Decoding “huh”

Disclaimer- This post is written from a guy's perspective so some of our female readers(on second thought do gals really visit this blog???) might not like it....

If you ask any guy to make a list of most frustrating phrases to hear, “huh” will come up in the list for sure. We don’t understand it and the word has so many varied meanings that even after an extensive research we have not been able to come up with a single best response against it. But our guide might help you survive.

So here it goes:

1. The “I don’t believe you” “huh!”: This huh is good, means you have surprised the other person with whatever you have said just now and you should feel good about it.

2. The “Sarcastic I don’t believe you” “Huh!”: This huh is said in a sarcastic way, when she does not believe what you are saying is true. It is usually difficult to differentiate between the “I don’t believe you” and the “Sarcastic I don’t believe you” huh. You should pay close attention for other verbal or visual cues to differentiate between the two.

3. The “Genuine I dint get you” “huh?”: Usually means you are very nervous and your voice is deserting you while you are standing in front of her making you incoherent. It also might mean that or are conversing in a place with lots of background noise.

4. The “I don’t Understand you” “huh??”: This huh usually is the first sign. Take heed. It should make you look back and stop your “geeky”, “sports”, “boast” or other such talk. On the positive outlook, this also means that she is genuinely interested in what you want to say and thus it is a great chance to get that point across but just don’t push for it.

5. The “Irritated” “huh!!”: This means that you are really starting to get on her nerves and usually requires you to make rapid changes in your attitude. It is usually used when she does not like your attitude towards something or someone. If you don’t seem to understand it, then the best strategy should be to change the topic.

6. The “I don’t care/indifferent” “huh!!”: This means that you have already lost her. She does not care for what you are saying. You did not pay close attention to the earlier stages and now you need to really do something desperate to get back the attention. Otherwise this conversation is already lost.

7. The “Getting Angry” “Huhhh” : This is the one of the most dangerous kind as she is going to get angry with you if you don’t take any correcting steps now. Warning bells should be sounded and you should rack through your brains to find all the things you said in the last 15 seconds. Because certainly some thing you said has been really unpleasant. Make amends, apologize and let go.

8. The “Already angry” “Huhhhhhh” : This means that she is already angry. Although an apology will not hurt, but you will need to mean it. This means that you need to understand why she is angry and if you have reached this stage, it usually means you have no clue about it. Try hard and take immediate action, otherwise the conversation has already turned into a disaster.

9. Crying Huh : Guys you never wanna be anywhere near this kind of huh… God save you, you have really hurt her, bad bad you!

If you are wondering why and whose idea was it to decode “huh”. Well it was Ankit’s and he has collected all the data. Why did he do it? Well, it gave him a chance to talk to girls for some reason :P. I just volunteered to compile the data into this useful, easy to understand(perhaps) guide.

Ankit: Guys, this is our humble attempt at unraveling the mystery if you feel we did a good job please encourage us so that we continue on this path to make your lives easier. Also, we would like to thank all the girls who answered my queries patiently and for answering my weird questions. Though there is a possibility that some girls might run after me for hitting me after reading this post(if they do read this blog) for wasting their time to collect data for this (stupid?) post. I haven’t mentioned the names of the girls whom i asked questions related to the expression huh.  Though, if they feel like it, they can mention their names in the comments..

Ghajini in Rs 10

Today I had my best experience of watching movie and that too the cheapest I would have ever watched. In Rs. 10 only!!!

Ghajini is awesome because of Aamir and I am now a very very big fan of Aamir. His acting is so believable, his expressions always so apt, never too much neither too less. The screenplay is awesome, story – well it has a lot of holes, and coming from a South Indian Director, the climax fight is very much like Rajnikanth. But the movie has a lot of action, comedy and drama… a perfect film just because of Aamir and Kalpana(I don’t remember the real name of the South Actress, but she was so cute…, Jia was terrible both in looks and acting) . Now, that I have given decent lip-service(well it deserves a lot more, but hey I am tired and need to tell a story) to the film.

Actually, we were all very excited of watching this movie, but sadly on 25th all the tickets were booked at PVR till 28th. So, this time, we went to a multiplex hall in Miapur where tickets are very cheap. Although, we reached at 5:00 and there were two shows: 6:00 and 6:15 . But sadly both got “house full” and the next show was 9:15. The hall is in Miapur, where there is no place to hang out at(well there was a very dirty pond in between, but nobody wanted to take a dip in it :P) , and very heated debates were going on about whether we want to go to Microsoft or to the guest House. Microsoft held the promise of gym and lawn tennis and of course work!! While Guest house held a warm, soft bed ready for us.

