Artagnon’s presence

First off, the weather in Manali is very erratic- plan with few fixed constraints and keep everything else in the middle flexible. You can’t ski when it’s snowing too hard or paraglide when it’s too windy. The weather can change from bright sunny to snowing in just thirty minutes without any warning. But before we start: My dad and I are pretty paranoid about this part- we even buy toothpaste using a credit card when we can and we absolutely hate cash. Take lots of cash- you’ll be paying for every adventure sport, taxi ride, auto ride by cash. If you run short, get it done through the resort so they add it to your final bill. You can then pay the final resort bill by card.

So, let’s start- I’ll list the adventure sports in descending order of priority (ofcourse, the ones I found most fun might not necessarily be the ones you’ll find most fun):

1. Paragliding. Cost: 2000 chips. Leave early and paraglide at 9 AM in the morning, before it becomes too windy. Contact “Destination Himalayas” for this. It’s a company that does just paragliding. We went through Club Mahindra, the resort we stayed at, but it should be easy enough to get their contact even otherwise. It’s an awesome 10~15 minute glide and it’s relatively safe after the take-off. If in the middle of the ride, the pilot asks you if you want to do the stunt for an extra 500 chips, say yes! It’s definitely worth it! You’ll go spiraling down almost 1km in a matter of a few seconds. You might find the wind a little chilly, so wear a nice warm jacket. If you’re paranoid about your eyes watering, especially during the stunt, you might want to take goggles along as well. Paragliding is also done in Solang Valley for 1000~1500 chips- it’s a 3-minute low-altitude glide. I’d strongly recommend against it as there have been accidents there. Low altitude gliding is dangerous. The pilots at Solang Valley are also pretty inexperienced. But ofcourse, if you miss the real thing, you shouldn’t miss paragliding anyway. Don’t worry yourself with worst-case scenarios in Solang Valley- you might fracture your back if your take off fails, but that’s all.
2. Rappelling. Cost: 200 chips (try to bargain down to 150- I did). This place may be a little tricky to find as it’s on the road about halfway from the Club Mahindra resort to Solang Valley. Look for a long ladder on a rockface. The sign is very easy to miss. Rappelling can be scary at first, but it’s awesome fun once you get the hang of it. You can go down the rock face by kicking off the wall just 3~4 times. In the first attempt however, you’ll probably just walk down the rockface very slowly. I’d recommend that you do it the second time- just learn the trick. You’re dropping down the rock face at a constant less-than-freefall speed, and your path is guided by the rope. You’re kicking off the rockface itself to prevent colliding with it. What prevents freefall? The friction between the rope and buckle and that between the rope and the mitten you’re wearing in your left hand. You must hold it just tightly enough to let it slip fast enough. The faster you fall, the less number of times you’ll have to kick off the rock face. That’s all there is to it.
3. Rock climbing. Cost: ?. Ok, I must admit that we were very lucky here. Dad knew someone in Atal Behari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering. It is absolutely not a tourist location and there’s nothing in the institute, which is what is so deceiving. When we got to there, the person dad knew and his friend obliged to teach us all rock climbing. The rocks ofcourse were the natural ones found in the hillside outside the institute. I must admit that it’s very hard and tiring, but it’s rewarding once you get it right. Just make sure that you wear a fantastic pair of shoes before getting there. There a question mark on the cost because they accepted a small sum of money after we insisted! On a sidenote, we also did artificial wall climbing within the institute, but I personally didn’t enjoy it very much (probably because I wasn’t even able to get as far as my brother )
4. Skiing. Cost: 200 chips (I think you can bargain this down to 150 chips). Rohtang Pass itself was closed when we went, so we had to go to another spot before Rohtang. If it’s the same in your case, you may want to try starting at 4:30 AM and reaching Rohtang before the gate closes at 8 AM, but I’m not sure it’d be worth it. The first thing you need is snow wear. I highly recommend that you don’t rent it from some place outside and take it from your resort instead- it’s very clean and convenient that way. You’ll get the skis and ski poles as soon as you enter into a deal with one of the people there. Although skiing sounds really fun and glamorous, you’ll soon figure out that the only kind of fun you’ll be having is falling down shockingly often. The place is like a traffic jam with snowmobiles, sleds and yaks (!). Nobody there did quite get the hang of skiing, but I can tell you this much- if you shift your weight backwards in an attempt to stop, you will fall. Play in the snow, but be careful. Make a snowman if you like- we did And I can’t emphasize this enough- Do NOT let the snow remain in contact with your skin for too long. You do not want to end up with gangrene and be taken to an oxygen tent. Take an extra pair of socks- you’ll have to take off your boots and expose your socks to the snow while wearing the skis.
5. Whitewater rafting. Cost: 1000~1500 chips. All the whitewater rafting happened in one place, so it should be easy enough to find- just ask anyone. We didn’t want to pay by cash, so we got this done through the resort. I must admit, this wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be initially. There is no realistic chance of falling off and dying It’s very very safe and in our case, we weren’t even doing the rafting part- just sitting in the raft. Take a change of clothes a towel- your clothes will get drenched.
6. Ball ride in Solang Valley. Cost: 150 chips (unsure). My bro and I had the worst time of our lives in this ball. You see, two passengers are supposed to be strapped tightly into every inflated ball with welcro before the balls are rolled down a hill. Yes, you can guess what happened. No welcro can hold a huge 6′2” 85-kilo character in place. What were they thinking? I went kicking about all over the place while my brother was still helplessly strapped in. Luckily, my brother didn’t sustain any injuries. Do this if it starts raining the moment you get to Solang Valley.
7. River crossing. Cost: Unknown. This looked so boring that we didn’t even do it. Basically, they’ll take you to the middle of a river using a simple rope-and-pulley mechanism and dip you into the water a few times by making the rope oscillate. Requires no talent or strength whatsoever to get across the river. You’re hanging from a pulley for heaven’s sake!

