Thursday, October 28, 2004

Children's games to give water to thirsty people!!

The Roundabout Outdoor people have come up with a nice idea.. to get water out of the group using the energy from children's games... a nice site... read on.

Makes me wonder, could this not be used in India nicely??

Anyone listening??

-A

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Allerca | The Hypo-Allergenic Cat

A very interesting thing this is!
Allerca is producing Hypo-Allergenic Cats that are genetically engineered to not cause problems to their owners..... how nice....

Add this to the list of fiction becoming fact..... (see previous post about brain on a petridish)..

Don't think about the future, know that it is here!

-A

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Brain outside body!!!

Univ. of Florida has this nice article about the culture of brain cells outside the body.. in a pertridish... and that it can control a flight simulator... interesting... or SCARY!!!
Post you comments folks!!
Animesh

Friday, October 22, 2004

Security Report: Windows vs Linux

Excellent article in the Register about Security Report: Windows vs Linux . Read on!
-A

Sunday, October 17, 2004

SRK teams up with son Aryan -- cool na?

Hi all,
SRK teams up with son Aryan .. nice article on IndiaFM.
Now I want to see this movie in Hindi :-).
-A

Scopo ... heads-up display....

I would say the future is here!!!
Video page for scopo.
Click on the "Scopo" video link.
Simply amazing... well.. this was bound to happen..
I wonder what's next!!

Animesh

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Theater at USC ... I finally found it!!

Ever since I came to USC, I have been looking for a place to see theater as it happens in american universities. However, all of the performances I came across were either non-free or clashing in time with something else I had to do, or both.

However, my fate changed for the better when on Oct 14, 2004, while pasting flyers for the AIS garba, I saw the flyers of a show by second nature, an inprov. comedy group at USC. I immediately decided to go since the timing was ripe.. Friday night at 10pm.

So there I was at Ground Zero Coffee House at 10pm, waiting for it to start... and boy.. was it coooool....

They started with the host impersonating a french waitor... he called a guy and a girl at random from the audience and made them sit on a table on the stage. They then chose "dishes" from a menu, which were actually games which the other members of the team played.

It was very similar to whose line is it anyway, in which participants had to think of dialogues and situations and responses instantly.

The appetizer was a game in which they all told a story... with the "controller" pointing out who has to continue next. Very much like the "block and tackle" we played back at ITBHU, except here you were responsible for completing other people's words also :-).

The next game was "revolving doors", in which three participants were each secretly told of a word (separate for each), upon hearing which in a conversation, the participant either leaves the stage if he is in or vice versa. It was hilarious to see them doing a pen-pal meeting scene with "cue" words like "the" and "letter" :-)).

Another one included a game in which the audience suggested dialogues which were written on bits of paper and thrown on the stage. The participants were to pick them up while enacting a scene and blend them into the conversation.... I nearly fell out of the couch I was sitting in =)

Then there was "chain murders". This involved three participants, one of whom is told a murder location, the dead person's profession and the murder weapon. Then the others enter one by one and the previous person to come on stage "tells" the person these answers by gestures and gibberish ... like adasdb aksdb lorem ipsum ..asdlaibaf adsfjba (if you could understand what I meant by those words... go see a doctor :-) )... The people have to do this "information exchange" within 2 minutes and then all are called on stage and start telling what they think are the answers... kinda like the game we all playes as kids in which we would pass around a message by whispering in each others ears in a circle.. and then heard what everyone "thought" the message was.... except here it was with gestures and oh-so-funny gibberish!!

They also did a "shakespeaker" spoof... and a scene in which one of them has a "skill/property" which he does not know of and the others try to make his realize what it is by giving clues while talking to him in a scene...

All in all... it reminded me of the pot-pourri and expressions events that we had back in ITBHU.

My friends from ultimate frisbee and Ben, a student of mine from EE102 Spring2004 tell me there are more groups on campus like that. Good for me!

I am surely looking forward to all the humorous theater I can attend at 'SC.

People who were patient enough to read till here.. please leave a comment.. I will appreciate your views on this post and any questions that you may have.

cheers
Animesh
P.S. I have not detailed all of them.. like "dubbing" etc.... more about them later..

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Dhamaal at ITBHU alumni meet in Southern Cal.

Saturday Oct 9, 2004 will go down in history as the day 25 people of the ITBHU family met at the Taal restaurant in southern california and had a great deal of fun.
More details at

ITBHU Alumni SoCal page
.
A must read for all ITBHU people reading this page, and for the people not from ITBHU... this is how much fun we have.. hope u have it too!!
cheers
Animesh

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Showdown at Center of Campus @ USC!!

Date: Wed, Oct 6, 2004
Time: 3:30pm

So here I am, going peacefully to teach a discussion session... when suddenly I see a DPS (Department of Public Safety) vehicle whizzing past me... horns blowing to clear the crowd that is generally present near Tommy Trojan, the symbol of USC pride.

Going a few more yards, I see that there is a huge crowd near tommy trojan, all looking towards the Bovard Auditorium. As I wondered what happened, I heard the cries of "Get out of the way" from behind me. Before I could respond, a DPS official gently brushed me aside while running towards the location of the event.

It was then that I heard this girl, in tears, talking on the phone telling someone about how this woman took her purse and showed her a knife. I was shocked to know that such things happen in the midday also.. and that too in the center of campus!!

I then saw the woman, brandishing a knife even as 7-8 DPS officers had her surrounded with guns in their hands. She started replying to one of the officer's request to drop the knife and it was then that another offier jumped her from behind and within a span of 3-5 seconds, they had her giftwrapped, all set to go to the DPS office and later, LAPD.

The incident reminded me how dangerous it is becoming nowadays here... and at the same time how efficient the DPS people are. Three cheers for them and also the students who reported this incident ASAP.

My wishes are for the girl whose purse was snatched.. I hope she comes out of the shock soon.

-A
P.S. You can read more about this on the Daily Trojan

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

FavIcon Generator

I came across this FavIcon Generator at Dynamic Drive. Pretty neat thing.
Thanks to them, we now have a favicon at the ITBHU.org site :-).

Sunday, October 03, 2004

AIS Cake and Cream Social.. and ITBHU Lit events...

We had the Association of Indian Students (AIS) Cake and Cream Social today (Oct 2nd, 2004) at USC and had TONZ of fun(pics coming up soon).

We played In-Out, Dumb-C and Ad-Mad games .... made me reminisce about the fun we had during the lit club events in ITBHU ... sniff...

Felt really good to see those competitions... too bad I could not take part.. I was organising.. (NRG, SP, Nitai, Animesh(Hazra), Pranay, Grover, Rajini, Maggie, Keerty, other ITBHU alumni .... are you people listening... send me emails at animesh.pathakATcse03.ITBHU.org about what you all are organising ).

Hope to be able to take part the next time, will ask someone else to do the organising.

I am very senti now.... will go and sleep...

I miss my days at the insti!!!

-A

Critical bug in firefox!!!

Hi all,
There is a super-critical bug in firefox.... thanks to the author.
Please go here : http://www.livejournal.com/users/shmivejournal/94967.html
:-)
-A