Millennium Hall, Senior Quiz Final

Quizmaster: Right Answer DPSN. Moving on to the next team.

Me: Dude, this is fucking boring. Bhaad mein gaya quiz. Uth ke chalte hai.

Mihir: Check out the semi-cute Xavier girl on your side.

Me (to girl): Who made this stupid quiz?

Girl: You think you’re too smart for it? What kind of quizzes do you have?

Me: The sexy kind. Will send you an invite for sure.

Girl: Huh? Which you school are you from?

Me: DPS Noida.

Girl: Aaah!! Attitude waale bachhe!! DPS mein manners nahi sikhate?

Me: Nah. They focus on speed flirting instead.

Girl (suggestive smile): Do you hate convent school girls or what?

Me: Na Na. Hum to aapse pyaar karte hai

Quizmaster: Next question for DPSN.

Interface 2010. Chose it over Silico Battles 2010 (Ahlcon, Mayur Vihar) only because I had to go to Code Wars  (DPS Vasant Kunj) the next day. (Silico clashes with everything). We split up the eSpice squad and sent half to Code Wars + Interface and the other half to Silico Battles.

Started from DPS Noida after some MAJOR confusion over who was going to which event. Me and Rohan tried sneaking in a hot girl (name classified but well, she just might be reading this and smirking to accompany us under pretext of of having a full team, but that plan got nuked. Reached St. Xavier’s in 25 minutes where we the male escort PK Sir escorted us one-by-one through the rain under the only umbrella we had.

St. Xavier’s looks like a typical convent school from the outside, but not as sucky from the inside. In fact the main hall, “Millennium Hall” was pretty big, almost a replica of Cambridge Noida’s Auditorium. After being treated to a torturous performance (during which someone swiped the Interface invite on Sawhney’s ass like a credit card) by the school band (see pic) we were sent off the various events. Me and Mihir for Quiz, Tushant and Nitesh for C++ Programming, Srijan for Java, Utkarsh and Rose for WebD while Karan & Karan (Malik and Sawhney) presented the PPT in the hall.

Quiz prelims were of MCQ type :/ Ranging from sitters like the developer of Java, to WTF? like last MSDOS version (6.0 or 6.2 or 6.22), it was a pretty disappointing one. Obviously, we owned it. Halfway through, in walks Akshay Kumar.

Erm… no, not that one. Akshay Kumar is the quizzer from DPSMR who had to attend Silico but turned greedy and decided that he could manage both. (He eventually lost in Interface finals and won in Silico prelims. Silico finals tomorrow)

After the prelims, we headed back to the hall to catch K&K in action. Malik was presenting with an iPhone in hand, reading off the notes. When he receives a SMS from a girl. In the middle of the presentation (see pic)! Fortunately, he chose not to reply to it and carried on with the thing, while our team rofl-ed.

An interlude followed, with more tortuous music. The iPhone had a cool app which repeats whatever you say into it in Hamster/Dog/Horny-Bitch tongue. We tried everything into it, until Sawhney got a little too excited.

Sawhney (loudly into the phone): Teri Maa Chod Doonga.

Some Random Teacher of Some Random School sitting across him: MIND YOUR TONGUE!

iPhone-Hamster: Teri Maa Chod Doonga.

After the first block of events, it was time for Video Editing (Rohan and Swayam, our winning-streak video team), Crossword (Dhananjay and Vishesh), Gaming (Malik) and Quiz Finals (We had topped the prelims). Turned out that Srijan forgot the syntax during the Java event, C++ programming was a farce of loooooong programs, and WebD was okayish. Overall trophy was a distant sight, basically.

We walked on to the stage for the finals like we were born to do just that, untucking our shirt midway (it brings good luck, seriously)

Quiz finals were a joke. Have you ever heard of a quiz with MCQs, True or False questions and NO passing??? I had’t. Until now. Easily the yuckiest quiz ever. We were reduced to making fun of basically everything to keep us interested.

