I have a huge hierarchy of email folders and I have Inbox. There are different groups/clubs I am attached with. I have email filters which filter emails from these mailing lists and send them to their respective folders. These are the emails which I don’t want to respond to or read immediately. All my work emails and other emails remain in Inbox. And they remain there till I have taken action on them. That may mean just reading them again, or replying back or doing something else. So, basically, at any point of time, my Inbox has emails that are either unread or I haven’t taken action on them.
Now sometimes, I get emails to which I want to respond but I don’t have time/I am lazy. They stay in Inbox. And sometimes they stay there for a month or so. And sometimes when I get back to those emails, I see that there is no point replying to them anymore. Now, I feel bad about that because I usually claim that if you have emailed me, I will reply to it even if I reply late. So, what do you do?

Who comes, who goes
Why, where, nobody knows.
But the corridors,
they itch my nose,
the gap I close.

The desks are full,
the stacks are high,
lo and behold,
its pizza time!

I eat a slice, I fill some more,
why free food, nobody knows
back at work, I wonder still,
but on my cup, Microsoft grows!!

Reminds me of last 2 semesters at IITK. But I guess PhD aspirants working in labs day n’ night might relate to this better.

Mozilla Corporation is sponsoring this times FOSSKriti. We have speakers from Mozilla, Opera, Yahoo, KDE, Sahana and Drupal. They will be giving talks and hackfests, apart from other small scale sessions. The details for the events can be seen here : http://techkriti.org/#/fosskriti-events/

Here are the topics for the events :

• Workshop : Web development and Open Source technologies
• Talk : An Introduction to HTML5
• Talk : Yahoo! UI
• Hackfest : Drupal 7 Patch and Development Sprint
• Talk : Open the Web
• Talk : Humanitarian FOSS: Sahana Open Source Disaster Management tool
• Hackfest: Code for Sahana in Web2Py
• Talk : Webkit and Telepathy

Apart from these events, there will be few small sessions. Go to the FOSSKriti stalls to know more about these sessions. Oh, we will have a PGP Key signing party as well. Don’t forget to go there.

• Graduated from IITK. I miss those days.
• Got into Purdue. For Phd. So, now I am student for another 4-5 years.
• No papers yet.
• Wasted summers in coding. Should have gone to some hill, and should have camped there for a month.
• Deleted Orkut account
• started using facebook.
• Bought Guitar and DSLR
• got 3.85/4.00 in first semester here. Not so happy about it.

2009:

• No web2.0 (mainly facebook), apart from little blogging.
• A little bit of photography
• Research
• Rare movies.
• Take Quals.

We have been cooking food for last few days. And the experience has been fine. I met my advisor, and we had our first group meeting today. I think I am gonna enjoy working with this group. I will be working on the Orion project, which is an extension of Postgres to support uncertain data. In the group meeting we discussed about the license issues. Lets see what happens. Oh, I also got my first paycheck as well(I am an RA here).

What has been upsetting me is that Purdue doesn’t give a shit about Linux. The wifi system they have is kinda baid for Linux. And the most surprising thing was that by default you dont get a Linux account in CS department. If you want an account to use Linux machine, you have to  be either enrolled in some system’s course or you have take permission from your advisor. I mean, how ridiculous it is. Its an academic system, and they are using Linux for teaching purpose, then how come they are not giving a linux account. Height!!

On a better side, I have been given a Gentoo machine in my Office. Yay! 2.6.14.6 i686 Xeon 3.06GHz.

We are getting a comcast connection. That seems to be the only service available at my apartment with proper services. I also have an at&t mobile now. 1-765-337-8090. Call me whenever you want. My apartment address is 2501, Soldiers Home Rd, Apt#67 C, West Lafayette, Indiana, 47906. And my office address is G18, Bay 5, HAAS, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. And like it used to be in IITK, if you want to meet me, meet me in my office . I haven’t decided my office timings yet, but I should more or less be available in my office in day time. lolz

My Purdue email id is rohitj@purdue.edu.

Rest Laterz

• I am alive.
• Nostalgia has been replaced by load of technical work. Thank God!!
• Proposal for NERD (a new magazine in IITK which is going to talk about research and development and FOSS and Free Culture) has been approved. The magazine will be released under a CC license (probably CC-BY-SA). Final Compilation of the articles is going on.
• I am admin for some Windows machines now. Can not make the company shift to open source, its impossible. And its a family affair, so I can not deny the work. But this made me believe it even stronger that shifting from windows to linux is as difficult as shifting from linux to windows.
• finally made a flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohitjiitk/ ….. there are 1-2 photos from my small, yet dangerous hike near a national park
• I have got an XBox. Its bulky, so I can not take it to US, otherwise I would have installed xebian on it. I do not know what to do with it.
• Finally a family trip seems to become reality. We are going to Manali and Rohtang Pas. A 5 day trip, with all luxury.
• Lot of Mangoes …. after 2 Mango-less summers. ….. and before 4-5 mango-less summers
• Finally met my old and gold friends Aakash and Sachin
• The “personal” stuff here, no more exists.
• deleted my orkut account. Only gmail left.