Now, we were just outside, when this gentleman comes to us and says that he can arrange 6 tickets. It was the same gentleman whom we had asked how to spend 4 hours in this place! Sadly, we were 8 guys and some were all for doing katta of Mukki and Shekhu. (They were coming in another auto and had not reached by then).  Anyways, Jitesh and Anshul took the initiative to enquire for the possibility of arranging 2 more tickets in black. They go to a counter where they are selling tickets of Rs. 10 each. These are all front seats(ok chairs) and there is no guarantee that you will get seats, you might have to sit on floor or stand. But we were desperate. We bought 8 tickets and went through the main gate. Usually you don’t see 8 decent looking dudes with Rs 10 tickets in hands, so the security people allowed us in. (There is another line of Rs 10 tickets which is outside the hall.) But we went into the hall early and thus got seats.

Now, the atmosphere inside the hall was awesome… better than Vishal I must say. There were whistles, shouts, and we could express our emotions ah… freely! Hey even Jitesh expressed himself so, you can understand, how the atmosphere took us all in.

I got an IMAX Feel while watching the movie from so near. It was totally a great experience… Hey even a CD costs more than 10 bucks… and we watched a 200 rupees worth film in Rs 10.

Exams and me

My end semester exams are going on. So, what am I doing here, blogging? Shouldn’t I be studying? Well I am not, because I believe I will do it later!

If you are thinking that I am a procrastinator, don’t bother telling me. I have known it always, and I get this huge realization of being the worst procrastinator during exams. Some facts to support the claim: [I have to defend this self-derogatory claim because some people won’t believe me!!!]

1. Till 10 PM at night during every exam, I manage to complete 25% of the course at max!

2. Till 12 PM the exam morning (exams are being held in the afternoon shift from 2 to 5), I complete my 90% course!!!! [Please don’t assume that I stay up all night for mugging up! I can do coding all night, but mugging up, no]

But surprisingly enough, my exams have gone well till now, heck, I took 3 extra sheets for 3 of my theory exams and took 2 extra sheets in the fourth. Previously, I used to be a guy who could never fill up even one extra sheet. How did I do it:

1. The revision during 12 to 2 with friends helped me a lot. And I realized that all those guys who give advise to students sitting for Board exams have got it ALL WRONG. In fact, you should:

a) DO LAST MINUTE REVISIONS

b) NEVER MEDIDATE/CALM YOURSELF BEFORE EXAMS. INSTEAD YOU SHOULD STUDY ENERGETICALLY AND DISCUSS A LOT TILL 5 MINUTES BEFORE EXAMS

c) DO EVERYTHING ON THE LAST DAY, THAT WAY YOU WILL REMEMBER ENOUGH TO WRITE FOR 3 HOURS

[I am not Joking]

2. I have tried to write faster. [I am not a slow writer per se but my writing speed declined as my typing speed increased.]

And now, if you have managed to read this far, congratulations. Comments welcome as always!

Sleep

I have been sleeping a lot for the past 2 days. Infact, I slept for more than 12 hours yesterday and 4 hours in the day itself today. How has the change come in me, I don’t know, but it has definitely made me conscious about the one body function we care very less about i.e. Sleep.

I read some things about sleep and thought, hey, this would be a cool topic to blog about. Sleep it seems is quite essential to body, but its exact functions are still a point of research. It can be divided into two stages based on eye movement – REM(Rapid Eye Movement) and NREM( Non-Rapid Eye Movement). REM Stage is also known as the dream stage while NREM is the so-called sound sleep without dreams. Both stages are essential to humans.

There is a term known as “sleep debt” which basically means that if you ward off sleeping for some time i.e. lets say you sleep for only 3 hours for one day, the next day it is mandatory for you to sleep for 13 hours to make up for the lost sleep previously. I find it true in my daily life, though I have found that the graph decreases as the amount of sleep missed increases. My personal graph for the two components is like this:

 

Sleep is thought to be very essential for restoring functions and growth of the body. Studies have shown less healing and growth in sleep-deprived rats. Apart from this, scientists have also shown that working memory which is responsible for reasoning, cognitive functioning, and remembering things (important for exams) is directly affected with sleep deprivation. In this case, the test subjects were human beings. Apart from this, it has been shown that people who are unable to sleep properly are weary most of the time and lack the ability to concentrate on the task at hand.

