Life - what the fuck is it about anyway?

With insomnia, you're never really asleep and you're never really awake.

I couldn't sleep, again. This thing kicks in every now and then. Most of the times I sleep during the day when I can't sleep at night. I don't have any answers to why and how but it does happen often and it (the insomnia) and I have made our peace. There have been times when I couldn't sleep for weeks. Anxiety is supposed to be one of the reasons for insomnia, which perfectly fits in my case. Too much of anything is bad after all.

And life? It just moves on. I've been in this job that I'm in for about four months now. It's good to have a source of income. A man's gotta work. Some friends complained that I don't consider anyone as a friend. I've got my own reasons that I don't wish to disclose. But let's put it this way - I've had enough shit thrown my way by trusting people and I've had enough of that shit, so I'm bailing the fuck out. I remember the times when I thought love and friendship are "real" and worth dying for. There of course are exceptions. They know they're exceptions and that's all I need to know. I don't even call them friends. Maybe because I don't believe in the general inference of that word.

Even Vodka doesn't help. It does get the head heavy as usual, but I guess I don't drink enough of that to make me fall asleep. I don't like it. I'm a beer guy. Heavy metal and beer are my thing.

We had our site up and running after all. Now that I'm earning, I got our site registered and shit, and we're up at http://nurvsofsteel.com. Never liked the WWW anyway. So I kept it away. We're working on getting it to look better. I'm too much into the coding shit to concentrate on the traditional graphics. And about the EP, we're still on the second song. The due date was 15th of this month, and I don't know how far it's gonna be stretched. I don't have much time. I don't think I can delay it much longer this time.

I feel cheated sometimes. But then I realize that patience is the key to go to where I wanna go. But I find it hard. Hard but not impossible, I keep telling myself. Honestly, I see just a glimpse of a way. But I guess that's all one needs to keep his hope from dying.

Called Madhu a few weeks back after I got her number from Facebook (after searching for five years). She was furious. Well, she should be. At the end of the conversation, she wanted us to be friends. I couldn't tell her that I just called to apologize and tell myself that her life wasn't ruined because of me. That she moved on and is fine now. Being friends was never an option. I probably shouldn't have called. I did stop returning her calls after that. I couldn't let this get any worse than it already is. Or maybe I just prefer some things to be unanswered - both for me and for others. Maybe that's the way I am. Maybe I'm a little more twisted than I realized. Maybe I'm more numb than I thought. Maybe I'm more dead than I presumed.

BSNL blocked Google Custom Domains

The last few days, I've been real busy doing some work on my blogs. Apparently, BSNL has been kind enough to block all Google Custom domain IPs. All packets are being discarded and we're getting timeouts and resets. This has been going on for the last couple of months and all along I thought it was because of some fault of Google. Turns out that all Google custom domain blogs are down when mine is.

I've been waiting for this to work for the last four or five hours and after I'd had enough I asked a fellow photoblogger Ashley Sisk to check and see if her blog was working there. It was. As a matter of fact, so was mine. So I check if BSNL has made some intelligent move on its part to go on and reinvent the Great Firewall of China in India. I found this story about how BSNL users are unable to access Google custom domain blogs. There's been an entire case study of custom domain issues, which by the way is helpful. More so because it has a blogspot version as well.

From the looks of it, it's pretty vague as to what the people at BSNL trying to do. All other ISPs are working just fine. No wonder I'm not fond of things.

The last decade

It's not really possible to sum up a decade in one post. But I think I'm gonna try anyway.

The last decade was about change. Particularly the last four years of it. I learned about "freedom". What it really means, what it's about. I learned the truth about big things like RELIGION and GOVERNMENT and TERRORISM and ETCETRA ETCETRA... What is more important is that I learned what this life is all about.

I also learned that not everyone is your friend and not everyone you hate is a foe. I learned and unlearned many things.

The irony - in the end, I'm stuck at a place I "HATE". But I learned why I always hated it. I learned what I love. I love hanging out with my "friends". I love to party and most importantly, I love to live my life my way. No bull questions asked, no bull answers thought of. And yet, here I am, going somewhere I sure as hell despise.

When I was in college, I did everything that I was "taught" from the very beginning of my life to be BAD and SIN and SOMETHING A GOOD PERSON NEVER DOES. Guess what, it's all bull. None of that matters. One's choice does. So I chose to do whatever I wanted. And there isn't one thing I regret. I was happy doing what I did. The late night parties, the beer, the heavy metal, the never ending line of smokes, the weed, the roaming around the roads on bikes all night long, the all night book mugging the night before an exam. And although some of those things did feel really effed up at that time, looking back now, at least I was free. If I chose not to read and remember the damn books before an exam, I'd fail but that would just be my choice. There's nothing like having control of your life, especially when the only thing you knew about life (for all your life) was that it "belongs" to people that gave it to you.

Back to this hellhole (the corporate crappy mess, or at where I'm at), I don't feel free. I'm beginning to snap and when I do, I don't know, I'll just break free. But that's what it's about anyway. If you can't find a way to be happy, you don't deserve to live.

I never really thought I'd say this, but back in college, even if not many people knew me, even if not everyone was a friend, but everyone did care, and everyone would be with you if you're in trouble. I remember when one of got beat somewhere in town, we all used to go to duel, although everytime I went along, the thing would already be over by the time we reached there. The placement parties, we'd call just about everyone we knew - share the happiness.. I miss those times. I miss being free. And unlike everyone, I'm not mourning about it and saying that those days won't return. The choice is mine. But I'd have to let go of other less important things. I'll probably end up alone, but that doesn't matter because I'll be free.

