enginerd

21.

Usually I and the act of smoking do not get along very well. But for the past few days, as I suddenly realize, it is not very hard to find a smoke not too far from me. And it is not that I crave for it or anything like that, but with a cigarette ever so ubiquitous in the residence hall, plus surrounded by hard core smokers always keen on lighting up, you just can't help it!!! I ought to do something about it, though. Too much of passive smoking ain't good.

From Boston News : The makers of Japan's favorite instant ramen noodles will soon be airing a commercial that's truly out of this world. Starting next month, Nissin Food Products Co. will film a promotional spot on the International Space Station for Cup Noodle, featuring a sales pitch by a hungry Russian cosmonaut. The commercial will air in Japan in November as part of Nissin's "Cup Noodle No Border" campaign, according to a statement Wednesday by Japan's space program, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. Space Films, a venture business set up by JAXA that specializes in space images, will send a high-definition camera to the space station aboard a Russian rocket launch Oct. 1 and direct the filming from Russia's Mission Control Center outside Moscow, JAXA said.

Three (almost four now) straight all-nighters, with only a few hours of sleep thrown in between the days, and yet I am unable to sleep. If someone was really keen on looking out for 'signs', I wonder what would this count as? But with assignments taking their toll on me and with my procratinatinating streak, in this supposedly "easy-going" semester, I couldn't blame anybody. Perhaps what I need is a time capture device to store away this wasted time that I could release anytime later and put it to some good use, say sleeping. The past week, the only thing that I had done remotely close to my academics was a Graphics assignment with OpenGL and stuff. And I was shocked to see a note from the Teaching Assistant which stated his inability to execute the 'C' Code. Apparently, I have to mail him the entire workspace, something that I find absolutely ridiculous. Just how difficult is it to set up a workspace and execute the code. To make things real bad, I have a...

I cant believe you are all still here. I have been way too busy the past week and now with things cooling off a bit, I surely will be blogging more regularly.For now, I need to catch some sleep...

Not often do I post two entries here in quick succession that completely stump me. The earlier one about Mozilla Browsers being more vulnerable than IE and now this whole thing about the email address being case sensitive. New York Times says: The domain-name portion of the e-mail address - the part after the @ sign - is not case -sensitive, but the first part of the address may need to be typed in exactly as given. This rule is explained in RFC 2821, the document laying out Internet e-mail standards, found at faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2821.html . This certainly is news to me. I never had thought that my username was case sensitive. Apparently, in most cases they aren't. The RFC2821 states: The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive. Therefore, SMTP implementations MUST take care to preserve the case of mailbox local-parts. Mailbox domains are not case sensitive. In particular, for some hosts the user "smith" is different from the user "Smith". But ...

According to a Symantec Report , Mozilla Browsers are MORE vulnerable than Internet Explorer. Well...

[Redefining] software engineering professionalism with the following objectives: a professional programmer picks a worthwhile problem to attack ; we are engineers, not scientists, and therefore should attempt solutions that will solve real user problems a professional programmer has a dedication to the end-user experience ; most computer applications built these days are Web applications built by small teams and hence it is now possible for an individual programmer to ensure that end users aren't confused or frustrated (in the case of a programmer working on a tool for other programmers, the goal is defined to be "dedication to ease of use by the recipient programmer") a professional programmer does high quality work ; we preserve the dedication to good system design, maintainability, and documentation, that constituted pride of craftsmanship a professional programmer innovates ; information systems are not good enough, the users are entitled to better, and it is our j...

As I read this , I'll have to say that it cannot get any more innovative(weird?) than a rent-a-guest agent.

And just as this hiatus comes to an end, I'd like to let all know that this was not a result of mundanity. Things were moving at quite a pace and yet, somehow didn't fall into the category of weblog content. India finally managed to win something at Cricket. Defeating Zimbabwe by an innings and 90 runs may not be the achievement one would be envied for, but with the way our royalty (read star cricketers) have been performing, I'd say it does classify a bit into something worth getting deliriously happy for. More Cricket. England finally finally claimed the Ashes. The whole Aussie outfit surrendered to the Flintoff-Pieterson duo in a manner none would have predicted at the beginning of the series. And while this made some ecstatic, one cant simply admire the way the Aussies threatened to turn it all around, all on the last day. I have officially reached the conclusion that there cannot be made a movie that actually bores me. Gates on Google : [Google] have this slogan that...