[Sticky]: For newcomers

Hello and welcome to Care to take a look? As newcomers and blog-hoppers might find navigation to topics they want to read a little difficult, I have created this page so that new readers can browse through the posts and jump to the category they want to read.

‘Crick’ De India

Hello readers! This time I want to talk about something that has been plaguing my thoughts for a long time now. Wonder what it is? Before I tell you about that, let me ask you all question. How many of you have heard the names Dhyan Chand, Balbir Singh and Dhanraj Pillai before? Many of you might answer that you have heard the last of the three names I mentioned. And even that is because the name appeared recently in the papers. No, it was not in the crime section or the politics section. It was in fact under sports.

And the three people I have mentioned are actually former players of the Indian Men’s Hockey team. They created history in a game which is supposed to be a country’s national game, but which is ignored by 90% of the country’s own population. The country I am talking about, as is obvious, is none other than glorious India. All this ignorance is because of a game called Cricket. I personally hate cricket. Just because of the publicity it gets. I feel it doesn’t deserve all this popularity it is gaining. In fact, the game gets so much publicity by the media that it has entirely eclipsed all other games and sports.

I wanted to write about this since a very long time. And now I am taking the initiative to put it into words. But before I wrote this article, I wanted to make sure how much other games have suffered. What better place to start than Wikipedia? And so I began with our national game, Hockey. Field Hockey to be exact. Did anyone know that the Indian Hockey Team remained unbeaten champions for six years in a row in the Olympics? And it has not even finished in the podium after 1980(Olympics)? This doesn’t end here. The same condition exists even in the World Cup. The statistics were disturbing. You can find out more about them here.

Courtesy: http://pinastro.wordpress.com/

One good thing is that Tennis is gaining more popularity and so is Formula One racing. It is high time that the people realized the tricks the media is playing on them and they start thinking for themselves. Having said that, as a closing note I would like to dedicate a poem which I wrote to the Indian Hockey team and the various other sports that have lost their value in India because of Cricket.

How fare thee Indian?
Do you remember me?
Or are you caught up in the tricks the media plays?
Forget me not oh diversified media; for I sway to the tunes that you play.
Steeping the people in ignorance and misinformation,
Is the most reliable source of the entire nation.
Why, oh why do you choose to obliterate;
what you claim is not worth to iterate?
Wake up, oh ignorant Indian!
For the time is nigh that you think like one.

I sign off today hoping that this small post which contains long suppressed emotions of a true Indian makes a change in at least ten others. Proud to be an Indian, Pavan a.k.a AnniYan.

Lalbagh Express

Hello everyone! Here I am again; back after another long break. I want to take this opportunity to enlighten you all with how enjoyable a boring train journey in the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun could get. Yup, you read it right. The things I mentioned here are actually the contents of a perfect recipe for ultimate boredom. Now let me tell you about the scenario in detail. It was a hot summer afternoon; my mother and I were to catch a train to return to Bangalore. After we got onto the train and got settled into our seats, I started to chat with my mom. Nothing special, just some small talk to pass the time. But after sometime, it was starting to get boring. So both of us realized it and stopped. My mom went to sleep in the sitting posture itself.

I wouldn’t blame her. We had had two very tiresome days prior to our journey. This was the time I really started to regret not buying a book at the small book stall in the railway station. Then I started thinking. The seat to my right was a window seat. But it was empty for the time being. Apparently he had booked for the ticket from some small town on the way where the train made a brief stop. I sat in that seat and started looking out the window. Now me being the day-dreamer I am, started to watch the cloud formations. And believe me when I say it; one of the patterns looked exactly like a mermaid. You know, like the cartoon The Little Mermaid in which they show you some sexy mermaids. I sometimes wished that they had a lower body that was human(you can keep guessing why ). But that was when I was interested more in cartoons and the female anatomy than the creativity part.