And this one is for everyone I knew and didn't know back at college. Guys, I really miss you people... Although you won't be in deep shit by the end of the month now, but those were the days.

My conference paper

Somehow I thought of searching for the paper I had presented in the ICSTE conference about an year ago. Found the paper on the Internet. Here's the link: Randomized Multilevel Encryption. Looks like they have the pdf as well documenting the whole thing.

At present, I'm literally away from the camera. I'm however thinking of making something interesting. It will use lasers. I'll post about it at a later time maybe (that is if I ever do make it).

Checked out tempest for eliza today and beamed off AM waves from the computer screen, which transmitted music that I listened to on dad's old radio. Listening to old mac donald and Ludwig Van Beethoven's for Eliza in a never before imagined (by me) way was quite something.

The devil's workshop or the devil himself?

They say, an unoccupied mind is the devil's workshop. Well here's an unoccupied mind here. Where's the devil?

I've been spending the last few of months, practically doing nothing. I did some of the photography thing. Then, when it started getting boring, I did some gaming. Played some of the Ego Draconis, NFSMW, Splinter Cell and SC Pandora Tomorrow. When all the games were over, here I was unoccupied again. Then there was this advertisement in the paper about a photography competition (No, I still don't read the newspaper. Dad showed it to me). But their print aspect ratio was one of a kind. Not 16:9, not 16:10 and definitely not 4:3, which was the ratio of my photographs. They wanted huge prints for one to participate in it, and such a great place for photographers this place is, the best photo printers in town didn't have that big a paper. So I had to drop the plan. Then there came this lucid dreaming thing. I got inspired after watching Inception. Sinofemp used to talk about these lucid dream things when we lived together. He'd say that he was dreaming and found something unusual. And then he'd realize that he was dreaming and start doing whatever he wanted. Mostly he'd fly like Superman. I trained my ass to do that for a couple of weeks, but as they'd put it, it needs a lot of patience just for you to get the first lucid dream. Patience, as it turns out is my worst nightmare when I see no development at all. I did have one though, much after I stopped trying, but the moment I realized I was dreaming, I woke up panting heavily. But it did add to the patience thing after all. Then there came this urge to watch movies about lucid dreaming. So I watched A waking life. And the visuals of it amazed me so much, that I started researching into how they had the patience to make such lifelike animations. Turns out the animation was outsourced to another company, who use this Rotoshop thing to make the animations. But it was closed source and they didn't source it outside the company. So there went my endeavor to try the software. And as with every new kind of program I find, I started finding Open Source alternatives. I found just one (among the automated ones and not the ones in which you have to manually draw the outline of the subject, which was not possible for me, taking into consideration that I'd work with videos, which would be about 30 frames for one second. And then I found a script. Days later, I made a version of that script that gave me my lifelike animations. And after the Splinter Cell thing, I developed a thing for Espionage and as such. Started watching movies about espionage. Realistic ones. Not the gadgetry bullshit of movies like James Bond. Although with Daniel Craig, it is much more realistic nowadays. At the time of Brosnon, it was comedy more and espionage less. Now that I'm done with the Wikipedia list of spy films, I'm watching whatever I can lay my hands on. Mostly open source movies. Wikipedia has been a hell of a companion lately. I'd wake up night after night reading stuff which will probably never be of any use to me. But at least I like reading those. It's not like reading to pass in a goddamn exam. It's not like pretending that you're digesting the stuff well when you're hating every single bite of it.



And, yes I did come up with a small project with that script I made:

Time and again, I find me questioning myself - What's this life all about. The answer, as I well know is imprinted in my brain. But as I'd always put, when you see no developments, patience dies. But hope doesn't. And that's what keeps you at it, whether you consciously realize that or not.

At present, I'm thinking of taking up an open source movie project using the rotoscoping script I wrote two days ago. But again, you need other people to work with you to make a movie. Skouzer made the solo of our first song a few days ago. With the exams on and no time to record it all, we're still waiting for the recording and production. Ironically, there's still two more songs to be completed and it doesn't remotely seem to me that we'll meet the deadline. But again, there's noone above us to kick our asses if we don't. The question now remains, what do we do when we have released the songs. Will they get any attention in this world of corporations? Will an endeavor with zero capital be successful? Time has the answer and I'm willing to find out.

Oh, and I did make an antenna for my wifi card. After two years of waiting, I got the connectors and wires in eBay. Unfortunately that's used to wire just the antennas to PCI cards for desktops and not laptops. The guy's gonna get me the  laptop connectors tomorrow though. And I made a parabolic reflector out of paper recently, which I plan to use for the antenna. Ironically you don't get those pringles cans here (because you don't get pringles), which means I'd have to make that out of paper and aluminum foil as well. Once I get that connector, I'll be up and running to hack my way into all the wireless networks around. It's funny how people don't realize how insecure they are in this world. One password and they think it's all safe. Nothing really is. Two years ago I hacked into one of these networks, probably from a hotel nearby. The admins probably knew that encryption could be easily broken by novices using programs. S they used MAC (Media Access Control not the Apple's Mac) filtering. But your humble friend here isn't a novice now, is he? I did break into the network, but finding their gateways was a real pain in the ass. Never really got through that and the next chance I got, I was too late. The people I gave my laptop to, to fix my screen ripped off my wifi card and antenna cables and lost them and down it all went. I had to fight with those fuckers for a week to get them to give me a new card. They didn't attach the wires though. I've been searching for the connectors ever since.

And soon, it will all be over. But I can't help but question myself - when?