Quizmaster: For DPS Noida. Jack Kilbi invented the IC. True or False.

Me: Pretty hard question, you know. Jack Kilby invented the IC, Jack Kilbi did not. Would you say its wrong if we say False on this pretext?

Quizmaster: Just answer.

Me: You won’t even clarify anything. We know the answer, that should fetch us points. Why do you base a question around a spelling mistake?

Quizmaster: Just answer, dammit.

Me: True.

Quizmaster: Yeah.

Lousy quizmastering:

Quizmaster: What is the name of the new motion sensing technology for the XBox?

Me: Kinect

Quizmaster: No. Its Project Natal. No points.

We fought. They didn’t relent. Suckiest quiz ever. We still won, of course by a landslide margin over New Era. And yeah, the girl WAS semi-cute (if you had the eye for it).

Video Editing was mixing and mashing trailers for the first 3 Twilight films to make the trailer for the fourth film. Twilight is gay and they removed all music, taking “Video” Editing a bit too seriously.Rohan-Swayam said everyone else was overdoing effects and making it tacky, so they might win. Malik lost in the Burnout round of Gaming. The finals were between MSM and DPS, Rohini — SFIV, FIFA10 and NFS Shift on an Xbox. They were sooooooo bad at NFS that half the people (including us) left the hall in boredom.

In a sudden call of hunger, we called up Dominoes and got a pizza delivered in the school Reached prize distribution with a full mouth, but I don’t think the Chief Guest even noticed. We won 1st in Quiz, 1st in Video Editing and 2nd in Crossword AND THE OVERALLL!!!! w00t!!! Never thought we’d have won it after Jaata Main Kaun School Mata Jai Kaur School got a podium in around 4 events, but whatever.

On the way back, we wanted to rape Sawhney (he’s kinda fat and cute, so we rape him after every symposium) and make a video out of it, but he wasn’t in the mood.

Well, This was practice.

Tomorrow is the real thing.

Code Wars. We’re in.

Mihir: Yaar Mrinal, aaj free hai?

Me: Haan. kyun?

Mihir: Sorry yaar, thoda short notice ho gaya. Abhi pata chala aaj MINET hai. Chalega?

Me: WHAT THE F**K

And so begins the IT symposium season of 2010.

I owe you some background, so here you go: I’m a Class XII student of DPS Noida, the president of its computer club, eSpice, and well, hot. Schools in Delhi (and elsewhere, for that matter) organize annual IT symposiums comprising events like quiz, photoshopping, music-mixing, movie-making and Stuff. They are pretty fun and I’ve been doing well in the quizzes and the Photoshop events.

I promised myself to go to fewer events this season, mainly because of studies. Missed the ones at Montfort (G@teway), BVB and MSM (Matrix EComm). So, MINET at Mother’s International was to be the first. Back to where I left:

Reached school in an auto and joined by Tushant Jhaat Jha, the super-Maths- programming guy and Mihir Paul a.k.a. BedBoy Head Boy, my quizzing partner and a good gamer as well. Turns out that nobody else can come at such short notice, but Mihir really wants someone to go for Gaming (Gaming and Quiz clash, so he can’t go). We call up Lohit Nagpal, the most awesomest FIFA player and above average CS player

Mihir: Aaj MINET hai. Daud ke school aa. (He lives behind the school)

Lohit: Meri FIITJEE hai aaj.

Mihir: BHAP! DAUD KE AA!!

Lohit succumbs and reaches school and 5 minutes. We take an auto to Mother’s International, and reach 10 minutes after registration closing time. Fortunately, this is India, so after running through the entrance (which incidentally, has a grocery store and what looked like a clinic) we reach the reception desk and they (obviously) relent. Turns out that only 6 schools showed up for the event and we are alternating between cursing the event’s size and praising our chances of actually winning something.