Overall, I’d say that Manali is easily the best holiday location I’ve been to in India

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NOTE: I have no intentions of starting another editor war. Opinions expressed here are my own.

Over five years ago, I realized that using editors like nano and Gedit wouldn’t suffice. The need to learn a real editor arose as I wrote more and more code. By nature, I’m a minimalist. I hate clicky flashy bloated things like GNOME, KDE, Compiz, Beryl etc. Emacs is large, graphical and consumes eons of memory compared to Vim. I had also just learnt touch typing and was eager to put that knowledge to use. Emacs didn’t appeal to me at all with its complex META and CONTROL keybindings and its complicated GUI. Vim, on the other hand was small, simple, ran off my terminal and had very simple keybindings. I took to Vim immediately and progressed to become very good at it. Vim uses muscle memory heavily- once you’re that good at Vim, you don’t have to conciosly edit anything; fingers move on their own and it feels like Vim is reading your thoughts. It’s the principle concept as touch typing. Which is what makes it so hard to switch. It struck me that there was something about Emacs worth learning over a year ago, but I was never really able to use it.

I wanted to do so much more with Vim when I realized that it was crippled. Everyone seemed to be talking about those features being present in Emacs. Consider a simple task- editing a file over the network. In the Vim world, I’d ssh into the remote machine and copy my ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim over, praying that the same version of Vim is present on the remote machine. Then using screen (see GNU screen) sessions, I could resume work. In the development front, I learnt that Vim had lots of features hardcoded for C/ C++, but not other languages. In Python, I had to use indentation-based folding to select codeblocks. I wished that Vim behaved more intelligently and do context-specific tasks. A :make in C or C++ is not the same as the :make in Python or :make in LaTeX. Vim didn’t understand this.

Writing and debugging were also separated- I couldn’t really debug anything from within Vim. This wasn’t critical until I ventured out to learn a Lisp. In Common Lisp, writing code and debugging it are so closely related that it was impossible to keep switching between applications to do it. Everyone recommended SLIME (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs). I tried to switch retaining the keybindings using tricks like Viper mode for Emacs, but to be honest, nothing really worked out. Purists encouraged me to use Emacs as-it-is without these cheap tricks. I kept looking for Vim equivalents for several tasks and kept failing.