The sleep requirements for various age-groups are different. Adults need only 7-8 hours of sleep, adolescents nearly 9-10, elderly 8-10, pre-school children 12 hours and babies upto 18 hours of sleep! Guess, I should re-evaluate the category I fall in.

If you are having problems having sleep, then I think you might be doing one of the following:

1. Eating late at night
2. Watching TV/Computer till late(like me who is writing this post at around 1 AM)
3. Doing no exercise during the whole day.
4. Having tension/exam blues(Basically procrastinating your work till the last night to the submission).

Apart from all the scientific stuff, I think I have my own theory too about sleeping. I think we learn all the things we did during our dreams. In my experience, dreams during exams are mainly concerned of formulae, theories and nightmares involving giving the wrong exam. While, dreams after watching a movie, reading a gripping novel consist of you enacting a part of the story. For instance, after a 12 hour dose of Harry Potter novel(don’t remember the novel number), I had this brilliant dream of flying on a broomstick, and that was the most wonderful dream ever! Dreams after playing a sport are usually the best, once I had played Table Tennis for 2 hours before dropping off for sleep, and all I dreamt of was the TT Ball bouncing up and down. But after a hard physical day, I do not dream at all. Guess, my body feels the need for physical restoration higher than mental reinforcing of experiences. So, the graph for this will be like:

Would love to hear your experiences on sleep… Comments awaited.

Gandhian Principles for Computer Geeks

                          

On the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, I thought it will be best to teach the Gandhian principles to the computer geeks and programmers alike.

1. Love Your Enemy

I know its hard to do, but you have got to love those nasty bugs that crop up in the code you write. By love, Gandhiji does not mean that you have to sing love songs to them, but you have to understand them and have compassion for them. Understanding why they occur can be critical in your approach towards defeating them.

2. Always be truthful

This is very important, in case you bring down the whole system while you were playing around with the system of your organisation, be truthful. Take up the matter in your own hands to fix it and admit your mistake to the system Adminstrator.

3. Never use violence

This is one of the major principles of Gandhiji. Whenever, you encounter that undiscoverable bug or a heisenbug don’t just crash your computer and/or any of its parts. Instead, take a deep breath, control your anger and go out to have a coffee.

You have to understand that while unneccessary violence will help you vent your anger, it will only make your enemy gloat at you. Thus, keeping an impassive face, feigning resignation by moving away and then attacking it after some time (non-violently of course) always works for me. 

4. Try to win your enemy over to your side

This is one very simple principle. If you can’t correct the bug, make sure you make it known to the people that it is a feature in the product. Many of the major features might have come this way and we would not have known.

5. Don’t be angry; suffer the anger of your opponent

You don’t have to show anger to the opponent, it only causes the bug to gloat in happiness. Rather suffer its anger, slog it out, it draws the attention of fellow geeks to your cause and they will come out and help you when they see you spending hours in your cubicle while you should be out there playing foosball/TT with them.

6. Wean your opponents from error with sympathy and patience

This applies when you are coding. You do the coding with patience, sympathy for the bugs, and you will find yourself debuging less.

These principles appear to be hard to follow and might prove to be slow in working, but there is no other principle in the world that can help you more.

As usual waiting for the comments.

Caution: Read at your own risk.

The usual symptoms after reading this will be a feeling of time wastage and if by any chance, you had an illusion that this blog can provide useful content, then the illusion will be shattered. You have been warned, now let the post begin:

X : hey deepank wud u have a min

me: haan of course, wats up

X: yaar jo hamari lab thi sw engg ki 6 sem uss mein jo hum sabne project banaya tha wat was the basis of it

me: basis matlab....

X: i mean like wat wud u tell someone if u have to assign him some work like wud u just say make a sw model for me

me: yes... u can say that make a design/umls/model for the project.

X: hmm i wanted a more formal language u know kind of lets say u are explaining you work to your employer so that it adds weight to ur skills :D

me: Ok. In that fashion i would say : Developed a software model and design for the Railway Management system as a part of the term project

X: hmm gud but not gud enough i need to go into more details and somehow i am out of words actually i have to send in my CV to unis u know apart from the SOP. so i have to give a liitle detail abt it :)

me: hmm, So tell it this way : Developed the design and model of Indian Railway Ticket Reservation software system which automates ticket reservations and bla bla.

