Sunday, November 29, 2009

CAT vs BITSAT

Some important statistics

1) BITSAT online exam was started 4 years back. CAT online exam has started just now
2) The BITSAT exam spanned for more than 50 days with 3 batches a day. The CAT exam was "supposed" to span over 10 days, with 2 exams everyday.
3) The no of students taking BITSAT is around 2 lakhs, CAT is taken by 2.5 lakhs
4) BITSAT is managed by the BITS Pilani, Institute themselves. CAT paid a huge amount of fees to PROMETRIC.
5) BITSAT continues successfully for 4 years. CAT failed on "First day, First Show", continuing the same on the second day too.
If anybody wants to add more point ( pro BITS) then please comment.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Ninja Awesome Game


Video Games are part and parcel of our lives. There are some which require high config processors and stuff , and on the other hand there are some which are simple and addictive in their own way.

One is Monkey Kick Off. I remember waking up 1 full night in order to beat my friends score. Try them out for yourself




Play Monkey Kick Off


Play Monkey Lander




But my favourite has been Ninja. I can guarantee that you will fall in love with the game as soon as you lay hands on it. It has that sort of an addiction, that can make you forget everything, and best of all, you dont have anybdy else to compete with. It is single player game, but requires eye and keyboard sync of the utmost level.
The sceen is simple, the rules are simple. You just have to manoeuvre your "ninja" through a 2D screen which is filled with obstacles, but it is the obstacles that will win your heart away.
-> a following missile
-> a mario like tortoise slider
-> laser bot
-> antenna bots
-> cannons


Download N Ninja

Game Info , Forum etc

You just have to play to love it. It is made in Flash and you have to respect the programming expertise of the designer. Looks like he has used Action Script. Well we need not worry about these silly things , just play the gmae and get immersed in it.

Yeah it can act as a stress buster too. And please please play it on a proper keyboard, dont spoil your laptop keys.

Monday, November 2, 2009

World Slipping out of their paws and our hands ....

Yesterday I watched the BBC Earth 2009 Documentary. You know, sometimes I feel how selfish I am. Consider this. I see the documentary, I feel bad about the state of the planet and the species living in it ( both plants and animals), I make a resolve to make a change , I adopt a few restrictions and constraints in my life, goes on for a fortnight or so, and then it all vanishes. You are back to the messed up, unncessarily complicated money obsessed life of yours.
So I have thought that instead of making false resolutions, one can do simple thing. Watch 2 or 3 documentaries like this per month. We generally scavenge for movies and music videos. Why shouldn't we watch this for a change.
The world has so many wonders in store for us, if we dont care for it at least we should see it and acknowledge the beauty of it. Once you see it, you will never feel like doing any anti-earth activity.
The beauty of the planet can be best understood by studying the life of its inhabitants. This file tells about the most challenging migrations taken by some animals every year. The amount they travel in a year, we might not do that even in our lifetime. Please be amazed by the facts

Amazing Earth

Below is a nice video from the same documentary. I will be uploading more soon.

Please read news about the climate change.


The video below is about a species of birds who scale the great Himalayan mountains of the heights 7000m twice every year.




Discovery Climate

National Geographic Climate

BBC Climate

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Animals Extinction

Click on pic to download nice wallpaper

I dont know how many had watched the " Tigers in India" , a documentary on either Discovery or the National Geographic, baout the ugly truth of Tiger Conservation in India.
We all know how serious this issue is, but if you are blaming the government authorities, and the poachers for the letdown, then you are not helping at all. It is very easy to comment on the negligience of the authorities and the act of the poachers but you must think twice.

The people who are actually guarding the forests, who sit on raised paltforms, and conduct daily investigation, have only lathis with them. LATHIS.. against deadly animals, leave aside weapons of poachers. How in the world can one expect them to do their job with such meagre facilities.
Even if you ask the guys , it is not that they are proud of protecting the "National Animal of India", or the government is making them feel proud, it is just that they don't have any other option of income. Judge this, the people visiting the park as tourists have high end binoculars, whereas these protectors don't have it.
Now who is the culprit? The authority just above the guards? Maybe he is not getting funds at all. Just the salaries of the employies, which is actually the case in most of the reserves. Funds can only flow in, if the public creates awareness, because the politicians always act to keep the masses happy. We will also have to become clever.
Raise your voice, spread the news, discuss it with friends everywhere, so people start to take interest, and then when the media picks up, maybe the government will act. Till then we will have to continue trying.

Read this:

Save The Tigers

Tiger Link

Friday, September 25, 2009

India......Anglicized.... and back


City name change is a common occurrence in India. And not only in India, the names of cities have danced, oscillated, born, killed over the whims and fancies of the party ruling there.

Bombay to Mumbai ...... not so bad. Even songs have been written, Ganpat Daru La
At least there is no way of pronouncing mumbai, other than the correct one. But people still love the old name, as is apparent from the fact that after the name change from Bombay to Mumbai, The Times of India, began publishing a "Mumbai edition." The edition's feature section is still called the Bombay Times . At least they have spared the STOCKS it's still BSE.

Calcutta to Kolkata ...... Well as far as my experience goes this city has experienced a name change only on paper. From the mouth of ( the not so familiar with Bengal or Bengali ) people it comes out as Kaulkatta. I remember everybody could suddenly see a lot of K's around themselves. Kolkata Municipal Corporation, Kolakta Tramways, K this, K that. A person who is generally glued to the television ( Zee, Star Plus, Sahara one, Sony and likes) from 1 PM to 5 PM could easily figure out the Ekta Kapporization of Calcutta.

