Saturday, April 30, 2005

Cliff Diving!

Lol. Here is something I can totally relate to. Recommended reading for deciphering the rest of my post. Just that the "cliff" was more than forty feet high, and there were no life jackets. The Slide at Aladin's Water & Amusement Park at Karachi is a little higher that forty feet. Or looks so to me. It all happened to me the first time I decided to peruse the slide. That was back in 97 or 98, and the first time I had been to any such "water" park [wasn't Aladin the first in the city?]. A coupla friends coaxed me to try out the monster slide, and damn, it looked like fun with the people coming "swoosh" and hitting the water, and, instantly, standing up and looking all right. Eyes can see what they are trained to see, and looks are always deceiving. The climb up to the platform is pretty much around as high as five floors. There is also a "ladies" slide, which is on the third floor. You see, for the weak hearted. Seriously, there were caterpillars fluttering in my stomach. Yes... caterpillars! I did consider the ladies slide, but ho-boy, with a bunch of friends?! Machismo at its best is the mockery of common sense. Finally we were on the monster platform. Looking down from there, the whole scene seemed funny. Hundreds of people milling around, in various states of half-nakedness, people resembling little more than colourful dots. And worst, a bunch of people around the parameter of the pool of the monster slide, waiting for their loved ones to hit the water with the utmost superb dive/lunge/whatever, so they could applaud and feel proud. Worst still, there'd be someone waiting for me too. Looking at the flight of stairs, I realize that there is no going back. The trip back is too long, there are an infinite number of stairs, and uncountable people looking up at the platform. Peering intently. Like mocking me. Anyone descending would stick out like a sour thumb and would be an object of ridicule. Damn, the safety regulation authority should order to construct a fire exit or something. A back door, to provide safe exits to sissies. Sadly, no one from the authority had a working genious mind like me. There is a little line for the slides, and me and a friend decide to go next. Go, supress all your fears, whims, anxieties. Life has to be lived to the fullest. This is your moment, grab it, and never look back. I mutter something and jump. The first thing I notice is that the surface of the slide is very dry. I know I have to push in order to get down, since once stuck in between there is no going up. Slowly I build up speed. I grip the partitions just so that I won't topple over. First slide done, landing on second. Still a bit slow, I remember reading a sign that to go fast one has to lean backwards. So I start to lean. Completing the second and landing on the third makes me realize that perhaps I am a little too fast, and my stomach instantly churns over. Damn, how to apply the brakes, how to get slow? My mind is racing fast, too fast even to recover bits from my memory, and I have landed on the fourth. There are only five slides. Time is short, competition is hot. I hit upon the lost fragment and remember to sit up to decrease the force. I try to do that, but too late. My eyes shut automatically, and the water rises up to greet me. Water, is the universal solvent. It has a very soothing nature of its own. As soon as I hit the water, I am in another world. No, literally. My mind lost the connection with the present, and views from my childhood unfold before my eyes. Am I in bliss, is this death, or is it just a dream. Do you know a drowning man sees his entire life before his eyes? I didnt really believe it then, since you can drown in a matter of seconds. But I do believe it now. Almost my entire life whizzed past my eyes, my mind strangely numb and peaceful, finding solace in this void, slowly, merrily. After so many years, I can still see it very vividly. Like I am floating in space, or memories, a feeling I can't describe. Perhaps death is sweeter. But no! The cerebral system kicks into action, sending frenzied messages all across the body. My hands and feet shove and kick erraticly, and my eyes fall open with a pop. There is the greenish liquid all around me, and the sunlight filtering through the water, making it quite pretty indeed [a hindsight]. I sense someone standing besides me, trying to grab me, calling out my name. I make sudden movements to clutch whatever I could get my hands on, and finally I get out of water, pulling on my saviour's arms. Dork, I even manage a smile, like I had pulled of a feat. There is my mom standing, looking concerned. My saviour was my friend, apparently he had a safe dive, or he was experienced. I "cough like an idiot", and tell everyone that I am okay. "Come on! It was all just a gig. Lol, you were concerned? Grow up! I can pull that stunt again, wanna see?" Apparently nobody is interested anymore, and I walk off groggily to a bench. Shaking off cobwebs from my mind, I vow. That was my first ever slide. Wondering? I vowed to put common sense first in all the coming ventures. I never went to the slide again. For all you guys who want to pick on me [and there are quite a few], I never learnt to swim. Perhaps I never shall.

