Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Fossकृति!

See that logo on the right at the bottom of the side-bar?



You don't? Scroll down a bit.



Arey, the one that's Black and Orange, (was made by me =), and looks like this:


FOSSKriti


Yep, that's right, we're having FOSSKriti at Techkriti '08 (IITK's Tech festival) from 13th to 17th Feb.

We're going to have Talks, HackFests, BoFs, Workshops, and goodies. If you're going to Techkriti, be sure to drop by.

It's the first time it's being held, so it'll certainly be an interesting event - especially with the Beagle/dashboard Hackfest Arun and I plan to organise ;)


Planning on having loads of fun that weekend,

~bheekling :^)

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Right Where It Belongs

If you haven't, listen to the song and read the lyrics. They contain such power that can only be exuded by NiN songs.




Two versions, listen to both of them if you can, else the first one.







Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth

See the animal in it's cage that you built
Are you sure what side you're on
Better not look him too closely in the eye
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on
See the safety of the life you have built
Everything where it belongs
Feel the hollowness inside of your heart
And it's all
Right where it belongs

[Chorus]
What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems
What if all the world you think you know
Is an elaborate dream
And if you look at your reflection
Is it all you wanted to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself
Find yourself afriad to see?

What if all the world's inside of your heart
Just creations of your own
Your devils and your gods
All the living and the dead
And you really are alone
You can live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can't find the words
Are you hiding in the dreams?

[Chorus]

Friday, January 25, 2008

げんしけん (Genshiken)

The title is the name of an Anime about a club called 現代視覚文化研究会 (Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyūkai). The English translation usually used is Society for Study of Modern Visual Culture.
However, the Modern era was the 1980s-90s, and hence I prefer the translation Society for Study of Contemporary Visual Culture instead. This opinion is, of course, not entirely my own (hah, almost had you fooled into thinking I was an expert on this stuff), but was brought around by two separate pieces of information I gathered from two completely different sources.

The story is long, so please bear with me.

It started off in September of 2007- oh, wait. I think I can make this shorter. There you go.

Hmmm, that link isn't very descriptive. Oh well, I'll just explain it.

Well, it started off sometime in Sept '07 (ah, the past gives me such nostalgia.. though since it's such a recent past, this probably isn't a good sign O_O), nareshov and I simultaneously had a sudden burst of energy, and decided to form an Anime cum Manga Club. There were several examples of precedence, so we knew it could be done. Plus, the Films and Media Council was undergoing a restructuring, so it was the best time for a new club to bloom.
So, we went to Prof. Suchitra Mathur for advice on how to proceed. Why? Simply because she was only person related to non-technical stuff that we both knew well enough to approach, and who we knew would actually be interested in it too :)

We talked to her, she told us that although she cannot back us officially (since she was already into the Book Club, Meander, and countless other things), but that we were welcome to come anytime for advice, and that we had her "blessings" so to speak ;) For official backing (which is good/required while forming a club), she advised us to meet Prof. Satyaki Roy who was (and is) the Faculty advisor for the FMC. Coincidentally, Naresh knew him quite well, having done a course under him. We then discussed (at length) the aims of the club with Ma'am, and she convinced us (to cut a long story short) to broaden our scope to include several kinds of Visual Culture; not just Anime and Manga, and as a consequence, forming a bridge between all the clubs under the FMC (since it covers all forms of contemporary culture), and other clubs as well, such as the Book Club (manga/comics).

We then proceeded to meet Prof. Roy with a renewed sense of purpose, and with a grand design in mind. A design with a purpose, and a design. Wait, I already used those two words didn't I? Crap, too tired to change them too.

Damn, I should hurry up and finish this post before I collapse on this keyboard.

Right, so he extended it even further to include things like the artwork on the back of trucks, and accepted it with open arms :P

And, then the FMC Secy got über-excited about the whole thing, and we talked about various stuff, and then put a preliminary writeup about the Club infront of the Students' Senate at the next meeting. Happy Ending: We'll be an official club starting next sem :)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the whole point of this post; the name of the club is SSCVC, pronounced Genshiken :}

Oh, and the Modern/Contemporary thing I mentioned before was revealed to us by Prof. Satyaki Roy.
The second piece of information (that I found out about in passing), was that the translation was not "official", and was merely the one that the fansubbers had used. So, the proper meaning was probably "contemporary".

EOF

Monday, January 21, 2008

TesseracT and the Techkriti T-Shirt

Well, it got over a few days back, and now I can relax... Oh crap, exams this week >_<

Anyway, here's a limerick, and if you can solve it (and you weren't playing TesseracT), you're allowed to.. bah.

A firefox extension, a fountain of memes,
the abode of randomness, and pervy dreams.
'twas hacked, and a movie made,
people were banned, and anons hailed.
Copies exist, but the original's the same,
all that's posted is completely insane!

On a somewhat-related note, people from my college are going insane on a google doc, frantically brainstorming on quotes for the Techkriti T-Shirt =)

Some samples (mostly original):

"They googled geek... and found me."

Front: "Resistance is futile."
Back: "(when < 1 Ohm)"

(all bloody and gory) "We fragged the punchline"

"In case of Big Crunch, follow me"

"I have a fractional Erdos number. And I don't know what that means."

Two T-Shirts:
1. Front: "Theoretician," Back: "Warning: Experiments may fail with me around."
2. Front: "Experimentalist," Back: "Warning: Proofs may develop fallacies with me around."

"Made entirely from recycled atoms"

"Don't be a Carnot Follower, believe in 100% efficiency"

"Watt is the unit of power?"

"Rome was created in 7 days; We create tomorrow in 4" (Techkriti goes on for 4 days)

"Absolute zero is cool"

"Heisenberg: Schrödinger's Cat is Dead. No, wait. Schrödinger's Cat is Not Dead. No, wait..."

"Art is 'I'; science is 'we'"

"I am all that is left of a witty quote."

"%s/God/Me"

"A Physicist is someone who averages the first 3 terms of a divergent series"

"This quote was generated by a program"


And, towards the end, a meta quote/haiku ;)

Hundreds of quotes,
On a google doc,
The haiku made it. ~Nirbheek

And then more quotes :P

"Heisenberg rules - probably"

"Haven't Lost My Mind; It's Backed Up on a Disk Somewhere"

However, it's been hours, and they still haven't decided on a final yet. I guess that's relegated to the next blog post then ;)

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Tekkon Kinkreet

Sunday. The most dreaded day of the week, for it's followed by a new work week.
Sundays make me sad.

If you're thinking of watching a movie sometime soon, put Tekkin Kinkreet at the top of your list. I watched the movie today morning, and the movie has the best animation I have ever seen in any animated movie. The art style, though very different, reminded me of the form characteristic of Mononoke.

Snaps really don't do justice to the movie, best is to watch a few minutes snipped from the starting of the movie:





High-res version