Few people understand the real difference between the two editors. They go on and on comparing the number of keystrokes required to do equivalent operations. I did the same for some time until it struck me- Vim is a dumb text editor, Emacs feels like some sort of intelligent organism. No real equivalents like the Vim “vawy…p” existed in Emacs- why? because Emacs is more intelligent in that. Vim doesn’t understand what a “function” or “codeblock” is. It simply understands characters and lines. Vim is a superb dumb text editor, but nothing more. Emacs, on the other hand, seems to understand what you write and assists you more intelligently. It doesn’t require the basic text editing functions that Vim has at all. I’ll give you an example. Recently, M-z or zap-to-char function was introduced into Emacs. Initially, I was very excited about it, because majority of my commands in Vim were dt, df. Now, I rarely use the command. There’s little doubt about it- In my Vim time, I could have beaten any Emacs expert at basic text editing. Vim does it faster. Emacs doesn’t even have many of those keybindings.

Then why? Because I came to realize that programmers do a lot more than just basic text editing. Vim and Emacs assist the programmer in different ways. Vim helps the programmer save time on basic text editing functions while deserting him when he wants to do his compiling or debugging or even interact with an external application. Emacs, on the other hand, seems to understand the code and helps the programmer operate on code entities, rather than characters and lines. SLIME is easily the best development environment I have seen. Emacs interactions with external applications nicely. Even documentation is readily available within Emacs.

What gives Emacs its so-called intelligence? A major part is contributed by it minor modes. When I open a certain file, some specific minor modes get activated and keybindings invoke context-specific functions. I loved the context-specific help. In latex-mode, I could preview the document I was writing with the same keybinding that I used to compile lines in elisp-mode. The same keybindings mean different (but comprehensible and expected) things in different minor modes.

As I started using it more and more, I understood the true nature of Emacs. Emacs is actually just an elisp environment bundled with several snippets of code written in elisp. Every keybinding invokes an elisp function (ok, some are so basic that the functions are compiled in C. But there are few immutable functions like this). This allows it to be infinitely extensible. Today, there are several brilliant elisp programs like emacs-w3m, emms, eterm, rcirc etc. which allow users to do email, chat, browse the internet and do a lot more, right from within emacs. SLIME is also just an elisp application. In Vim, everything’s written in C and keybindings are hardcoded, which is what makes it rigid.

At the end of the day, I have realized that average programmers can be equally productive on both Emacs and Vim. The question is simple- do you want your editor to assist you with basic text editing or higher tasks? And as programmers become better and better at what they do, I personally feel that they require assistance with higher tasks and not basic text editing.

Programming, Software emacs, vim

There was this badly written article on patents up on a mailing list, awaiting comments before being published.  Admitted, I can be very critical at times, but on this occasion, I actually went over the edge and ripped it apart line by line. Literally. Now, all it is is pure entertainment value.

Being a tech based entrepreneur patent management is a crucial issue for the success of one’s start-up.
>>> Always hyphenate words when you can. It improves readability. “tech-based”
>>> Avoid usage such as “one’s xxx”. Who is being a tech-based entrepreneur? Who is the ONE?
>>> “Eats shoots and leaves” or “Eats, shoots and leaves”? There’s a comma missing in this sentence.

You have to make sure that if a company like IBM files a patent on your new software start-up, it’s not lost among the million patents floating in the sea.
>>> Who? Me? Am I the ONE?
>>> Ambiguous “it”. What? IBM or my new software startup or IBM’s patent?
>>> “the million patents floating in the sea” should be “among the millions of patents floating in the sea”

Patent attorneys cannot help you much if you have already committed mistakes initially due to lack of awareness.
>>> What? What mistakes? Lack of awareness? What should I have been aware of?

Before getting into depth of this issue, let us understand what patent means.
>>> Marvelous. You’ve started a paragraph with a sentence referring to “this issue”. What i this issue?
>>> “Let us understand”? Are you trying to have a conversation with me all of a sudden? First, you refer to me as the “one”, and then go on to say “you”. Finally “we”?