Friday, April 29, 2005

Google... again!!

A reader recently sent me the following insight into the workings of Google: "Generally speaking, there are two types of search engines on the Internet. The first is called the searchable subject index. This kind of search engine searches only the titles and descriptions of sites, and doesn't search individual pages. Yahoo! is a searchable subject index. Then there's the full-text search engine, which uses computerized "spiders" to index millions, sometimes billions, of pages. These pages can be searched by title or content, allowing for much narrower searches than searchable subject index. Google is a full-text search engine." Well, that pretty neatly describes the working of Google. And turns out that this text is lifted straight from O'Reilly's Google Hacks book. Here I credit them, so they wont file a copyright infringement act against me. Which brings me to the question of how anonymous my internet life has become. If they do sue me for copyright infringement, then where'd they find me? Who is me anyway? uXuf is my pseudonym, my friends [online walay] dont even know where I live, who I am, what's my last name, or even whether I am a girl. Goo! There you go. And I might be using a proxy after all. Maybe I am not studying at a university, and all my stories about university life were actually about long lost days. I could be the Governor of Texas for all they know, or the Archbishop of Chicago. Well, who cares! Back to Google, and I am getting increasing hits with the search phrase "google sucks". Well, dont just act like ignorant people. Search around for what makes Google shape their policies this way. And this "google sucks" thing I sense is taking off like a mafia. Recently I landed on someone else's blog [I dont remember whose was it] and he had his own "Google sucks" post, and exactly the same comments that I had on my page [JD and anonymous] were on that page. Sniff, sniff, I smell a conspiracy here. Noone could be that consistent to paste the same comments on different blogs. And then, they aren't paying for their sites to show up in search results. So dude, get off their back. And if you want your site to turn up higher, pay Google! Here is someone who actually is grateful to Google for saving her ass. Pretty intuitive on her part. And finally Google saved someone for reasons other than searching for crappy assignments!

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Of bad GRUBs and nice t-shirts

I messed up my pc again. Was fiddling with the GRUB loader and it puked the Windows boot loader. Now I could only boot into Linux. Ahh, those were days when Windows used to bamboozle the GRUB. Looks like GRUB had its revenge finally.

PS If anybody knows how rootnoverify(hda0, 0) chainloader +1 could work for my Windows XP, please let me know. I have a project pending and I dont wanna format the harddisk! :(

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Just saw this shirt at Threadless. Looks cool, and besides I wanna wear it to university, especially to the Algorithms session. Image hosted by Photobucket.com Guess what's written on it? Ah Munna, Eat Choo!

Am I being naughty? Should I show more respect to my teachers? :P

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Meera - The Pride Of Pakistan

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Much has been said and written in these pages about our girl Meera and her excursions in the Indian Film Industry. Inspired, one of our readers sent me a coupla pictures of what had apparently been her *scenes* in the movie "Zeher". I am just posting the more steamy ones.

On second thoughts, she is a tad sexy. And yeah, you've got no future in Pakistan, Meera. Cheesy movies and equally cheesy dance sequences aren't your forte. Stay in India, and give us some hot news. You'll atleast get the hot dance numbers, like "Saaqi Saaqi" :)

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The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k." Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go. By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "W" by "V". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors; be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil b no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru. English with the Russain accent, Ze Boris!