Surprise Event is first up. Its an open event which clashes with nothing else, so everyone from the school (4 in our case) took part. It was a Maths+logic+shit paper which had questions like “How many times does a clock’s hands get superimposed in a day”

Me: WTF. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AN IT SYMPOSIUM, FOR GOD’S SAKE!

Anyway, I lost interest in it, but believed Tushant would crack it, being the Maths guy and all. After the event, Me and Mihir stayed on for the Quiz Prelims while Tushant went for Programming with Lohit. The prelims were a mixed bunch, ranging from acronyms to visual like:

Me: I’ve seen this!!! I can’t remember where. SHIT!

Mihir: Think, dude, think!

Me: I think it started with Alt or something

Mihir: Altair?

Me: Bang On!

And then there were sitters like Turing Machine, Jaron Lanier’s oxymoronic term and total “I don’t have a clue ones” like IRIX, Futzing and full form of VIRUS (For the record any fullform of virus is supposed to be an unofficial backronym, MINET morons) (We wrote Viru Sahastrebuddhe)

After the prelims were wrapped up, we checked out the school canteen the grocery store. Had a few bars and drinks (as in chocolate bars and soft drinks), caught up with  the Vasant Kunj guys i.e. Vivek Nair, Karthick, Aditya Kumar and Co. (who tried to scare us into believing that the upcoming Code Wars at VK would actually be challenging). At one point we stumbled across a hall where a couple of MINET guys were playing FIFA on a Wii. We began talking about something in that hall which led to Aditya Kumar proclaiming that I’m gay. (I’m not)

Aditya: Dude. You are gay.

Me: No, man. Wii is gay.

Pun unintentional.

The results of the three events were out. We didn’t qualify for the second round of Surprise Event (which was, infact, a FIFA match on Wii), nor for programming. (We can’t win an event attended by 6 schools = We suck.) We did qualify for the quiz finals though, unsurprising since we’ve had podium finishes for the last 7 quizzes (excluding TCS IT Wiz Delhi 2009, where instead of me, a classmate won the first prize). The most excruciating mistake we made in the prelims was of the pic above.

Quizmaster: And that pic was Alt..

Me and Mihir: Oh Yeah!

Quizmaster: Alto. Xerox Alto.

Me and Mihir: F**K! Wasn’t it Altair?

Quizmaster: Altair didn’t even have a screen.

Yeah. Whatever. We qualified, so its okay.

The quiz finals began in another room while Lohit went for gaming. We had no one for Group Discussion OR Web Designing OR PPT, so were just hoping to win the quiz.

The finals (6 teams) were good, an infinite bounce of ~30 questions followed by a visual round. I don’t really remember the questions (the event was a week ago), but the team from RKP got into the lead first and maintained it throughout the quiz. We answered some nice ones relating to charging batteries with urine and and bot which ran on H-cells and stuff, alongwith a few sitters like the developer of Bada OS. By the end, us, DPS VK, and DPS-RKP team 2 were on a tie for second (and third) place. The quizmaster gave us 3 questions, whose answers we had write on paper and show it to him. Maximum (correct) answers in minimum time wins.

Q. Which wireless signal uses the 2.45 GHz frequency?

Q. Who said that he was a total as***ole in computers in 10th grade?

Q. How do we better know the Victor Company of Japan?

2.45 GHz reminded me of the radio frequency of 2.4 GHz and I was sure it was either WiFi or WiMax. The second one could either be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. No one else makes such quotes. No clue about the third.

We wrote WiFi, Steve Jobs and Samsung. All wrong. But everyone else’s too.

Now instead of giving us new questions, the FatGuy (quizmaster is a long word) told us to just guess randomly on the 3 questions. Halfway through the guess, he picked up Nair-Karthick’s paper and said that he had one answer correct but he couldn’t “decipher their handwriting the first time” Way to go. They came 2nd. But its still a tie for third place. Fatso asks us to just randomly guess the answer aloud (weirdest quiz ever, I tell you). Me and Mihir are fast and not shy in any manner, so we blurt out, before RKP could even open their mouth:

Me: WiMax!

