Wishlist

Ipod Nano
iPaq Pocket PC (also looking for some other similar items)
Apple MacBook Pro
Sony Vaio U series U 80 maybe...

I'll add more when I get mor time... till then, anybody want to fetch me somethings currently on my list.. then u r welcome..

Was the hare really at fault?

Everyone has heard the story about the hare and the tortoise, with the hare sleeping in between the race while the tortoise kept on moving slowly and finally won the race. For years, i've been told the story as an example that being hardworking pays off.. and everyone blames the poor rabbit for being lazy.

But was the poor rabbit really at fault? And if Yes, then what was his fault? All he did was to take some time off for himself in the race for success. And he was punished to serve as a bad example for generations to come. Is it really such a bad idea to take have some time off from work and do really whatever you want to do? And if you do it, is it worth the stuff you lose?

You judge yourself the best

This is in continuation to the previous post.. as now the mid sems r over..

I decided not to study for the mid sems, and give them a try without studying anything.. just coz i wasnt in the mood to study. And it worked. They went all right.. Somehow.. at some level, you know how much effort you need to put in to achieve a certain level.. You are the best judge of yourself coz u clearly know ur goals... and most of all, u know urself much better than most other people..

Well.. the mid sems thing was just a small part to put my instincts to test.. still bigger risks are yet to to be taken.. bigger decisions are yet to be taken.. and i am really confused about what steps to take..

Instincts.. Even when so much is at stake..

How does one figure out whether to trust their intincts or not?

I got my midsems from monday.. its almost sunday morning rite now, but i dont feel like studyin even though i know i havent even studied half of what i usually do. I m not in the mood to study.. Although logically thinking, i know i cant finish(by finish i mean do enuf to get a descent score) the syllabus for he exams, my intincts tell me "ho jayega"... And even though I m not a spontaneous person, i trust my instincts...

PS. To all "ghissoos"... study harder.. or give your instincts a try...

Macromedia Flex

I just found out about this amazing thing called Macromedia Flex. It is made up of a combination of Macromedia Flash and MXML. It seems like a really cool thing to start designing stuff with really cool interfaces.

The only Macromedia stuff that I have tried uptil now was Macromedia Flash, designing some templates or parts of websites, but Flex would be a nice experience.. I guess

I havent really had the time to really get started on it coz of the exams, but as soon as they r over, i'll something to jump directly on to..

Something About Prime Numbers

This is a part of the article i found really interesting.

Back in August an new algorithm was announced for determining if large numbers were prime. I wondered if this panned out. I further wondered what the implications were for cryptographic systems that depend on the difficulty of factoring large numbers into primes.

A team of Indian scientists has developed a solution for an ancient and important problem — how to find out whether a number is a prime or not. Professor Manindra Agrawal, with his students Mr Neeraj Kayal and Mr Nitin Saxena from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, came up with a computer algorithm that solves the problem. The students have only recently completed their undergraduate degrees. Their result was announced on August 4 and published on their website on August 7. Within 24 hours, more than 30,000 people worldwide had downloaded the paper.

"The strength of this process is it says a number is prime if and only if it is prime. There is no percentage margin of error," said triple j's Mr Adam Spencer, a mathematician by training. The algorithm, or set of instructions, is unique because it is 100 per cent accurate — something that has not been achieved before. Prime numbers are divisible only by themselves and the number one. They are extremely valuable in computing science and mathematics.

Encryption of information transferred over the Internet, for example, is achieved in 'packages' of large semi-prime numbers (which are divisible only by two prime numbers). These packages are known as RSA numbers, and unless the receiver knows which prime numbers are used to make the RSA number, they will not be able to decode the information. "Any developments in terms of determining primes, or calculating primes, or unravelling if things are semi-prime, will have implications for cryptography because the basis of cryptography is knowing massive prime numbers," Mr Spencer explained. But until now there has not been an efficient method of determining whether a number is prime or not — a dilemma known as the primality testing problem.

Existing computer programs are able to estimate prime numbers, but they carry a small degree of inaccuracy — either failing to find a prime number, or coming up with a number that actually isn't prime. While the new algorithm is a polynomial time algorithm — one that is efficient in the time it takes to compute — current methods are faster because they use less steps.The Indian researchers have indicated that their next challenge will be to reduce the number of steps.