Courtesy: Flickr.com

So there I was, dreaming away and imagining myself some pretty good fantasies(now I won’t say what kind. ) when this guy whose seat I was sitting in walked in on my wonderfully landscaped dream. I cursed him under my breath and moved over to my seat. My mom had woken up by now and was reading a Tamil book. A pity I don’t know how to read Tamil fluently, otherwise I could have borrowed the book. But I had far bigger things in store for me. I couldn’t let a simple thing like boredom get the better of me. So I turned to my left to see a lady in her late 20’s sitting with her 4 or so year old daughter next to me. The kid was actually throwing a tantrum that she wanted to sit with her father. The father actually looked so tired that I thought he would drop down unconscious if he didn’t get some sleep.

Now the mom understood this and tried her best to keep her daughter with herself. I actually pitied the woman, because the kid was actually pulling her mom’s hair with quite a good amount of force. That was when I realized that the lady could use a hand. I tried to distract the girl by smiling at her. She quieted down all of a sudden. I bet she thought I was some pedophile Whatever it was, the kid at least let go of her mom’s hair and mellowed down.

This was when I started looking at all my fellow-travelers . There were all kinds of people. The I am ok with anything kind of people (me and my mom), the family to which the lady and the girl belonged to, the show-offs/wannabe’s who think the world is too shoddy for them; and then there were the middle-aged couple who were trying to make small talk with their fellow-travelers. I spent the rest of the time talking with them and the lady. I was also occasionally trying my best to annoy the wannabe sitting next to me by talking so loudly that he could hear me over the loud music playing on his headphones. The rest of the journey went by pretty much the same way.

And that was when I got the idea that I should write a post about that journey. And so, here I am narrating to you in the best possible way I could; the journey from Chennai to Bangalore in Lalbagh Express. I want to make a note here. I got the initiative to turn a most boring thing like a train journey into totally exciting adventure by thinking of Dinesh’s blog. I learned that lesson and wish that other people who read this article learn it too. Saying that, I promise you that I will be writing new posts without giving too much of an interval between them. Signing off, Pavan a.k.a AnniYan.

HaSaRd

Hello folks! How have you been? You might be wondering what the title of this post means. Most of you would even think its a typo. Don’t say you didn’t think so! Anyway, for the geniuses who know what it means, I guess I wouldn’t need to explain. But for us other idiots(yes, even I didn’t know what it meant before searching for a title to write this post ), Hasard in French, means Random. Cool title huh?

Random - by Pavan

Anyway, the main reason I wrote this post was to show the world what it meant to be completely random. To be completely un-scheduled. Yes, it is a wonderful feeling. Starting past Wednesday, I have carried myself in a completely random manner. First there was an unplanned 20 Km drive on my bike to my friend’s place, just because I was bored to death. And the next day, I went in the opposite direction. But I didn’t cover that much distance as I did the previous day. It was absolutely exhilarating.

On Friday evening, my parents and I were supposed to catch a train to leave to my cousin’s engagement. But the whole day, I was acting like nothing at all had been planned. And in the last half hour, I did my packing and left with my parents. The train journey was the most horrible one in my entire life. The quality of the seats was SO good, that I almost puked when I saw it. No, really. I have traveled in General compartment, which doesn’t require prior reservations. But even that was better than this particular journey.

The following couple of days went by in a blur where I was helping with the errands and chores for the function. The return journey was comparatively better. And so, I was in Bangalore eventually. Ah! Home sweet home! I did whatever I felt like doing the past couple of days too. And there ends my Random Week.

Now that I have recounted whatever I went through, I would like to share a thought with you guys. Take some time off and do something unplanned. Give yourself a break from the monotonous lifestyle. Have fun and carry on. And oh! The most important point. DO NOT get carried away and get stuck in the randomness. It is just a break. You have to continue with your life without the randomness. But once in a while is a good thing. It means you are still there and not drowned out in the machine-like world that we nowadays have. Signing off and continuing with other non-random things, Pavan a.k.a Anniyan.

