Free

The word used as the title here is a highly abused word is what I personally feel. There are a lot of ways in which it is used. Interestingly, every meaning that I know of the word free has a very interesting meaning. As I just said, all the types of “free”s are highly abused by people during talking. The word free, when searched for on wikipedia, gives a page asking what type of “free” am I looking for. The options given over there are broadly classified into:

Computer Science
Intellectual Property
Literature
Mathematics
Philosophy
Popular Music
Public Services
Other

This is much much much more than what I had expected, but then it seems that my experience with the word “free” is very limited, and there is much more that I need to learn. From what I know, the various uses of “free” are:

Free as in no cost price:
This is every marketing person’s favorite type of free. It is the thing which draws crowd, which sells other stuff, and is very powerful and attractive. I am guessing most people use free in this sense. It is the most searched for word on www.google.com, or any other search engine, is what I am guessing.

Free NOT as in free beer:
The title is self-explanatory. Any guy who is even minutely “Open” minded, will guess that this free refers to the “free” of the Free Software Foundation. This is another wildly abused free, all over the Open Source and Free Software community. It is used and explained in every instance where anything related to FSF is mentioned.

Free as in freedom:
This is the philosophical take on the issue. It is also a very talked about free, in history, civics and god knows what other places. The only thing that I think of when I hear freedom is the lyrics:

With Silence comes Peace
With Peace comes Freedom
With Freedom comes Silence

-Illusion and Dreams, Poets of the Fall

Somehow though, today when I saw the word freedom, that is not the first thing that crossed my mind. I was afraid when I heard the word. Its been a long time since preparation for QUARK ‘08 began. I realized that I have never had freedom as such during the whole time. Although it has been the best time I have had in college so far, I still think that freedom was one thing I was denied, due to the overbusy state I was in constantly.
As I sit here at my comp typing away leisurely, thinking about life after 2 days, when the tests are over, and finally I am left in the “post-QUARK” trauma, I realize that its gonna be hard.

As I had mentioned in my earlier post, doing such stuff has completely blocked any chance of my social life improving, no wait, its not even kept the same, its decaying slowly. As some sort of compensation to the whole situation, I guess I had gotten involved in this to a point that it was my social life. Its funny though. Its all over, and now the weird time starts.

20/2/2008 2100hrs:
[Im having maggi at Nescafe, and my Chief comes and happens to sit at my table]
Me: Hey
Chief: Hey
Me: So….., wassup?
Chief: nm, exams going on…
Me: [trying to do small talk]Oh….. what paper tomorrow?
Chief: Ah… Programming Languages, I have freaking 80% of this book tomorrow
Me: Be happy uve got only one paper…, I have 2, and im still in EEE 2nd year
Chief: [sudden spurt of enthusiasm in voice] Chal chuck that, tell me what have you thought of the magazine idea?
Me: [relieved, and totally into the convo now] We are going ahead with it, itll definitely help QUARK ‘09 in a big way
…and blah blah blah…

Its still weird to think that it is all over. I will be writing about my team, and its special members in the near future, as I am now officially “free”, it will be sooner than the average gap I have between posts.

PS: I had once in the past tried to write down what all I have learned from QUARK when it was 45 days away. Now that it has been 12 days past it, I realize that it is quite futile to do so. I believe www.wordpress.com will run out of space if I get down to writing what QUARK, and what the Organizing Committee have taught me.

Today

0900 hrs [or sometime then]:

1 New Message
From: Sidey
“Movie at 1130. We are going to Vaishali at 1000. Are you coming there?”

A few seconds later:

I wake up, look at the message, curse people for disturbing my sleep, curse people for being addicted to Vaishali, sleep of once again.

1125 hours:

“Ill pick you up in front of Vaishali in 2 mins. Be ready” – Me to Alekar

1130 hours:

In front of Vaishali. 2 kms to go. Shit.

1140 hours:

“Ill pay the parking guy, you get in”

1142 hours:

We see the certificate of the movie ‘Taare Zameen Par’ and I exhale in relief.

Halfway Through the fist half:

me: “I hate this movie”
Alekar[sitting on right]: “Why, its good. I mean, the way they have…”
me: “Its not about that, I dont hate it for that, but I do hate it”
Sidey[sitting on left]: “You hate THIS movie?? Are you crazy?”
me: “Will you two idiots listen to me for once?”
Alekar and Sidey: “Yeah go on”
me: “I hate this movie because I feel people are shouting at me continuously. Every two seconds I twitch when I hear my name taken in scolding, or in some angry tone.”
Alekar and Sidey: “:|” [rather the expression equivalent to that]

1420 hrs:

me: “How did you people find the movie?”
Bov: “Damn Good, did you check out the guy in class who is like Bhutkar?”
Sidey: “Amazing Movie. Liked it a lot”
Alekar: “Nice movie, although I feel the first half was a bit too long. Any longer, and I wouldve left. I was troubled from the core because of it.(phrase used – atmic tras) I was reminded of Vincent’s in the first half”
Bov, Sidey and Me: (rofl)