Sunday, April 17, 2005

YaGooHoo!gle

You'd be thinking, and I thought too, that what the fuck is that Yagoohlelgo (whatever) thing anyway? Turns out to be a fusion of Yahoo! and Google abilities. There is always a debate raging on which search engine is better, and this website brings the biggest two of the engines' results together, stacked side by side. So, if you need the power of two search engines, want diverse results, or just wanna be nasty and compare results, YaGooHoo!gle is the place to be. So what Asgeir S. Nilsen, the brainparent of YaGooHoo!gle has to say: "This site started as an April Fool's post on Slashdot, and the saying was that the fool wasn't even any good. I got a fair amount of hits with people searching for "haha", "funny", "april fool", and "bonesaw". Bonesaw?But then traffic rose. I started receiving feedback. The router crashed (I later found out that the DDoS-logic had kicked in). I've got several offers for hosting the site, and donations have started coming in." Well, Asgeir, thanks for a novel idea. I hope the donations keep pouring in, not to mention that the subscription thing is too much of a hassle, and that you are man enough not to benefit from the works of others. But still its great for people like Extiinct. And JD Guy, you should switch over to Yahoo!

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Google sucks is a fad!

People are really pissed off at the policies of Google, it aiming to be the next Microsoft, it being a giant company with no regards to the wishes and comfort of people. Well, that's what I gather from the feelings of the pissed-off'ers. Like John Daniels said: "I have had my head so far up googles A$$ for so many years I feel like a fool. It is now 2005 and it seems for at least a year google's search results are crap. It is like I have to search longer and longer to find what I am looking for. I own a small business in the US named Excalibur Gate Openers LLC. We manufacture gate openers to automatically open swing gates. The website name is www.excaliburgateopeners.com and the title of the web page is the same. You would think you could type in Excalibur gate openers as a search string and the search engine would bring up www.excaliburgateopeners.com first. All other search engines do except Google! This was my wake up call. GOOD BY FOREVER GOOGLE, YOU SUCK!" My my! Thats one indeed disgruntled customer, and they are a sign of bad business. Though I agree with him, but the page ranking system of Google is a little disoriented. Like here we got a nice little explanation: "Just got hold of the discussion going on regarding Google and its pageranking. Something about page-ranking... Well, Google's page-rank mechanism is partially based on CLICKS from GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS itself. It adds very less to the whole score...or rather, its ignored. Yahoo and Google use the same mechanism. We all know, Google determines site's listing based on its PAGERANK. This is based on these factors: a. Content Keyword Strength (obviously, the site's content counts) b. Cross Linking Website c. Reversal Cross Linking First factor: Sites pointing to you (Cross-linking) It largely depends, on sites POINTING to your website. If the pointing site, is very popular and has a higher ranking, you will get a good score for this. If the site isnt that popular, you will not get a good score - but you will get some. Second factor: Sites pointed by you (reversal cross-linking)Second factor is the list of sites, that YOUR website links to. It has the same scoring mechanism as of the previous one. It's still not this easy and simple. The whole concept is wayyyyy too sophisticated. If you are interested in reading further, visit: http://www.whitelines.nl/html/google-page-rank.html That's about the page-rank. Note that, ranking is not MANUAL in any way. But, you can always have a paid listing, this will obviously pull your site up on the listings. " So that's it, people. Google isn't evil, they're just getting a little misdirected, that's all. Maybe they are thinking of making a few quick bucks, but you can always count on them for their innovative ideas. Just visit their website and look for the links, you'll find many interesting things there. Google people: stop imitating Microsoft.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Stupid Gulab Jamun

Eria: What do you guys like, mithai or ras-gullay? Me: Mithai, ofcourse. But I don't like ras-gullay, Mom and Dad do. Eria: Okay, which one? Me: Gulab Jamun is the best. We were in a mithai (sweet) shop when this conversation took place. And ofcourse, being a Gulab Jamun freak I didnt want to miss the chance of having them, and woh bhi a whole kilo! When I am in a mithai shop I am like a kid, I can take all of the mithais and still wont feel satisfied. So that was the case that day, too. Although I was drooling over Besan kay laddoo (sorr folks I dont know the English version of mithais), I kinda sacrificed them for the old faithful Gulab Jamun. And the result? Seemed like those shithead mithai house people put a whole kilo of sugar instead of Gulab Jamuns, sugar painted brown and made in round lumps. Aargh, I still feel the taste in my throat. Now I know how the diabetic people feel like. Curse them mithai walas!