X: wahin na that bla bla will add weight else toh u also know ki the project didnt have much weight :D...  ny ideas?how to make it look good?

me: umm ..... The software system does intelligent reservation while taking the passenger physical condition and preferences into consideration

X: hmm now we are getting somewhere :)

me: along with adequate scalability features to incorporate quotas and new schemes like Tatkal

X: ya thats cool..also cancellation or just checking train info and obviously booking also spl discounts are available to senior citizens,doctors, and students

me: yea

X: i think i am done with it let me just reframe it and i will show u the final piece :)

Developed the design and model of Indian Railway Ticket Reservation software system which automates ticket reservations. The software system does intelligent reservation while taking the passenger physical condition and preferences into consideration along with adequate scalability features to incorporate quotas and new schemes like Tatkal, E-Ticketing and I-Ticketing. It gives the passenger the flexibility of not only booking or cancellation of ticket but also the ability to check information about any train.

me: perfect :)

X: ok can i ask for a little more help

me: yea yea, y soo formal

X: 2 more questions first the practical utility of the project i mean how did it help in developing one's ability second a short summary of the subject under which the project comes in short a gist abt sw engg

me: it helped in dev ur ability by helping u apply formal sw engg tools nd tech. to practical problems.  

X: hmm that is gud point

me: It also helped you to understand professional software development giving you first hand experience on how to make a reliable, efficient, scalable, robust and maintainable softeare system

X: waah lovely

me: thank you :)

X: i guess it is fair enough to say that u deserve getting a call from gsoc each year u know how to play with words :)

me: hehe, yea thats why i love writing blog too :P

X: ya i can see that now

One person convinced about why I love to blog…. sorry to bore you with the chat conversation…. Now you know why I categorize such posts as : Hopefully Funny :P

Incurably Addicted!!!

This is the life-story of an incurably addicted person. He is not addicted to cigarettes, neither to alcohol and nor to drugs. He is addicted to computers. (The "he" in the story is "me").

My story starts way back when I was still in an immature stage in the 6^th standard. It starts in the heat of summers when I joined Casio Classes to learn the syntax of music. But apparently, my compiler failed miserably in compiling the Casio program and I was branded as the Nalayak(Duffer) student in the class. My Casio still awaits me in a corner like an abandoned piece of code left till eternity to rot. I moved on – my dream to become music pro was labeled as an incurable bug which still shows its symptoms even today. The usual symptoms include me singing and people bearing.

In the meantime, the virus of computers was finding its way into school curriculum in the form of BASIC and other stuff. I did not realize the nature of Computers then. With the Dot Com boom, the virus made its first attack by influencing me to join a computer institute to learn Microsoft Office in the summers of 8^th Standard. As the program had ran so successfully at school and summer course, I decided to dogfood this virus named "Computers" by bringing a computer at Home 3 years hence. That was just the beginning!

Lets fast-forward the story to a more recent time(since the middle story is boring) where the effects of the virus are significant. I decided to join Gym after hearing the cool functionalities of this program. But whenever I try to click on it, it says: "Program Cannot Continue Install. Not enough Disk Space is available". When I go to see the disk usage of my brain, it shows:

Computer.exe 90 GB
Music.exe 2 GB
TimePass.exe 5 GB
TT.exe 1 GB
Reading.exe 0.5 GB
Food.exe 0.5 GB
Movies.exe 1 GB

Naturally, I tried to delete the Computers.exe program. I get the error: "Access Denied. The file/program is currently in use. Please try again later". I, being a smarty-pants, booted in the Recovery mode and typed in:
C:\Windows>del computer.exe
Are you sure(y/n): y
Command or File not found
C:\Windows>

So, I was unsuccessful. You know, once I did manage to start the CollegeGym Program 6 months back, since it is smaller in size and the disk usage was less, but it aborted after 1%. It showed the message: "Severe Muscle Pain Encountered. Do you want to abort the program?" I foolishly clicked on Yes. I still regret that click! Apart from this, the virus does not even allow me to download a large number of files like Girlfriend.exe giving me a program incompatibility error. This error comes after I ignore the warning message: "This Program is a deadly Virus. Do you want to continue?", which I did not for a long time! There are many other such programs, but I don't want to bore the pants off you with the technical details.

I will once again try to install the Gym Program tomorrow, and post the results of the installation process later on. Wish me luck and tell me some hacks if you know them!