics/4 + Chemistry/4 + Maths/2, used for Engineering Admissions) of 190.75/200. Sounds good on paper, but in reality, it’s not. I could get any college I want, except the really good ones. Sigh.

Hope I get a good college. Wish me luck, ‘coz that’s how lives are decided here.

(If I sound a tad, err, pissed off here, then it’s because I am. I’ll put in a new post ’bout why I’m pissed off at this education system soon)

Coding the technology behind it – GoodFather and Avee, has been an extremely awesome experience for me. I made a lot of mistakes, and learnt from them. Also, I spent quite a bit of time with the architecture, which has paid off by giving me an extremely extensible base to build off. More technical details in a later post. And, btw, did I mention that GoodFather was named for Rob Lagesse and Avee for my friend Avantika?

Also, a lot of things in my life are changing, leaving me in an inconsistent state. Sometimes, I wish I had can issue a ROLLBACK. I fancy I’ll get through though. Again, more info on this in a new post.

So folks, subscribe to thestatbot.com for your weekly dose of web stats J