I think its important that’s why I writing it. I am anyways going to post it
on my blog as well.

Note : I haven’t read what all people have been saying on this thread.
(apart from 3-4 posts from some people I know)

I was discussing with it with some friends, and came to some good
conclusions…..

0) So, the first problem is that students here do not know what they want
from this place. They do not know what they want from life. They do not
have right information. Students when come here don’t know nothing about
nothing. So, we should have a questionnaire/review system. A system which
will ask students to answer some questions. People wouldn’t evaluate it,
but this questionnaire will make students think. Student will think want
they want from themselves. Students will think whats right and whats wrong.
We can have this questionnaire thing every semester. This will not only
make them think, they will tend to ask questions about possibilities they
have.
0.1) First supporting point to the fact that student don’t think of their
future and they don’t think logically is that lot of students are going to
financial jobs, without even knowing what finance is. I can surely say 90%
of people are going to finance without even thinking what their future is
gonna be, and without knowing what exactly they shall be doing (If you are
one of those who is going for a finance job, and think I am wrong, please
don’t reply. I don’t time to explain you why you are wrong.)

1) Student interaction : I find that people coming out for different
festivals are more or less same. You will find same guy working in Megabuck
and Techkriti. These big festival are big, but they are not attracting many
students (IITK students) as participants. We need something else so that
people will come out. We need a way so that people from different years
could come and talk at *same* stage, rather than with senior-junior ego.
1.1) I strongly propose that we should have a good place where people could
come and hang out. CC Canteen isn’t an enough place. We need a place where
I could sit for long time, where I could “hang out”. CC canteen isn’t a
place where you sit for long time. And anyways the kind of food we get here
isn’t good enough. CR sucks. I don’t remember even a single visit to CR
when I didn’t shout at the workers. This “good” place will serve in many
ways. A big problem with IITK life is that there is no happening place
around us. We need a happening place in or around IITK. These “happening”
places help you in lot of ways. All your tensions from acads/parents can be
removed. And you stand on a stage where there is no senior and there is no
junior. These places will trigger interaction. Someone suggested dance
place, but I don’t think thats possible. So, a normal food court sort of
place with probably good music would be a good idea. A place where students
will get good food, and also a good place to sit. A place where they will
come to have fun. Do you know of any place where you go to have fun apart
from your room where you sit in front of your computer. And also, remember
the kind of sucky and *unnutritious* food you get in mess. Seriously, why
do we need mess when it can not serve nutritious food. One main reason why
I am not doing a PhD from IITK is that I know my life will be sucky for
next 3-4 years. I will have to spend my time inside a small area with no
place where I could go to enjoy myself.
1.2) Why don’t we have a proper air conditioned SAC Rasoi. Make it a common place to hang out. Let it be a little bit extra expensive, but make it proper. Every now and then we have domino guys coming, why don’t we have a proper Rasoi in SAC instead. We have such a huge place about rasoi as well, we can utilize it to the best.

1.3) Mixed hall system in which 1st, 2nd and 3rd year students live together
is a good option. They get interact with each other. You may say that 1st
year can anyways interact with 2nd year, but its not good enough. 2nd year
students are *stupid*. They know nothing. I remember my first year when I
used to ask my seniors (2nd year mainly) what I should do to go for MS. I
remember their replies, it was all bullcrap. 3rd still knows something. I
wonder if all four year students could stay together. Can we

2) Happy Hours : CSE started a cool thing. We have a regular weekly meeting of faculty and students. Faculty and students interact informally about different issues. We talk about personal stuffs as well. We should have such happy hours thing in every department. This way faculty-student interaction will increase (which right now is very less). Not only that faculty knows a broader and better picture of the IIT world. They can talk better about what students can do. They have the right knowledge. Students can clarify their queries. Also students wouldn’t feel alien.

3) BTech Hons and BTech Minor : I got to know that IITB has this system now. You have a set of options. You can do BTech Hons, which is a bit harder than normal BTech, and you can do BTech which is 4-5 course less than normal BTech. You can decide to switch between them whenever you want. You can also do some courses in other department and get BTech Minor in that field. This way, you don’t have to spend time on wasteful difficult courses, and can spend some quality time on courses that you want to do. And if you find that you don’t want to be in technical field anymore, you can always opt for just BTech, and get a degree and then can join MBA/finance job whatever you want. This way the load can be decreased for those who are not able to /don’t want to take extra pressure.
3.1) Also, stop calling BTech as four year degree. Its a Btech/MTech, thats it. When you get your degree shouldn’t be important.

But for eff’s sake, do/suggest something “constructive”. Rather than just asking for decreasing academic pressure. Yes, stupid courses and stupid instructors are there, but why are we not able to ignore that? Parent?, to hell with them if they are not able to think constructive.

rohitj
PS: Last year, my views were different. I wouldn’t say they were wrong, but weren’t very broad enough I guess. So, if you find my views switched, my apologies.

Yes, I am still able to write this post in some funny way. Some of you know how these incidences effect me. Still want to control my thoughts on the way things are going. As far as this issue is concerned, I have been shifting from one view to another. I still do not know whom to blame. But I think I have come up with some lemmas and theorems which will surely help.