1435 hours:

Sidey: “Alekar what the hell are you doing, stop destroying the tissue papers”
me: “Shhh… sidey, don’t do that, such kids are supposed to be encouraged. Let him spread his wings and fly. Go on Alekar, do you want more tissue paper.”
Alekar: “stfu pinda, I was just trying to make candy wrapper out of the tissue paper.”
Bov, Sidey, me: (rofl, again)

Conclusions that can be drawn:

• Never ever watch a movie in which the name of the main character is the same as your own name. It destroys the movie.
• Specially so, when the main character in the movie is mauled like crazy [verbally]
• It is worth going to any movie, as long as you have Alekar with you.
• It is our moral responsibility to take part in QUARK ‘08. [www.bits-quark.org]

PS: For those who cannot relate to this post, [im guessing a big percentage of my readership] im really sorry, but I had to write this somewhere, or I wouldve forgotten this memorable day.

Life, The Universe and Everything

Life:
Since I have been a kid, my parents have told me that I am a Hindu by religion. So, I just checked up what life means to a Hindu [cited from Wikipedia]

The purusharthas are the canonical four ends or aims of human life. These goals are, from lowest to highest importance:

• Kāma (sensual pleasure or love)
• Artha (wealth)
• Dharma (righteousness or morality)
• Moksha (liberation from the cycle of reincarnation)

My aims in life, although not clearly defined, are not close to what this reads like when you read it for the first time. If I were told to write what I feel the meaning of life is, I would write something more like this:

It is something that we understand when it is over, which then has lost all of its relevance.

Now, I sometimes do also feel that it is the time we spend in Death’s waiting room, and just like any other waiting room, its upto us to make ourselves enjoy our stay. Whether that means talking to someone else in that room, reading a magazine, a newspaper, listening to music or thinking what will happen once the wait is over, is totally upto us.
Most people who know me, that is who read this blog, know that I am incapable of thinking so deep, and that I am a very shallow person. So for them:

Basically life means nothing but accomplishment for me. This need not be materialistic or even something I can talk about. It can be as simple as feeling nice about doing something stupid.

The Universe:

The broadest definition of the universe is found in De divisione naturae by the medieval philosopher Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who defined it as simply everything: everything that exists and everything that does not exist. Time is not considered in Eriugena’s definition; thus, his definition includes everything that exists, has existed and will exist, as well as everything that does not exist, has never existed and will never exist.

[Source - Wikipedia]

So now two things in my title are merging to one? Weird eh?
Even I did not expect this to happen. I thought the Universe had something else as a meaning than everything. Everything is just plain everything. A bit disappointing yes, but its cool. I guess we all can live with the fact that the title to this post is a bit misleading. Well, for me the Universe does not really mean all this, and for me, the two things are different, so I have kept them separate in the title.

The Universe is the set of all things that I know, be it living or non-living. The Universe happens to be a huge set. So I normally work with a set called “Friends” for saving memory in my head.[*non-living things can be friends]

Everything is fortunately simple enough, even in my life, it still means every darned thing.

Before I forget, I should complete the formalities and wish anyone who is reading a warm and wonderfully happy New Year. May you all enjoy 2008 to the fullest. Resolution Ideas for all readers:
“I will Participate in QUARK ‘08“

[I know this post is quite random. Anybody who guesses the cause and effect relation associated with this post gets a prize from me. Also, references to this post might be made in the future, when I want to leave something open ended, and basically confuse people]

Quark ‘08

The one thing that has gotten me high for the past few months. The day I saw the notice saying that I was selected to be in the Organizing Committee to today, lots of changes have taken place in my outlook towards it. There are a lot of things that I have learned from it. I learned:
How work is supposed to flow.
How Organizations work.
How people have issues regarding work [most of the issues being "i dont want to" types].
How greedy people are for certificates.
How to get people to work for you.
How I was pathetic at all these things.
How busy can a person get.
How one can still find time for “social” activity.
How CGPA gets screwed up when you do that.
How people’s roles get decided naturally.
How important is it to wear shirts (and full pants too, both being at the same time).
How it gives an unnecessarily “important” feeling.
How much is music necessary in life.
How to design websites in AJAX.
How to design websites using DHTML.
How to give kick ass presentations.
How management has killed my projects.
How, once blogging is hit, is very hard to start again.
How high can you get.
Thats about it, I guess. Well, all I can say is that there are still 45 days to go for Quark ‘08. I hope I learn a few more things from it. There are also some things that I did not learn, still:
How to study without feeling so at all.
How to prioritize.(In general)
How to be a good student (something I was sent to college to do).
How to delegate and trust.
How to ask girls out, successfully.
How to balance everything.
These are the things I haven’t yet learned, with respect to the things I have. Otherwise, the page would run out of space if I list everything. But its cool, im still just 19 years old. So, lets just hope that I do learn some of this stuff in time. I hope Quark teaches me this.

Also, in a Marketing attempt:
Official website: www.bits-quark.org
[Kindly do check it out]