A.I.-nalysis

Today morning, I read Su’s post on a chatter bot. You can find out more about chat-bots, or chatter bots here. What I always do when I find a chatter-bot, is that I want to confuse it. Even while abiding by the conditions one needs to follow when talking to a bot. The conversation was something enlightening. I will post the whole conversation between me and MyBot. And I will also list out what I found out, and where. This is just my way of proving we are better than the machines. I know I am nothing but a stupid critic who can’t come up with something similar. But, I guess I have more fun in pointing out the faults of technology. Here goes.

MyBot says:

Welcome to the world of artificial intelligence. Are you a registered user?

Pavan says:

Apparently not.

MyBot says:

In this case, I assume you came here for your own MyBot, right?

This is the answer it is supposed to give if the answer resembles a no.

Emote-ed

Hi to you all! I am back here after a very long gap. Thanks to SU, I felt utterly guilty to have brought my blog to near extinction. That has driven me to write a post just like the wind does, the clouds. Now enough with the chit chat. On to the real deal. Or should I say, “Reel deal”? I used the quotes for a reason. Did you see the most visible title of this post? Of course you have.

Anyway, has anyone of you felt that someone is hiding their emotions? Most people would answer yes to this question. Now why would people want to hide their emotions? Aren’t we the ones who want to be more expressive? Ok. I know I am asking too many questions and not giving any answers. So here goes. People hide their emotions mostly because of an insecure feeling. This is a topic that will take up another whole post if I start talking about it. So to conserve space and to save all of you from much irritation, I won’t discuss it now. But one thing is very confusing. People who don’t feel insecure also hide their emotions from many people. Why is this done?

The answer is simple. If we were to keep ourselves transparent to the world, we would naught but be thought to be too expressive. If anyone asks me why and from whom they should hide their emotions from, I would tell them two things. The answer to the why could be because you don’t care what a person thinks of you. Another reason would be because you want yourself to be unpredictable by another person. There are many advantages as well as disadvantages to the second reason, which I would do better than to mention now.

So moving on to the second question. Whom should I hide my emotions from? This question can be a little difficult to answer. The simplest answer is that you feel things would be better off without letting the other person know what you feel about something. An example would be your boss. You don’t want him/her to know what you feel about something. That could put you or your accomplices in some cases, in a huge mess. An emotion well hidden from the right person is the right answer to a huge problem. Who else should I hide it from? Definitely not from people you care about or people that care about you. I think that statement was pretty clear and needs no more explaining.

Finally, I want to say that we need to think twice before we express our emotions anywhere. The wrong emotion at the wrong place could wreak unforeseen havoc throughout any sane man/woman’s mind. I am browsing through this topic without going into it too deep for the reason that all that what I have said in this post are things what I feel. If anyone feels otherwise, this blog is always open to your feedback. And finally, its good to be back. Signing off, Pavan a.k.a Anniyan.

PS: This is the 50th post on Care To Take A Look? This is a huge milestone for me as I am also only 4 comments away from the 1000 mark. I thank all of you who took their time to go through this blog and leave your valuable comments in it.

Blog Dead, Author Alive?

First : Check who the author of this post is!

Well, this phenomenon is not new at all. It is just that its called as  Writer’s Block elsewhere! I suffered it a couple of times and my friend is in a similar tryst now, I guess. Whatever it be, here I am, setting out to bring his blog back from temporary death through this (not-so) dead post.

Coming to the crux of the issue, many reasons are possible, to which this issue is attributable. But the bottom-line is : Your Blog is DEAD. At least, temporarily. It is a sad state of blogging affairs and can cause a guilt pang in your heart when you think of it sometimes.

Ever since I started Blogging, my blog has been one of my priced possession. I cannot fathom how much boredom would have eaten into me had I not started to blog. The time was apt and the situations demanded from me, some sort of brain-flushing. That said, everything was apparently bright because of the excitement in the air about the new hobby I’m gonna take up. I’m sure many of us would have felt similar things as well. Right?