Fatso: No.

Me: ZigBee!

Fatso: No.

Me: BLUETOOTH!

Fatso: Yo.

iFTW. There wasn’t a trophy for the third place, just a piece of paper certificate, but we managed to smile. Lohit came third as well, so the trip wasn’t as bad as expected.

We were wrong.

After the event, Mihir took an auto for his East Delhi home, while Me-Tushant-Lohit were looking for a way to the nearest Metro station to get back to Noida. We figured we’ll take an auto to the station.

The Heavens burst.

Rain, like you’ve never imagined, was upon us, and we were in the middle of a road, no shelter in sight, screaming for an auto. There were hundreds. And they were all full. We spotted a bridge and took shelter for nearly half-an-hour, shouting for a taxi/auto/bus/whatever, whenever one passed. As fate would have it, all our drivers were on a holiday today and Dads busy somewhere.

35 minutes later.

We finally found an auto and jumped in like a tiger on a deer boarded it.

Me: Sabse paas waale Metro station le chalo

Autowaala: Bhaiyaa. Aaj 2 baje se kal 2 baje tak metro band hai.

Me: FML.

We were short of cash, so taking the auto to Noida wasn’t an option, so we went THE OPPOSITE WAY to Nehru Place , braving through the swamps on foot, and then took a Blueline to Noida, in what could be considered one of the most uncomfortable-st bus journeys of my life

It felt so good to be back in familiar territory.

Minutes later, we saw a Metro pass on the overhead track.

The idea is simple. You have a picture. Its something which you think might be taken from the net. You want to know what it is. Just upload it to TinEye and the engine searches through its database of 1.26 billion images (and growing) to find a similar image. By following up to that image’s context, you can extract information on its subject. Of course, it won’t work for every photo, but does so 80% of the time.

Check it out. Someday, it’ll help you.

P.S. I stumbled across it while solving an online quiz… the type where using any help is allowed and the quizmasters give many connect-the-picture’s-subjects problems thinking that since people can’t search using images as keywords, it’ll be hard. Ha! Hope they don’t read this blog

jDownloader is a free, easy-to-use download manager which does all the dirty stuff of downloading each part one-by-one (or a few at a time) once you provide the links. The links, of course, are easily available all over the net on warez forums.

What makes this program stand apart is all the features crammed into it. Once you copy the links in your browser (don’t even have to paste it), the LinkGrabber module automatically checks if each part is online… so that you don’t have to go through the agony of downloading 99 parts and finding that the last part has been removed. It also has a built in extraction feature which automatically extracts .rar and HJSplit files after downloading. It also compatible with most download sites, the popular ones are certainly covered. Another interesting feature is although Rapidshare and some other sites don’t allow you (ie your IP address) to download more than a few files daily, the reconnection feature can be set up such that it automatically disconnects and reconnects (to obtain a new IP address) after each download. You can also set the password for files which require one so that the download process doesn’t pause in between to ask for it. Files can also be prioritized, those which have higher priority are downloaded first and so on.

The program is open-source and is available on all platforms. You’ll need the Java Runtime Environment to run it.

PS: A temporary bug, as of 6-Oct-09, shows a plugin out-of-date error while downloading from Mediafire through jD. This is supposed to be fixed ASAP but meanwhile you can try replacing your <jDownloader folder> \jd\plugins\hoster\MediafireCom.class with this. (Updating to the next version will remove this patch)

After a fortnight of nagging, my Dad finally a bought a shiny new LCD TV. It’s an LG Jazz 32” TV (don’t comment that it’s too small). It’s a Full HD 1080p panel with 500W PMPO speakers.

I opted for the stand instead of wall-mounting, partly because the mess of wires dangling would really spoil the look of the TV. My sources of video were a Hathway Cable Connection (awesome quality + all features of big DTH services + Rs. 30 per month = ) and an Dell XPS laptop connected via HDMI.