Madras to Chennai ..... I dont know any Tamil, but even then , this I feel has been the worst of changes. The word "Madras" itself commanded certain respect. My grandmother still uses "mudrasss" in her conversation.

It is not that Indians don't like Indian names. Our fathers did not name us as Canning ( a street in Kaulkutta) . The problem is a city is renamed by the local politicians, and the renamed name might cause a lot of problems to people not belonging to that region.
Take Kerala for example. Only after going there did i realize that "Kozhikode" is actually pronounced as "Korrrikode".

Renaming of cities takes place all round the globe.Wiki List
Take the example of 'Tabora' capital city of some region in Tanzania. After German colonization it was named 'Weidmannsheil'. After the German left it was quietly named back to 'Tabora'

But one may also argue that it would take one generation to get used to the new names and after that things would pretty be normal. A child born now would not care whether Chennai was Madras previously. To him Madras would sound like a fairy world name.

Future possibilities :)

Ahmedabad - > Karnavati
Lucknow - > Lakshman Puri

Delhi - > Indraprashtha
Delhi - > Dilli

Thursday, September 24, 2009

POLITICS ........POLITICS

One just cant stop wondering about politics. Its everywhere in India. In offices,homes,schools,vedas and uh..of course The Parliament. The subtle difference is that people in Parliament have Politics as their " prime business" whereas for others it is "side business".

Recently there had been a spate of news, unearthing, digging out cases 6 to 7 years back. There were many of them. And to add to the already generated hype, the media clung to it for a whole week, till the issues became boring.

1) Whether the Nuclear test ( the second) was a failure or success.
Again that old "Cong-BJP" war. If the test was a success then the scientist who claimed otherwise should die with shame. One should simply think of national interests while issuing such comments.

2) Swine Flu
Wow, The deaths were tracked like anything, with an hourly city by city basis. It is good that they are doing this but if only they can do this with existing diseases like "malaria", "dengue","typhoid" etc etc ..... so many lives can be saved. Just because it became a global phenomenon
did our Indian Media deemed it necessary to cover it.

3) Gujarat Case
I dont know the details but it went on for quite some time, round the clock.



Interestingly other major issues were kept at bay like

1) Drought in Bihar ( almost nobody knows about it)
Its as if everybody has taken for granted that there will be some drought or the other.

2) ISRO ( Well I dont think any other technical government entity has progressed as ISRO has done and it is only through sheer hard work).

3) Commonwealth Games
What is the status of preparation? We don't know
What all are they going to build? We don't know
Why are newly made bridges collapsing? We don't know ( this actually nobody knows)

4) Kasab
What's going on with Kasab? Is he still in jail or scot free?
When is he going to be released? ( Obviously he cannot be convicted,Indian Judiciary could not find strong evidence against him. He needed to kill many more people to be charged with some kind of felony)

Friday, July 10, 2009

Ethnic Vice... Balika Vadhu

Right now the most watched soap on air is "Rakhi Sawant ka Swayamvar" ( which is so good a matter of discussion that it calls for a new post) but I want to concentrate on the soap that had one month back rocked the charts ( on the small screen).
Initially the high pitched voice and the seemingly unnatural feminine aggression and dominance of Dadi sa was a treat, not because of bland potrayal of the Haryana Rajasthan ethnic culture but because it was something different from the regular boring "kicch kicch". The same effect was seen for SAB's Left Right Left. I was myself an ardent viewer but a weak script of around a month was enough to draw myself out of its clutches.

The thing i like most abt "Balika Vadhu" is that it has shown immense maturity. Problems that have plagued those regions for centuries and are doing so even now have finally been communicated to everybody in a very different fashion handling the matter with equality. Its not that "widow remarriage" should be practised and why shouldnt anyone allow it. They have shown why these evils persist , what happens to those who stand up against it , what can be the possible solution.

The happy part is the youth in this serial has taken the bold step. And yeah watch out for the adages at the end of the serial. They arre really meaningful.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Advertising

The most effective ad till day has been that of Siemens. The tag line "Therefore siemens" was just amazing. But what I noticed was the line at the end "Issued in public interest on World Environment Day". Is this kind of effective broadcasting limited only on one day. Should not these kind of advertisements be aired throughout the year. If a particular company keeps on making new effective ads not only its interests are being promoted but also that which is fro the general good.
For a mention the new Intel ad was brilliant especially the one with Ajay Bhatt co founder of USB. Rellay an inspiring ad. :)

Monday, May 18, 2009

At last... Knight Riders

Simply speaking the win came as a bolt from the blue. Judging by the past last over finishes, the knight riders had never been lucky and even this one it was by chance that the ball cleared the in field. The happiest man would no doubt be Brendon McCullum.
Any other captain in his stead would have his self confidence shattered to pieces by the continuous dismal performance of his team. But not this man.. He has come out strong learning from his mistakes and we see the results in the last game against Chennai super kings.
Everybody should take a leaf out of his way of holding the team together and leading from the front single handedly. In the last game i however found the commentary very biased in the favour of the chennai super kings. It is a thing the IPL guys should take care of.