Warning: If you are one of those who think I shouldn’t write about it outside IITK, you can go to hell. I gave you 3 years to come up with a solution or at least clear the situation. You didn’t do that. You hence loose the right to stop me from writing this post. Yes I know people (15 people a day?) will read it, and I guess they should.

Note: I am mainly talking about suicides which are not purely because of personal reasons.

The first thing to notice is that the students who do these things are stupid. Yes, lot of IITians are stupid (It may sound ironical, but its not). Like a friend of mine pointed out, an F or a bad grade doesn’t ruin your life. I get bad grades, and I am going to Purdue University, which is like one of the best universities for CS. I know people who will graduate in 1-2 more years and still have job offers. Who reads your transcript when they offer you job/admission? Sometimes they do, but most of the times they don’t. And do you know that an F doesn’t affect your CPI (GPA)? Its hilarious, isn’t it. People with lot of Fs have CPI similar to mine. Then whats the fuzz about? Oh one more thing, whatever you score here in IITK, people outside IIT will always call you IITian, and will always listen to you like an SRK fan watches SRK movies.

Secondly, lot of parents are stupid as well. I have some friends who are “frustrated” ( not real frustrated, but frustrated in IITK slang) with the way parents pressurize them for academics. Parents have small idea of how things go in IITs and will still comment on students performance. I remember my father once talking to me about job etc. He was like I got to know that a CS grad from IITK gets like 2 million a year or something. Though in general average salary is like 0.8-0.9 million Rs. Thank God my parents are awesome, who never show any expectations from me except from hard work. And thank God they let me do whatever I wanted to do. I never got to listen comment about my results.

Thirdly, the academic system of IITK. The guy who committed suicide (he was in first year) belonged to a batch of around 500 students. In their first semester itself, in one course, 96 out of 500 students got an F. 20% of the class was dumb according to the instructor. Thats what an F means, right. In IITK, in a normal course, getting an F is a tough job. How can 20% students get an F? Just think who was wrong. IITK is the *best* institute of India. It is one of the best institutes in the world for UG studies. Best students clear its entrance exam. In first semester, these students perform the best. My first semester SPI tops my chart as well. A similar thing happened with a guy from my batch, who committed suicide last to last semester. The professor sent a mail naming students who might will get an F. The list had almost 50% students who were doing the course. I wonder what happened in that particular course. I mean, the students are doing good in other courses, but in one particular course students perform so bad? Who is wrong? I was discussing it with a professor in Happy Hours, and he said that it happens only once a semester. But thats not the point. Why does it happen at all? And don’t you think it will affect student morally and mentally? And don’t you know that it does effect his future in some sense. An F given by mistake in final semester can waste a students 1 whole year. Every now and then there is a course which acts like this. Of course it creates pressure. People have expectations from themselves. I myself expect somethings from myself. Thankfully I do not expect to get good grades. But I do expect to learn from a course. Similar, one guy may expect to get into MIT. And if something tries to come in between even when it doesn’t deserve to come in between, and if the person gets to know that he can not do anything about it, it creates problems.

So, yes. The major cause of these suicides is the student. I know its very harsh to say it so clearly, and believe me its hard for me as well to say it this clear, but this is the fact. Its student who couldn’t think reasonably and couldn’t cope with the pressure. Like a friend said, “apne neeche dekho, duniya hai puri. agar upar dekh ke depression hota hai, aur phir bhi neeche nahin dekh pate, inspite of such a counselling service to help, to unka uthna hi bhala hai”. You know your parents have wrong expectations from you. You know the system is wrong not you. And you know that you are better than most of those who couldn’t even get into IIT. Then where is the problem. And yes, academics or parents trigger the process. But again, why do you give a damn to it.

We had a Lab of 40 computers booked. We had to have 2 person per computer. We also had to kick out IITK students, and we asked them that they will have another kernel workshop. There were still non-IITK students who were kicked out because there was no place for standing the lab. We finally had 100 people inside the lab.

In evening we arranged same workshop for IITK students, in which we allowed non-IITK students as well. It again had awesome response. That even when it was clashing for i-Quiz.

Ankita Garg took the workshop. She was kind enough to take the workshop again for IITK students. People who came for the workshop varied from people who had heard about kernel for the time and people who had their “own” kernel.

It was a great start for FOSSKriti. The first day itself when Techkriti team usually think that there wouldn’t be much participation, we got like 60-70 participation. Awesome. Cleartrip brought us some TShirts as well, which we gave to some participants. And we also had some Gnome badges and Gnome stickers.

The event started at 10PM. After 20-30min talk about beagle which Arun Raghavan gave, we shifted to lab, and people started hacking beagle. Well, there were people who didnt know much about beagle and linux. But still some people stayed there till 5AM. Yes,  10 guys stayed there till 5AM.

And more to it, we finally have 3 submissions from the workshop. One is a firefox extension to include beagle in the search engine list. Second is bibtex search. And third is searching in beagle for the select words in Pidgin chat box.