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Late 80s and 90s was the worst time for Indian cinema. Indian movies lost the idea of having a theme in it. People like Salman Khan, Govinda, Shahrukh khan, Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Deol became top actors. Most of them didn’t have any clue of acting. Shahrukh who ruled the industry for some time was merely a joke as far as serious acting is concerned. I do like Shahrukh Khan’s movies, but thats just because its usually a light movie, not because it has some nice theme, or nice acting. People like Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, Amitabh Bachchan, Shabaana Aazmi were missed. Songs were made basic necessity. Old movies used to have songs as well, but they didn’t come out of blue. Those songs used to move the movie forward. But songs like Kurta Phaad Ke were there for no good reason.

I see a new trend in Indian cinema now. Actors like Kay Kay, Irfan Khan, Rahul Bose, Konkana Sen are proper actors. Their movies may not be “commercial” movies as such, but their movies always have a theme, and more importantly a serious acting. These actors make me like Indian Cinema again.

Update : I have talking about Bollywood, not Indian Cinema as such. Apologies for mixing the terms. Bollywood means just Hindi/English movies, not south/east indian movies. I do not know much about South/East Indian movies.

Back in IIT Kanpur, CSE ground floor lab used to be my daily hangout/work place because it was not a silent place, and yet not noisy place and because there was a coffee shop nearby. I started missing that after coming to Purdue. I tried using the brewing machine in my office, but that wasn’t that great, and anyways, it’s a little lonely working in office. And then I found Greyhouse Coffee Shop.
This shop features some awesome decoration, a class room (yes, a room with black board, chairs and tables), nice sitting place, nice sound tracks, nice wifi, nice timing and last but not the least, good coffee. It opens at 7AM and closes at midnight or 1AM depending upon day. Few weeks back we had a class in this coffee shop, thats when I discovered that its a good place to sit. Yesterday, I spent almost the whole day here. It was awesome. Constant supply of coffee, ice creams, cakes and other supplies. And if you are hungry, you can go outside and eat something in some shop in Chauncey and come back. In night, its a little crowded, so you may not find your choice of seat, but if you plan to sit here for sometime, you will eventually get your seat. They have 4 types of normal coffee. Go for bottomless coffee and try out each one of them. They are all good.

If you live around this place, you are most welcome to give me company here.

I was coming back from a meeting. I was standing in the bus stop chilling, waiting for the bus which was late. Then came this girl and a guy. I hardly noticed them. They stood in front of me. Girl was talking on phone. When she finished on phone she asked the guy what he did on weekend. The guy said “Nothing on Saturday. On Sunday I watched Slumdog Millionaire.” <pause> “Its a good movie”. The girl replied, “yeah its a good movie. The part which I was atleast was, was SO India.” <”So” with a stress>. I was standing there, I heard it. My next inpulse asked me to ask her what she knows about India. And those who know me, know that its natural for me. I would fight with this person. But to your surprise, and mine too, I didn’t say anything. I smiled. No, I laughed.

I laughed because some people still think that India is a land of snake. It is full of poverty and thats all it has. I laughed at the ignorance and unintellect of that person. This is specially significant here. Here as in America. Because America has lot of Indians. (I never noticed that untill I started looking at different research groups in academia and industry in general). And after this, if this person could still think that way, I am sorry for her. Now, I am not saying that the life shown in that movie is untrue. With good approximation I can say the story is true (not the millionaire part, but the slum life). But is this India? Oh, not just India, she said “*so India*”.

When I read this post, I thought its just exaggeration, but guess what? I was wrong.

