Did you understood this?

I was in the college, to submit my project report and i stumbled upon the answers to the 4th cryptography internals on the notice board.Yes! The lecturer put the answers up! Whoever asked for them?! Thankfully, i did not have to take that test. And i pity all those who were forced to take it. Why?! Take a look:

Well, let me spell out a few questions for your benefit, in case you are having trouble reading it:
*What is the draw back of "mano"-alphabetic cipher? how can it be "overcomed"??
*List the characteristic Ceaser Cipher substitution which "enforces" to use brute force cryptanalysis. ( i guess it should be characteristics of..)
*What are the two unique and not necessarily compatible requirements for a sequence of random numbers? Lo and behold! The answer is a) Randomness and b) Unpredictability!!!

It is difficult to ascertain what language the man is communicating in!! That's not all, he spewed wonderful pearls in the class all the time, that i kept awake to listen to them, interpret them and have a good laugh! :) Here are a few:
*Did you understood this? ( Repeats it after explaining each topic!)
*The typewriter is going to be elapsed soon!
*Practical means, not impractical.
*When we product two numbers, the result becomes very large! ( by now you know, he meant multiply two numbers :) )
*We cannot larger the key size in any way!
*If the buffer is fulled, the connection cannot be formed easily!
*In conventional systems, there is a possibility of stoling the key!
And saving the best for the end, he pronounces eavesdropping as "evaas-dropping". I close my mouth, duck under the desk and laugh my heart out each time he says that in class!! There are many more such gems. He says them with such a straight face that you are sure that the man does not know how funny his nonchalant statements turn out to be! He even asked us to draw a round square while he was teaching us Logic Design long back! God help the juniors! I wish them luck in decrypting his statements!! :D

End of a joyride called college!

How many times have you woken up and cursed the college simply because it exists and you need to go there to attend those blasted classes?!And how many times have you secretly wished that a lecturer would fall ill or something so that you could have a class off? I have probably done it all through the four years of my engineering. But alongside, i have also looked forward to meeting up with friends in college, catching up on the latest college gossip, the bunking and going loafing. It is as if, there are two separate worlds inside those college gates- one, outside the classroom and one inside!

Well, yesterday was the last day that i got to spend in the class, during the photo session. Amidst taking pictures and signing autographs, we also made sure we left our mark in the class. The beam in the center of our classroom, all brightly whitewashed, now sports a message-"8th CS-A 05-09 was here", just like the one in Shawshank Redemption.

I had always imagined that i would be all teary eyed and sappy on the last day. However, it was not to be, what with all the PJs being cracked and the smiling for the pictures. I was extra happy since we had wrapped up the project only the previous day!
With the project also over, it is as if there is nothing more to do for now!( i have blocked out exam preparation entirely out of my mind, as of now) It all just adds up to the empty feeling that i have when i wake up these days( of course, half the empty feeling is because Sony Max has some bad movie playing at 8 since monday)! To top it, there are neighbors who see me at home all the time and keep asking me-" college ilva?", "college mugitha?". Howdu! College mugithu. And i am not exhilarated about it. The four years seem to have passed in a jiffy and have left me wanting more! And in a matter of a few days, the exams will also be over and it will be THE end of my college life! I am going to miss all my friends, the juice center,the steps, the parking lot, the placement cell and all the fun i have had in college. One big regret is that i can't seem to recollect which was the last class that i bunked :(. After all, i won't get to do it anymore!!

The blue book rests in peace!

I completed, no, successfully completed the last set of internal assessment tests of my engineering today. What a relief!!No more internals!! Each day of the internals is a trying experience and all that one wants is to get it over with. I really cannot get myself to believe that i have gone through almost 24 such sets of tests through these four years.
Way back in the first year, the internals were serious affairs with all of us sincerely preparing and vying to get the much coveted 25 in all the subjects. As we got higher up through the semesters, the interest and the seriousness waned, and so did the marks! The graph was anything but exponential. All that we prepared and prayed for was the magic number of 15, by hook or crook ;) ! There were some hopeless subjects along the way in which i thought i'd not get even that- EC,CO, Adv MuP, SE... i could perhaps list most of the subjects we studied! But to compensate for the nightmares they gave, i am sure we had some interesting subjects too, but i can't remember any of them :D. Do remind me if you can think of any!
Anyway, i am glad that i don't have to go through the ordeal of IAs anymore. It has been one herculean task to get those marks each semester. I'd like to thank all my friends who directly or indirectly helped me get through my internals. Thank you for the combined studies, for explaining all the stuff i'd skipped, for letting me peep into your books, for the pdfs and the chits! The marks wouldn't have been so good without your support ;).

Hello Again!