Generally, after months into the making of a good name and fame to your blog, the clog appears. Either you will feel it difficult to manage work and blog together, Or its like you’re not interested anymore to blurt out things to the virtual world, Or your brain refuses to search for new ideas to post. Whatever the case is,  It is a matter of time before the real truth comes out. For the greater good of the blogging community,  I wish it is just a temporary phase and doesn’t result in a blogger deleting his blog. (Yes! I know a person who did that!)

To fight it, we can form fraternities or blogging communities and discuss ideas for blogging. But everything is futile unless the writer can put his heart into writing his stuff. So, we can say briefly that “There is no Writer’s Block where there is a true Writer’s Heart!”

Well folks, All the best for all the blogging days. Hope you enjoy your life with a true Writer’s Heart!

Prioritize your needs.

Hello readers! How have you all been? I am sorry to have disappointed you all by bringing my blog close to death. I have had reasons for that. Those are left to me to ponder over anyways. I have been isolated from the blogosphere for about 1 month. Maybe even more. But now, here I am. And as always, bloggers are required to write a come-back post. And so, I write.

The past month has been very special to me in all aspects. From remarkably happy moments to unbelievably sad moments. Much has happened in this short interval. Most significant of all would be that I found very good friends in my college since I joined it. That would be 4 years. These friends are also my team-mates for a project we are building for our college. Since I was not blogging or roaming the streets uselessly, I had some time to think.

In that time, I thought about my priorities in life. There were many. And many were not organised properly. Realization dawned upon me when my dad was due for retirement. He has retired by the way, on the 31st of January 2009. So there I was, analyzing my priorities. I sorted them out and found everything very clear from then on. But only sorting out my priorities were not enough. Working to achieve them mattered very much too.

And all that thinking and analyzing and what not, worked out pretty well when we gave our project demo on Feb 9th. The response was something which none of us had expected. The Vice-Principal was very impressed by our work and wanted us to continue and finish what we have started. Once that was over I was in Utopia. All this was the result of recognising and organising priorities.

And now for the conclusion. The reason for me to write this post is that people should do the same as what I did in order to achieve some things in life. The happiness obtained by achieving them entirely depends on how well you have organised them worked for them. Never give money a higher priority in life. There are many things that money can’t buy. And one of them is happiness. Signing off by saying, “KUDOS to our team(Me, Abhilash, Shubha, Shravya and Manasa) and our project guide(Mr. Nandishwar)!”

LAMP: For the un-familiar user

Two days back, I was searching for a good LAMP package on the ever-expanding internet. But I was amazed to find that there was no unified package where one could do everything in just a single step like the MAMP and WAMP version. People reading this topic will know what I am talking about. But for others, I am referring to the open-source package called MAMP, LAMP or WAMP depending on the platform. The full for is given by – Mac/Linux/Windows Apache MySQL and PHP/Perl/Python(depending on the requirement). As many of you can recognize, it is a web development package. I installed the LAMP package including PHPmyadmin by following one of the many tutorials available. The best one according to me, is this one. It describes the process to install LAMP and configure it by providing the right commands. But it still made the process a little long. No one would want to do it the long way right?

That is the reason that was given to me by Abhilash, one of my close friends. When I asked him if something could be done about it, He gave me a wonderful idea of compiling all thos commands into one easy shell script. You can find this file here. It is in the “.doc” format. But it should work fine as any other shell script if you use it with the sh command. Once you finish downloading the file, go to your “terminal” and change to the directory where you downloaded this file. Once there, type out the following command and follow the instructions.

$ sh lamp.doc

That will do almost everything you need to. The only thing left is the creation of files based on your requirement. Once this step is done, place all the files which you create under the directory : /var/www. Make sure you give suitable permissions to the files. Otherwise they might not work. If someone does not understand any part of what I have said above, PLEASE DO NOT FIDDLE WITH IT! Only a person looking for simple LAMP installation should carry out this process.