The 10 largest prime numbers known are Mersenne primes, named after the 17th-Century French monk Marin Mersenne. He established that (2^p)–1 (that is, two to the power of 'p', minus one — where p is a prime number) is sometimes prime. This is the form of most of the large primes discovered, said Mr Spencer. "These Mersenne numbers aren't always prime," he explained. "But with Mersenne numbers it's particularly easy to test if they are prime or not." By contrast, the process to determine if any random number is prime or not is extremely complicated. The new algorithm offers a foolproof way of doing this. The algorithm does not, however, generate prime numbers — and to date there is no way to do this.

"If someone was to develop a program that was able to factorise numbers, the whole security process of data would collapse," said Mr Spencer.

code4bill

Today I was eliminated from the code4bill contest. I reached round 3 but couldnt qualify for the next stage. This was what i aimed for... Had i cleared this round, i would have then been thrown out of the competition as i was not eligible for it from the start.. It was only for 3rd and 4th year students.

The concept of Black Holes

Astronomically, Black Holes are heavenly bodies with mass so high, that they are capable of creating a gravitational field so strong that even light cannot escape it. Thus it is very difficult to observe black holes coz anything that goes towards them, is sucked into them forever.

In my life, I have seen a lot of black holes. They are not rare, but abundantly present all around. Well that’s coz I have a little different definition of black holes from NASA or wikipedia. I refer those people as black holes who somehow have the habit of borrowing stuff, but somehow seem to forget to return it. Anything that goes to these ‘black holes’ have little or approximately zero probability of coming back to the mother ship.

Due to some weird reason (the research is going on), these black holes assume that anything that’s coming their way should not be returned to their home planet. Every object i.e. matter that is directed towards these black holes is sucked into them by an unknown type of force. The only known characteristics of the force are as follows

The origin of the force is need.
The force is attractive in nature to every kind of material known to mankind.
The force makes the black hole system ‘memoryless’ i.e. the whole black hole system has no record of the instances when the force is on its peak.

Live.com

well.. I havent been a regular to the live.com gadget section but it has grown really fast since the last time i saw it. Lot of gadgets have come in since the last time i visited that site. And the best part is that one can add ones own gadgets to live.com. Thats damn cool.. I mean not everytime one gets the thing that he wants, so if u can make one for yourself, isnt it the best?

I havent really into the details uptil now for making my own gadget, but it doesnt seem so difficult. MS has provided the documentation for makign your own gadgets. It can be seen at

http://microsoftgadgets.com/blogs/gadgetnews/articles/1019.aspx

Well, i guess u know what will i be doing for the next 2-3 days..

iPod Video and Nero 7

I just got an iPod video a few days back and have been playing around with it since then. I checked out what all accessories apple offers for the ipod.. but they are so damn expensive that even if I like then, i dont think i'll ever buy them. As there is large iPod community, i was hoping that people might have come up with good DIY stuff for Ipods. But unfortunately, as ipod video hasnt had much time into the market, there isnt much that people have made for it. So i thought why start experimenting myself with the ipod..

One of the first things that one may require is to convert movies/tv shows/ viodeos to the ipod format. I woukd recommend Nero 7 to do the job for you. Istead of buying softwares that specially convert the videos to ipods resolution, you can use Nero Recode to do the job.

To convert the vidoes using Nero Recode,

1. Start Nero Recode and Select "Recode DVDs and videos to Nero Digital"
2. One the next screen, Click on MOre button and select "Portable" or "Portable - AVC"* in the Nero Digital Profile list.
3. Import the files that you need to encode and click on Next.
4. Under the Nero Digital Settings, Click on "Advanced" and tick the "Simple Profile" check box. Also check the "Expert Mode" checkbox on this screen.
5. Click on Burn

and your job is done(well, almost as the encoding time depends upon the video and your processor)

* Both Portable and Portable AVC profiles will work and the AVC profile will give a better output. But encoding in AVC profile is a much more processor/time consuming than in normal Portable Profile.