It has been eons since my last post, so let me say hello to the handful few who read my blog!( i don't think it is reeaaally necessary though, coz most of the few people who read it are the ones i meet on a day-to-day basis in college :D) Anyway, i have a good reason for not updating my blog regularly. It is not for the lack of events to talk about! It's just that i have been pure lazy ;). And a proper valid reason that i changed my ISP and the new guys took 3 weeks to provide the connection.( i was internet-less and restless the whole time!!) Anyway, now that i have gotten back to blogging, let me get you up to date with the taaza khabar from my side.
Project is progressing at snail's pace. Gawd knows how Greeshma and i are going to tie the ends together by the final submission date. Am praying for a miracle! ;)
In the meantime, 75%( i guess that's the minimum) attendance has been made mandatory for us 8th sem CS people, in case we want to take the internals. Something unheard of in JCE! So your's truly has been slogging away in class in order to make the cut to be eligible to take the internals. Its killing me!
And there was also our CS Fest, CieSta during Feb-end that was a huge success, what with highly efficient people organising it ;). It was a precursor to a host of other departmental fests. While i was not plodding away in class, i was participating in the fests without too much luck with the prizes :(
In movie news, i have not watched anything new! Thanks to the producer's strike!
And who needs to watch movies when you can see the movie stars at the IPL! And i've been rooting for the CSK from the start of the tournament. It breaks my heart to see them lose!

Coming to TV, when Prison Break went on a break last year, i was wondering how the hell was i going to wait till April for the rest of the episodes!April has already come and gone! How time flies!! i am waiting to see how it ends now. It's about time it wraps up. They have been dragging it for a long time!
I'll leave other trivial stuff for later. Enough of boring you guys! But i have to mention the highlight of my day- i cast my vote today. i have been maha-thrilled about it during the run up to the elections. i can proudly show off the indelible ink on my finger now!

Firsht Day!

First day of the 8th semester! I was as excited as i was on the first day of college some three and half years ago. So i get to college earlier than class time and find only a handful of people standing in front of class.Then we do the customary hi-hello and wait for the lecturer to turn up. No sign of the lady,so we go roaming. The first stop is the temple where i prayed for a wonderful final sem. Hope Lord Ganesha was listening! With an hour at hand before the next class, what better way to spend the rest of the time than at Yampa? Caught up on the latest college gossip, gloated at being the seniors of the college and all, over chai.

By the time the next class was due to start, a lot of people had finally decided to grace the classroom with their presence. Second hour was Constitution of India & Professional Ethics(,according to VTU syllabus ;)). It seemed to me like i was back in school in the civics class.

Third hour was Advanced Computer Architecture(ACA). The lecturer came in and started talking about responsibility, discipline and how we were going to step into a new life soon. How we would be recognized for our individuality in the industry and how engineering had made us all lazy(how true!). I was waiting for him to stop doling out advice and to come to the point. But no! The sermon went on and on and touched myriad topics, ranging from Darwinism, evolution, spirituality to modeling our life and future. The modeling then found some link with robots and AI. By then, half the people were wondering what was happening! And someone fell asleep. The lecturer woke him and actually asked if the lecture was causing any inconvenience to him!! To top it all, he conducted normal conversation using technical terms and it kept us in splits. One really weird class which i enjoyed! Never seen so many topics discussed in the span of one lecture.

The last hour was that of the strict,action-taking lecturer. Only, he did not take any action for bunking two weeks or bother to scold us. Probably realized by now that it is of no avail! While the previous class was full of entertainment, this one was completely dull. The lecturer simply read out from the notes he had got, stressing on totally unwanted stuff.The way he droned on and on only made things worse. After what seemed like an eternity, did the last hour get over! It is classes like these that make you simply want to stop coming to college. Thank god for friends and the fun stuff we get to do in college. And thank god for the holidays we get once a while! By the way, naaLe is raja! Yay!! Seems Dalai Lama is visiting our college tomorrow. The college is all spruced up for his visit. If you are in JCE, you do not want to miss our old airplane in the quadrangle,replete with fresh coat of paint. Who is going to call it junk now?

College beckons..

The 7th semester results came out today and i got back the "distinction" that eluded me the last time! Yours truly is very happy and thought it fit to share it with others. Not that it is a great achievement. Almost everyone i know has got one this time around. Happy that the VTU did not play spoilsport with any of us:)

Since i have a lot of free time at hand, i picked up Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged that i had left halfway through, and started reading it. At one point, one of the protagonists says that the most depraved type of human being is the one without a purpose in life. Got me thinking as to what the purpose of my life is! As of now, all that i am doing is living it to the fullest and having all the fun i can. Is that a good enough purpose? I suppose the actual purpose will be clear once i step out of the confines of the college into the so called "big-bad-world".

Speaking of college, it reopened on the 5th of this month. But as per JCE tradition, am yet to set foot into the class. Rumor has it that one particular lecturer is really furious at our indifference towards classes and is gonna take strict "action" when we get there. Like we cared about it for seven semesters! At most, the first internal will be really tough with incomprehensible questions and many will end up with single digits for marks. There was a time, maybe at school and PU college when a single digit was looked down upon. But engineering college changed my attitude towards it coz i became a single-digit-getter myself. I was horrified the first couple of times but got used to it as time passed and even started enjoying the process. It became a norm to score measly marks in the first internal and the third internal would be a challenge of sorts.This semester will be no different in that sense.

Am eagerly looking forward to the first day in class. After all, it is THE final semester. Most of the memories i will take back from college will be those of this semester. But i am not sure if i want to spend all my time in class. You see,after this, i wont have anymore classes to bunk! So attending college, bunking class and watching movies, roaming around and having endless conversations with friends is on the agenda for the semester. You never know, in the process, i might discover the purpose of my life!