The appropriate government gives a set of exclusive and jurisdictional rights to the inventor like distribution, sale, use, export and these rights are collectively known as patent.
>>> In trying to explain to me what a patent is in the middle of your article, you have suddenly brought in some “appropriate government”.

For obtaining a patent, an invention must cover three basic criteria: Novelty, Non-obviousness and utility.
>>> “cover criteria”? More like “satisfy criteria” or “meet criteria”.

Many inventors publically disclose their invention before filing a patent and loose on the grounds of novelty.
>>> “loose”? Come on. This is a glaring mistake.

As a entrepreneur, one must know the level of disclosure to make in public before filing a patent, which parts of the invention are patentable and if it is been covered by any other prior art.
>>> Totally incoherent. I don’t understand a thing. Break it up. “As a entrepreneur, one must know
1. The level of disclosure to make in public before filing a patent
2. which parts of the invention are patentable
3. if it is been covered by any other prior art”
Putting all three into a coherent sentence requires considerable skill.

Knowledge and Intellectual property is the prime asset a start-up can have.
>>> A and B “is”? Are you confused between singular and plural?

Awareness and confidence of its protection are the skills which makes one a successful entrepreneur.
>>> “Confidence of its protection”? I’m left speechless.
>>> ONE.

One of the major challenges is to realize the value of this intellectual property, which is well depicted in Gordan V. Smith’s famous book ‘Intellectual Property: Licensing and Joint Venture Profit Strategies’.
>>> Major challenges of what? Of being an entrepreneur?

Intellectual property is actually a legal definition of ideas, inventions, artistic works and other commercially viable products created out of one’s own mental processes.
>>> Okay, I’m tired. After telling me about how IP is important to a startup, you’re finally getting around to giving me an atrocious definition of IP. “created out of one’s own mental processes” — WHAT!?

In the same sense that real estate titles and bills of sale establish ownership of tangible items, intellectual property is protected by such legal means as patents, copyrights, and trademark registrations.
>>> “protected by such legal means as” should be “protected by legal means such as”

The United States Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) receives over 5,000 patent applications each week and has granted over 100,000 patents annually since 1994.
>>> *sigh* … off we are again on the roller-coaster ride- yet another irrelevant tangent. Why doesn’t the article flow at all? Are the cut-outs of articles from different Wikipedia pages or something?
>>> “5,000 patent applications each week” should be “5,000 patent applications a week”. You’re not emphasizing on what it does every week, but on the number of patent applications it receives. My college fees isn’t 35,000 INR each semester. It’s 35,000 INR a semester.
>>> “and has granted over 100,000 patents annually since 1994″ TENSE! The sentence should be corrected as “The United States Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) receives over 5,000 patent applications a week. The organization has granted over 100,000 patents annually since 1994.”

Since then patent application and issuance rates continue to increase exponentially.
>>> Since when?

This makes patent management a crucial criteria.
>>> Criteria for what?

The main goal of patent management is obtaining and maintaining patents. This process involves various technical, legal and business skills. Identifying, developing and assessing the technology involved in a given patent naturally requires some amount of technical knowledge. Legal expertise is often beneficial, but not necessary, to complete a patent application and maintain it. Finally, maximizing the profits of the patent is the responsibility of businesses. While numerous professionals are often involved in obtaining and maintaining
patents, it is also possible for the individual inventor to do the work himself. Although, this is less likely a wise approach if the invention is complex and the potential profitability is high.
>>> Okay, I’m convinced that this paragraph has been cut out from a different article and interposed into this one, in some vague attempt to cite some examples.

Managing a portfolio of patents in your asset is very crucial and sturdy task to perform.
>>> “is very crucial and sturdy task to perform” should be “is a very crucial and sturdy task to perform”. “Crucial” and “sturdy” task? Can adjectives be more misplaced?