Finally, this package includes Apache 2, MySQL, and PHP 5. Additionally, it includes Phpmyadmin also. You can access you localhost by typing localhost in your browser’s address bar. And phpmyadmin can be accessed by typing localhost/phpmyadmin in the browser’s address bar. Enjoy, fellow developers. Credit for the idea goes to my friend G.Abhilash. Signing off, Pavan a.k.a Anniyan.

Download lamp.doc

Disclaimer: This was tested and run on an Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit PC. This is in no way related to Windows. So please DO NOT blame me if you can’t read.

GOD – Mythology or reality?

It has been a very tiring week for me up until yesterday when I finished my Chemistry examination. I am satisfied by my performance and am confident that I will pass. Now coming to the the title. That is the question on most of the people’s minds. I wanted to write this post as an answer to SU’s post. While mentioning Atheism and Theism, every religion wants to prove only that god exists. And if questioned what/who is GOD, they quarrel among themselves saying that their perception of GOD is better than the rest. Now according to me, that is like saying, “My imaginary friend is better than yours.” Now let me make something clear before moving on to the depth of the topic.

I am an Atheist!

Now that I have expressed my point of view about this topic, it would be a little better for you to understand my views even if you don’t agree with or respect them. Now coming to the topic. People whom I know might know how I converted to an Atheist at heart. But people who don’t usually ask two questions with respect to religion.

1. What religion do you believe in? – None. I don’t believe that there is some “power” controlling the workings of the universe. In short, I am an Atheist.
2. You weren’t born an Atheist right? What were you before you converted? – A Hindu Brahmin.(I haven’t converted legally though. Just for the sake of my loved ones.) I don’t really know even if that matters. That is because I think there is only differentiation based on species. Not on something that doesn’t even exist.

I want to accept one fact though. I did convert to Atheism very recently. Not because my troubles were too many or because I followed what another person said. I have had experience with the latter with reference to my close friend Abhilash. My mother asked me whether he told me something that made me disbelieve in GOD. The answer is NO. The first reason for my answer is that he is not someone who forces himself upon someone else. Secondly, I don’t let other people think on my behalf.

There were a series of realizations following which I accepted the truth that there is nothing governing over the goings on of the universe. I will be writing about many such realizations. So if anyone feels that this post is not worth reading further, I suggest you stop now. Moving on, there were four situations which thankfully led me to the truth. They are also inter-connected.

Praying for something all my life:

Now this might sound a lot like I thought this way only because I didn’t get what I prayed for. But I assure you it is not so. I had prayed whole heartedly to “GOD” that I somehow PASS in the examination. But that did not happen. Before you come to conclusions, I want to say that the amount of work and my paper presentation were not up to the mark. I know this because I applied for the photocopy of my answer script and analyzed it. First Realization – It was entirely dependent on me. I cannot blame anyone. To this, many of you will reply, “Only prayer will not lead you anywhere. You need to work accordingly.” To that I reply, “Even if you don’t pray, the amount of work you put in will lead you somewhere.” This is because there is no entity to listen to whatever you say to yourself.

The discussion I had with my friend Abhilash:

Now don’t be misled into thinking that he altered my mindset. I assure you. He did not. The discussion was about how god was created. He produced a very funny explanation that GOD was created because of lonely philosophers who did not have anybody to share their feelings with. To avoid this, they created an imaginary friend called GOD and made people believe that the imaginary friend was not so imaginary after all. However, I don’t believe all philosophers were loners. But I stated my view. God was created to explain the vast mysteries that nature had posed in front of us. An example would be the Aurora Borealis. The northern lights phenomenon. They said the “Valkyrie” made a trail of lights when they rode forward in the Norse mythology. And what do we call them now? Think. Realization two – GOD is a fictitious explanation to the unexplainable.

History of religions being region specific :

When I listen to the discourses given by Hindu pandits and the sermons given by the Christian pastors, I observed a pattern. How come there were no temples all over the world if god existed everywhere? And why would the apparent “GOD” in christianity protect only those that believed in him and not other religions? Last I know, Jesus was only the messenger of GOD. Anyway, that is for you Theists to decide. It is not that I do not respect the beliefs of other people. I only wish that all of you be awakened to the facts and not the myths. Realization three – GOD is not who the people claim it to be.