Monday, April 11, 2005

Softec 2005

Finally I got the time and resources to extract the images from the cellphone. Although there was great public demand (:P) for the pics. Sorry dudes, but the most cherished and prized images are, sadly, deleted. Not that I had to do anything with it, just that they were taking up space :P

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FAST Lahore, the main building. Image hosted by Photobucket.com Main building, side view. Image hosted by Photobucket.com The new building. We were *not* taking the picture of the building here though :P Image hosted by Photobucket.com And the kids corner. This Dexter was way too cool, and I was impressed.

Rest of the images are with me. I'll post them up sometime soon, if they don't invade anybody's privacy.

Picnic Spring 2005

So Hawkes Bay it was! And what else could you think of when you have a coupla hundred people on your hands and only a Sunday? And the beach is always the popular choice for the picnic, and it was so today. Had fun, but the water was waaaay too cold, or maybe I'm ill :( I didnt get to ride the waves much, I was so damn shivering! But overall it was fun, wasnt it?

Friday, April 08, 2005

Cheap Helmets!

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Lahore: Since the law of regulatory helmets for motor-cyclists, one motor-cyclist has done away with a pan in order to get off from the prying Police.

That's funny, really. But then, what if the guy meets an accident, would that pateeli [pan] would provide any protection to him?

Why don't we understand that laws are for the betterment of us!

A bitch would always be a bitch!

Bitchness is in the genes, you couldn't possibly root it out, or subdue it. I thought that she has mended her ways, what with her being all sugary. Guess a little discord goes a long way, especially for girls. That's why women are discouraged from being on an authoritative post, and I think that's pretty fine. Warna how would you possibly justify Bitch getting in the way and feeding BigBitch about all the wrong reasons, and then telling me, "You dont need to worry if you're capable!" Bitch, bitch, bitch! And if it so happens that it messes up with my plans, I promise that you'll have to pay, you faggot.

Thursday, April 07, 2005


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Priceless!


Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Recent Visitors

Its nice to see that my blog fares up well in the searches. I get to encounter various visitors through search terms as varied as "microsoft pakistan softec 2005" [although I dont know the relation and Microsoft wasn't really in force at Softec 2005] to "windows 98 domain server" [beats me again]. I got someone looking for "contact address of Frederick in Pakistan"! Whoa, who is Frederick anyway? And Frederick WHO? You seriously need to learn the effective use of a search engine, pal. Somebody was looking for "Fuck the fucking fucker" also. Pretty inituitive, huh? And the most popular of all is the term "google sucks", and most of the time this search comes from the "Google" search engine itself. Come on, I know Google sucks, but when I posted that I mean about Google, the company, and wasn't talking about the Google search engine. The Google search engine is simply amazing, anything could I say, would be just little to add to the magnanimity. And I am googling most of the time, for apparently useless things, but its amazing the amount of resources that comes up, and you sure find something in it. And Pope John Paul died, he was born in 1920, in Poland. I was just thinking about whether he took part in WW2. Fought against the Nazis, or was against the Jews. Just a thought, maybe I'll google him up too. You can read the Google sucks post here.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Quickie post!

All with four days of chuttiyan (off days), I didnt get time to blog! That's cool, my time is being spent alternatively on sleeping, playing CS and sleeping, playing CS. And that was the infinite loop. I got to know I have got two assignments due. Computer Graphics is on Monday and Network Programming on Tuesday. And I am going to sleep now. God help me with my assignments, I'll see them tomorrow. P.S. I am waiting for the cake.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Blogger sucking again

I dont know, but this is happening since a few days. "There were errors" whenever I try to post something. Where is the redundancy the Google people tout about? I am really much pissed off to write anything, really.

Friday, April 01, 2005

:)

April Fool banaya... baby ko ghussa ayaa!!

When utilities get to fight...


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