Best examples in patent management will be IBM generating revenue of US $ 1 billion from more than 30,000 live patents and University of California generating more than US $ 100 million from more than 3,000
patents in the year 2007.
>>> “… will be IBM generating … in the year 2007″!? IBM will be generating revenue in the year 2007? The sentence is long and incoherent, much like most of the other long sentences in the article.

As rightly said by Jackie Hutter, IP & Patent Business Strategist, “goal of building a solid patent portfolio is to make your business an attractive target for investment or acquisition by a larger company”.
>>> The first acceptable sentence in the article has to be a quote

Patent portfolio management includes an extensive study of patents, valuing the patents and strategies to generate revenue from patent selling and licensing.
>>> Always use Oxford commas to improve readability, especially when the sentence contains more than one “and” connector. “Apples, oranges, and bananas” as opposed to “Apples, oranges and bananas”

A recent study in the US shows that 60% of the individuals file patents in US, while corporate earn 99% of the revenue from it leaving individuals with only 1% of the pie.
>>> “the individuals”?
>>> You like the US so much as to mention in twice in the same sentence? Where else would the study be conducted on people in the US?
>>> The sentence can mean two things: 60% of individuals in the US file patents, which seems to be completely skewed to me. The other interpretation can be rephrased as “A recent study shows that of the 60% of individuals who file patents in US, corporates earn 99% of the revenue, leaving individuals with only 1% of the pie”. It’s unclear which corporates you’re talking about as well.

The situation is much worse in Asia because of lack of awareness in means to generate revenue from patents.
>>> Unnecessarily convoluted. “The situation is much worse in Asia, because people don’t know how to generate revenue from patents”

To end the note, one must always be aware about the extent of disclosure of his invention in public, constantly manage his patent portfolio and analyze the value hidden in this intangible asset and
realize the wealth that can be generated from the same.
>>> What note?
>>> Are you trying to stuff the whole article into a single sentence? Because you should have realized that it’s not possible.

Knowing all about protecting one’s intellectual property makes him awake, aware and confident to run the business.
>>> “makes him awake”. No comments.

-> Overall, an atrocious article. I’ve wasted my time even _trying_ to edit it.

Humor, Journalism article, entrepreneurship, patent

There are innumerable cases of  administration failure and misdiagnoses/ deaths in BC Roy. I’m mentioning three recent ones that are relevant to #iitdeath. It doesn’t mean that the others are less important.

Anshu Gupta, a first year Agriculture student collapsed in the NSS camp while playing cricket on the 25th of November 2007. The adminstration failed to ensure even basic medical facilities in the camp. To make things worse, the camp was in a remote village, some 50 km from the campus, with no real immediate to-and-fro transportation facilities. When Anshul, along with a few friends was finally admitted in BC Roy, not much could be done. Anshul suffered from a certain heart condition that required him to minimize his physical exertion- There wasn’t much BC Roy could do to save him. However, what annoyed students most was the attitude of the doctors in BC Roy, and they way they spoke with Anshul’s parent. It was also a massive failure on the administration’s for not providing any emergency medical facilities in the NSS camp.  He died in the hospital on the very same day.

Rohit Kumar, a third year student died on Sunday, 22nd March 2009. After suffering from serve headaches for a few days, he succumbed to a head injury after falling off a cycle-rickshaw. BC Roy was hardly operational as on any other lazy Sunday morning, and the amubulance provided was in terrible condition. No real doctor accompanied him in the ambulance and he died on the way to Mindapur hospital.

Another student, Gaurav Tomar, 5th year, is in the ICU in a hospital in Delhi due to BC Roy’s failure to detect malaria!

To sum up, BC Roy is good for commodities and infrastructure. It has a pharmacy like any other that gives away free medicines to students and a student ward with just enough beds for the sick. What lacks is services; the severe shortage of good qualified doctors makes diagnosis of several common diseases such as malaria, typhoid, jaundice and chicken pox nearly impossible.

News bc roy, iitdeath

This article is one of three parts. The other two parts are: Provocation and The day that was

On Monday morning at 11AM, a meeting was held to resolve the issues discussed in the open house discussion at 10:45 PM on Sunday evening. The minutes of the meeting are available here. As seen from the minutes, the discussion is still at its early stages.