My performance in this semester’s examination:

This is the last situation. This situation did not exactly make me realize anything new. But I can say it played an important role in establishing the fact. This semester, I have performed very well in most of my exams. The ones I did not perform well, I can only say I hadn’t expected it would turn out that way. Which is entirely the fault of my under-preparedness. Here all of you need observe one point. I did not pray or in any other way ask a supreme being to help me. The result is as you see it now. Before I used to blame that “power” for all my mistakes. But now I found there isn’t anything that I can blame it on. Even if I did, it would be like creating a person who doesn’t even exist, in my mind and then blaming him. Final realization – Nothing controls the workings of the universe. All that happens is because of logic. There is nothing more factual than logic. An example to prove that is given in this link. Man was not created by GOD and women most definitely not from the ribs of a man.

That concludes my post on my perception of GOD. I say that the principle of GOD is myth and will always think so. I still put the Tilaka on my forehead just to make my dad, who is a very orthodox person happy. Signing off, an awakened human being, Pavan a.k.a Anniyan.

PS: This post might not convey my exact feelings as the length and the medium also matters. A phrase said in a letter can mean many things when read from different perspectives.

Note to my brother: If you happen to read this post, please don’t mention about it to mom and dad. They would feel bad if they came to know about my views of god.

Do I really know you?

Today morning, I was wondering about not making a post since 3 days. I even thought of posting the uncompleted tag which Manushi gave me a week ago. Then when I thought of having lunch before posting it, I received a SMS on my mobile. It was from my best friend Harsha a.k.a Su. When I read the message, I thought it was some kind of forwarded message. Then I thought maybe something is wrong. But as I replied to him and asked him why, he replied in his usual abnormal self. The contents of the message are as follows.

To what extent do you think you have understood what I am? And to what extent do you think I have understood what you are?

To be frank, I still think something is not right. But anyway, here goes. What I inferred from this SMS is that you don’t have any work and are pissed of studying. So you thought you pop a serious question like this into all the friends of your inner circle and torture us by not letting us concentrate on studying. But I decided that I have to get this off my back before I can resume studying. Or my head would burst. Now we move on to the first question.

To what extent do you think you have understood what I am?

I want to be frank and say that I haven’t understood what exactly you are. That is because you still hide some particular feelings around me, or around anyone else in your friends’ circle for that matter. But I can safely say that I know how you think of most of the things. Let me list out some prominent qualities I observed in you.

• Possessiveness: You are pretty possessive when it comes to certain things. I don’t want to list out the things here. But will happily do when I meet you in person.
• Courage: When it comes to taking a risk, I can confidently expect you to do it.
• Comedian: Yes. I can also say that you are the perfect comedian. You make everyone you are with, laugh. But as all comedians do, you have something that is bugging you which you don’t want to tell out to anyone.
• Brainy: Yes. According to me, you have an above average thinking capacity. I have observed this many times in you. Even though the topic being discussed is not of your interest, you tend to comprehend whatever the person is saying. I am not talking only about our conversations about computer science.
• Attitude: A guy with a very mellow attitude. You can soothe my temper whenever I talk to you. I thank you for that.

There is a whole load of other things too. But this list comprises only of those prominent things which I see. Now coming to the next question.

And to what extent do you think I have understood what you are?

According to me you have understood almost everything about me. You can understand what exactly I have in mind. You have understood my priorities in life. You have understood I lie to you sometimes. But you don’t want to show that to me because you think I will feel bad. On the whole, you are one of the very few people to have understood me to the highest possible extent.

The reason I wrote the answer to your questions here is because I want the whole world to know that I have a friend who understands me. It is a privilege only a select few in the world experience. Thank you Harsha. This post is a testimonial to our friendship.