I bought my laptop in India. In India, I didn’t use my DVD drive to play movies much, because all the time when I wanted to watch a movie/song, I used to get the pirated avi/mp3 file. Now, recently I rented few DVDs and none worked. I tried everything, nothing worked. Even when I have been using Linux exclusively for more than 2 years now, I always have a feeling that if things are not working than its the Linux bug. So I cursed Ubuntu for having bugs. But I really wanted to watch movie, so I explored more, and found out it was the region code problem. Some non-social people started this concept of regions so that DVDs work only in a area, and wouldn’t work in other areas. Thankfully, you can change your region code 5 times. So, I change my region from India to US, and things are working now. This is really a ridiculous thing though. I was talking with a friend who is American and she said that she has problems watching international movies because the international DVDs they buy in US they are sometimes in different region code. Now, for people like me who love watching Hindi, English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and what not language movies, its a big trouble. Isn’t it funny that those who are paying money to buy these DVDs face this problem. And those who don’t (like I never bought a movie DVD, I always got the pirated avi files), its so easier. I mean, this is really stupid. The only people who you can restrict are the ones who are paying for it, not the ones who are downloading the pirated copies. I guess its just about putting too much restrictions for no reasons.

I was taking hair cut on the auspicious occasion of Oct 27. As usual I started talking with the guy giving me hair cut. And of course the talk started to cover breadth. The best part about talking to people with not-so-brainy jobs is that you get to talk in breadth. Talking in depth consumes lot of energy. Anyways, we were talking about different types of therapy. And he said that he takes light therapy. He has problems because of the dull West Lafayette. And I think its not too wrong. The sky is always covered with the dull clouds here. And not many animals to see. So, basically you have to be creative enough to bring out colors here. This all reminded me of Onion’s poem :

I walk my own way,
the broken path on the west.
Little sunshine from the sunset spree,
that finished atop the mystic tree.
Lights up my way,
the broken path on the west.

Yesterday, while trolling on the streets on West Lafayette, I saw this lonely yet lively road. It looked mysterious. So, I started walking on that road. That road took me to this place. It was awesome. Houses with proper built, long courtyard, trees that let you breath yet gives access to full sight, grass properly managed, and the type which will make you sleep immediately. I wanted to put its pictures, but I didn’t want to insult its beauty. The sign board on that road said “No Outlet”, and I thought while returning back, who wants an outlet.

Recently I started using IRC a lot. As I was doing some django, PyQT and KDE/C++ development. Yes, its lot of development. And then whenever I want to ask some question on IRC, I have to use pastebin/dpaste. ( dpaste is developed upon django framework. ). Now, to dpaste any code, I have to switch to Firefox, I have to use mouse as well. I have to copy paste the link to xchat. This was tedious task for me. So, I started making a plugin for xchat so that I could easily paste my code. Fortunately XChat has python plugin interface.

This plugin runs with the command:

/dpaste language

If you keep <language> empty, it will assume it to be “Plain”. You can use any language supported by dpaste.com. The command will open a gtk window, in which you can paste your code. And then “dpaste” button will copy paste the link (containing your code) on your xchat input box. . As of now I am sure, it works fine in IITK proxy system. I am pretty much sure it will work fine if you are behind no proxy.

Before using the proxy, you will need to change few parameters in the script, namely “proxy_username”, “proxy_password”, “proxy_server”, “proxy_port”. If you are not behind proxy, just keep “proxy_server” empty.

Also, you should install python module “ClientForm”, “pygtk”, and “urllib2″.

aptitude install python-clientform python python-gtk2

To load the script, a simple way is /load <path to plugin file> . Or you can copy the script in ~/.xchat2 folder. That way the script will be loaded whenever you open xchat.

You can download the code from here. As of now I haven’t made docs, but its an easy plugin, and some commenting as well.

Updates : Download the plugin version 0.6, and you don’t need to change anything in it. The plugin uses xchat proxy settings by itself.   As of now, http proxy and no proxy is supported.
http://rohitj.net/myscripts/xchat_plugin_dpaste

Yes, I can also see some changes on my site. I wanted to try this before I decide somethings. Advertisement is a big business no doubt. I could see the power of this business within a day. I hope to see more things. For internal news, stay tuned. haha…

So, here I am, seeing probably 8th movie in Umang’08. This times Umang is surely one of the best Umang in these 4 years. And yeah, I am liking doing live blogging. I just had Pizza from Domino who has a stall just near the auditorium where movies are being shown. Apart from that I am having coffee and popcorns. Surely prices are high. Coffee costed me 10Rs, which usually cost only 5Rs. Pizza prices are 10-20rs higher. Popcorn which should cost only 5Rs. costed me 10Rs. But then you always screw your customers, don’t you.