Video Quality:

In general, the picture quality is pretty good. But if you watch SD content (low resolution) , like regular cable you’d appreciate it only if you watch it from a distance. I didn’t conduct any “technical” tests on the set, but i feel the colors are quite strong which, incidentally can be easily adjusted to one’s preference. Watching the only 1080p movie I have – Kung Fu Panda – was an awesome experience. The detail and fineness of the video was breathtaking. Regular DivX movies also look good, but again, you’d like it more on watching from a distance. I played a few games and was just blown away by the sheer richness of the display.

Audio Quality:

This has been advertised as the TV’s USP. The 500W speakers sounded great in the showroom, but better at my home! The set has a 3.1 pseudo-surround speaker system – 2 on the sides, woofer at back and one speaker in the front (unnoticable unless you touch it). The speakers are said to be tuned by Mark Levinson, whoever he is… . The TV boasts of “Clear Voice” technology, which when enabled, amplifies the vocals and reduces the background sounds. But I didn’t quite like it, especially in movies where the score/music would get drowned out. (so I just disabled it )

Other Features:

The TV works great in my opinion. Small niceties like a USB port to play music /pictures /DivX videos are appreciated. The remote feels tactile but sometimes I wish it’d been smaller. The manual has instructions to program the “universal” remote for your STB and DVD player. But I couldn’t get it to work with my Hathway STB, probably because it’s not a HD-STB. (Don’t comment back that India is 3rd-world) Another gripe is that the TV takes too long to start upon pressing the power button, but that can be overlooked. All in all, this gets a Thumbs Up from me!

I tried it out and its amazing!!!! Although the memory consumption is on the higher side (~50 MB on idle), it just has to be experienced atleast once. It transforms your boring old desktop into a “BumpTop” where all files, sticky notes, photo frames etc. behave like physical objects and can be moved around, put in a pile, hung onto “walls” and so on…. all mimicking an actual desk.

In the end, it may be a weekend-ware (software which is fun for 2 days, then gets boring and you uninstall it), but the concept deserves applause.

 

Asus P320 is a great device. It’s got a great 2.6” touchscreen, pretty good audio capabilities, GPS, Wi-Fi and the Windows Mobile platform for just 9000 Rupees. With the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, it is natural for owners to upgrade, but unfortunately the new OS is officialy available only for new phones. But of course, that’s just “official”. To get Windows Mobile 6.5 on your P320, follow these steps:

1. Backup all your contacts, messages etc. using PIM Backup or similar software.
2. If you haven’t already download the latest Asus 4.15 ROM. Follow the instruction enclosed with the file to install it.
3. Download Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM (I’m using hdubli’s 21234 ROM).
4. Copy it to your memory card (make sure you have deleted the 4.15 ROM installer).
5. Hold down the Volume Down key and poke the reset button on the bottom with the stylus.
6. Continue holding the key until the screen shows writing percentage.
7. After the ROM is written, follow on-screen instructions to calibrate the screen and set date/time. SMS fixes etc. will then be installed automatically.
8. Voila! You’re on WM6.5!!!

Optional, But highly recommended:
1. Enable ClearType from Settings -> System -> Screen.
2. Download some plugins and customizers for the new Home screen (also called cHome or Titanium).
3. The ROM doesn’t include Java. If you use it, download it here.
4. Get a skin for the dialer. It looks awful.

1. Download the Borland C++ 5.5 Compiler and install it. (UPDATE: Try my mirror link if you get stuck up in the sign-up process.)

2. Download Relo IDE and install it. During installation, it will ask you for the path to the compiler (usually C:\Borland\BCC55\Bin\bcc32.exe)

3. After installation, open Relo, go to Tools —> Options –> Project and check “Add compiler inc/lib directory”

4. That’s it!! You’re set!! Click on the arrow beside the new file icon and select C++ to create a new file

UPDATE: If you face any compiler-related problems, make sure your Tools –> Options—> Project window and the subsequent “Edit Compiler” window match the ones shown below.