Meanwhile, in fond memory of Rohit Kumar, a candlelight vigil was organized today by students at 6 PM. It was perfect, with over 2000 students marching down 1 km on the Scholars’ Avenue from the Gymkhana to the Institute front gate. It’s one of the most beautiful things to observe- everyone dressed in black overalls and marching with candles.

Event, News iitdeath, photography

¡ The neutrality of this article is disputed. I realize that it’s not possible to stuff everything into one article and have decided to split the #iitdeath episode across three articles: Provocation, The day that was (this article), and Aftermath. This article serves only to describe the violent student protests and the open house discussion that followed it on the 22nd of March, 2009.

Rohit Kumar, 3rd year electrical engineering student of IIT Kharagpur was declared dead today morning at Midapur hospital, while being transferred from the institute’s BC Roy hospital to Kolkata. He succumbed to a head injury after falling off a cycle-rickshaw in the campus. He could probably have been saved, had he received timely medical attention at BC Roy. The issue of health amenities has plagued the Kharagpur community for too long now, and in spite of repeated incidents and requests, the facilities continue to be dismal.

What followed was a massive protest by over 1500 students, who gathered in front of the director’s house. The media wasn’t allowed to enter the front gate. The LAN/ internet was shut down to flush all the students out of their rooms and join the protest. Since very few students have GPRS, and without the media and internet, practically nobody outside the institute knew about the event. The protest was violent and the mob had one demand- they wanted the director to resign. They wouldn’t settle for anything less.

Violence has no bounds. Students were angered that the institute their own batchmate/ friend die. They wanted to break into the house and literally beat up the director. After breaking all the window panes in the director’s house, they proceeded to break open the lock of his garage, took out his car and totally destroyed it. It didn’t stop there- they just kept breaking everything they could lay their hands on.

When the director did finally appear at the door, there was almost a stampede in the rush to grab him and beat him up. The director had no choice but to give in his resignation. Yes, the director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur had to resign because the students protested so damn violently.

Throughout the event, I tried to post updates on Twitter tagged #iitdeath. I also managed to click some pics. Although I’ve hardly done justice, I’ve taken care to make sure that I’ve smudged out the few partially seen faces seen in some photos, in view of people’s anonymity.

An open house discussion followed at 10:45  PM in the Tagore Open Air Theater (TOAT), which was attended by over 4000 students. A rational discussion was expected, but mob mentality kicked in pretty soon; students started shouting at the top of their voices. The result of the discussion: The dean of student affairs resigned from his post, and the deputy director resigned from the post of chairman of BC Roy. Some valid points were discussed as well, but most of them were drowned in the mob’s voice. To see what was discussed, refer to the Aftermath article.

The event has received extensive press coverage. All major newspapers including The Hindu have a front page article on Monday morning about the event, but the reports lack detail due to widespread misinformation. Even Scholars’ Avenue is uncertain about several facts. An official press release is expected to clear out most of these details.

News bc roy, iit, iitdeath, mob

Shilpa was bullied beyond belief- this is the best compilation I could
find on YouTube.

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I thought it would be a good idea to do the in-thing, you know. So as
not to get too bored in the room during vacations and to relieve my
frustration after a brain-dead class/lab. So I decided to install
Counter-Strike and play on the LAN with others. Bad idea. Really bad
idea. I suck so badly at it, it’s not even funny. My normal CS
routine:
b42 b6
Move around a little bit
Get killed within the first 10~20 seconds of the game
Wait for everyone else to die
Loop
 
*sigh* It only increases my frustration levels now.

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Web_2.0_BarCamp.pdf (689 KB)

Yet another file I found in the attic of my hard drive. I used this in
BarCamp Kharagpur over a year ago. I especially like the “feather
slide” It’s useless without the notes view, really.

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Networking.pdf (844 KB)

I found this presentation in the attic of my hard drive. It’s amazing
how I can laugh at something I made just two years ago.

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