This time there are 3 screens. 1 in auditorium, where you get to see the wide big screen. 1 is open air theatre, just outside the institute auditorium. And the last one is in newly made outreach auditorium. The outreach one has a really small screen, though the sound quality was good. Open air theatre surely didn’t attract people as even after arranging fire and bed, people didn’t come. Auditorium as usual is awesome.

Today they are showing bourne series in one serious. Right now they are showing Bourne Superemacy. Sound is good. So is video quality. And ofcourse this series is good as well. There were 3-4  non-english and non-hindi movies as well. Audience was like zero till thursday. But from friday onward the auditorium which has a capacity of 2000 students is more than half full. Good, isn’t it.

We also had Mr. Chanakya in opening ceremony, which was surely way too cool. They showed us a episode his new series which is about vedas and upnishadas. The episode was cool. I am now desperately waiting for it. I loved Chanakya.

On a serious note. Its good that Umang uses legal CD to show movies. But they were using illegal songs in intervals. And they even copied VCDs to show movie. (it should really be fine, but its still illegal)

2007 was overall good. I got to learn lots of things, and got to do lots of things. Got to talk to lot of cool people. Though I wouldn’t forget that it also brought 7th semester which was like the most difficult semester I ever had. This semester probably took my anxiety level to top. Some of the highlights of 2007 are below:

1. Got a job at Microsoft, India. I am excited about it.
2. Got involved into Free Culture activities.
3. Shifted 99% to open source softwares. (flash )
4. Shifted 100% to free songs. (though, this is true.)
5. Shifted to wonderful KDE. I will write an entry for it.
6. No more Gentoo, it takes time. Ubuntu on other hand is wonderful. (Apologies to all those who are on Gentoo or are thinking of shifting to Gentoo because I asked them to do so. )
7. Hiking
8. Another hobby now is Photography …. need money to buy DSLR.
9. Bought a new web space to play with different things. Its been wonderful till now.
10. Zeropage removed restrictions from their songs.
11. Kelly Allyn sent me her autograph, need to go home to get it.
12. Met some wonderful people during internship at Virginia Tech.
13. <compressed because its personal>

Hopes from 2008 :

1. Grad School or a good job (or a startup?)
2. DSLR
3. Free Culture Club at IITK
4. Passing IITK
5. openmoko / android
6. make IITK music club release an album under CC ( www.tempostand.com should help us)
7. Finish talk with Vox Populi guys

So, yesterday night came this new member in our wing. He was sitting in corridor in front of my room. I heard Shankar doing some thing, so opened the door and found Shanky patting this dude. He probably wasn’t feeling good because of cold, and hence came to our wing. Its an awesome experience to have a room in front of lawn. I get to see lots of animals, and sometimes shoot them with my FE210 camera. Well, I will soon buy a DSLR, but till then I am trying with this camera.

So, I brought my camera, started taking photos. This guy didn’t like flash at all. He tried running, I ran after him. And when he found that he can not beat me on this relatively slippery for dogs floor, he stopped. I patted his head so he feels comfortable, and then started photo session. Though, I didn’t mean to take any good shots (lolz), and rather I thought I didn’t take any good shots, my friends asked me upload the photos on Orkut. And I did. And I got some cool responses. One guy even copied the photos, and posted it on his album. [:)] …. and this other guy, who probably never sent me a message, asked me how I got that dog to do all those things? I hope it’s not just because it was my first time.

So, anyways, the photo captions goes with the saying of Mahatma Gandhi : ” Bura mat dekho” which means don’t see bad things. “Bura mat suno” don’t listen to bad things and “Bura mat kaho”, don’t speak bad words.

Bura mat dekho

Bura mat suno

Bura kahna allowed hai (Speaking bad things is allowed)