First of all, download Kext Helper which makes installing kexts (drivers in Win-speak) a breeze.

Shutdown doesn’t work properly. You have to press and hold the power key for 8 seconds for complete shutdown

Bluetooth works out of the box (i.e. no extra drivers are needed)

Webcam works out of the box (i.e. no extra drivers are needed)

Dell’s Wireless Card works out of the box (i.e. no extra drivers are needed)

LAN and Intel ‘s Wi-Fi card have no working drivers as of now

Audio –  
Download AppleHDA.kext and HDAEnabler.kext. Install them using Kext Helper. Now drag the AppleAzalia.kext present in /System/Library/Extensions to the Trash. Now repair permissions with the disk utility (click on top right Spotlight icon to search for it). Reboot.

Graphics work fine if you selected the drivers in customization. But to enable some cool whiz-bang effects which come under the banner of “Quartz Extreme”, do the following -

1. Launch Terminal (search for it from Spotlight)
2. Type in -

sudo nano /System/Library/Extensions/NVinject.kext/Contents/Info.plist (there’s a space after sudo and after nano)

3. Change the IOProbeScore value to 0. Save with Ctrl + O
4. Exit the editor with Ctrl + X
5. Type in sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions
6. Reboot after a minute

Memory Card reader -

Download the SD Card Reader Pack and install the two files using Kext Helper. Reboot to save changes.

Fingerprint Reader -

Download the official software by UPEK (maker of fingerprint reader)

1. Download the Mac OS X DVD (Get it off a torrent site). I’ll be using the iAtkos 5i distribution. Burn it to a disc (Windows may show the size as ~542 KB, don’t worry) and boot from it. (Press F12 on startup and select CD/DVD Drive)

2. Click Continue on the first screen. Then when the menu bar comes up on the top, got to Utilities -> Disk Utility

3. Click on the new partition (most probably disk0s2, check the size) and click on Erase to make it ready for installation

4. Close the disk utility (top-left red button) and Click Continue. Select the just erased partition as the destination and continue

5. On the Install Summary screen, DO NOT CLICK INSTALL. Click on Customize.

6. Now what options you choose depends on you configuration, but for most M1330s, the following should work:

iAtkos Main System
Chameleon Bootloader
AppleDecrypt
EFI Air SMBIOS
9.2.0 ToH Kernel
x86 ACPI
Disabler.kext
nVidia Laptop driver (select the GMA b if you opted for integrated graphics)
Intel AHCI SATA
Speedstep a
Laptop Battery
NTFS-3g (used to access Windows partition from Mac OS)

7. Click Done and then Install. The installer will check the DVD for consistency (you can skip it if you like) and then install Mac OS. Installation took just 10 minutes on my system.

8. On the Install Succeeded screen, before the timer reaches zero, fire up Disk Utility again

9. Click on the Mac OS partition and click on "Repair Disk Permissions". Then close Disk Utility and let the laptop reboot

10. Fill up the first run dialogs like time zone, create account etc. Make sure you set a password for your account (not just for security but also to prevent some upcoming commands from becoming unresponsive). If all goes well, you’ll now land up on the Mac OS desktop!!!!

11. But wait, we still have to set up the dual boot. The system boots up into Mac OS by default and to boot into Vista, you have to press any key on the boot prompt and then select Vista. Now this method isn’t very cool nor neat.

12. So we’ll set things up so that the power button boots into Vista and the "Media Direct" button (the one with the home logo) boots up into Mac OS. To do so, pop in the Media Direct reinstallation DVD that came with your system and type this in the command prompt:

D:\dellkit\rmbr.exe DELL 1 2

where D: is your DVD Drive, 1 is the partition no. of Vista and 2 is the partition no. of Mac OS

13. That’s it!!! You’re done!!!