Going to catch Spiderman 2 in the Mann Village Theater tonight. A group of us walked down to Westwood after class earlier today and got the tickets, so we're all set. Sounds like it's going to be a good flick...check out the overall rating at Rotten Tomatoes!
Woo yay!

Alright, so now that I've sort-of settled in here at my new place, it's time to get all of you updated, as promised.

Well, I moved in here on Sunday afternoon, unpacked everything and put stuff in place, and then realized I had no way of connecting to the internet from my room. The Co-Op (the place I'm staying at) has a wireless network connected to a DSL line (Dave, it's not even close to 25mbit anymore...damn it! =P), but I needed to get authenticated before I could use it. Now since it was a Sunday, the office was closed, so I couldn't get it set up. With all that time to waste, I decided to make a trip down to campus just to see how far it is from this new place. Turns out it's just a 10-15 minute walk.

In any case, I was able to get the account set up on Monday, so I can now happily sit in my room and use the wireless network without paying extra for a connection. The Co-Op is off-campus, so as I mentioned earlier, this connection is not a part of the university/ResNet network. It's just a regular DSL line with Verizon, so the rest of you can stop envying me now. Pretty good connection, nonetheless...at least for most of the day (starts to get iffy late at night when too many people start using it). Plus, I can head over to campus anytime I feel the need to use the uber-crazy-mad-l33t-phat-pipe connection.

I'm sharing a room here with Mohit, a graduate (Ph.D.) student whom I've known for a while. Since the Co-Op works on a seniority system (people who have stayed here longer get better rooms), I was able to get a really nice room to stay in over summer although it's my first quarter here, thanks to Mohit. Just my side of the room is bigger than the dorm room I stayed in last year. I'll post some pictures later next week once I move my fridge in and get everything else sorted.

Classes began on Monday...things seem to be going well so far. It always feels good during the first week. I'm hoping it stays that way for the rest of Session A. I know Session C should more relaxing, since I just have one class then. I might look for a part-time job, or think about working on some sort of project. We'll see what happens...

And finally, for Omar:
MoBlog MoMent: We attended an Indian Classical music concert just before I moved back to uni. The singer in the picture is Pt. Rattan Mohan Sharma, who taught me music when I was in the 7th/8th grade in Bombay. The second person from the left (accompaniment) is my dad.

Yes, you read that right. Heading back to uni after lunch today. Summer courses begin tomorrow, and continue until a week before summer break officially ends.

Quite a strange feeling having just a week-long vacation after a whole year of classes. I guess it's alright though...I did have a great time, and it was completely relaxing.

I'll post another update once I've unpacked everything and settled in my new room.

I watched, what I think was one of the most heartbreakingly touching movies, last night - a Japanese animated film called "Grave of the Fireflies."
It's a story about the life of a young boy named Seita, and his five year old sister, Setsuko, whose parents are killed during the American bombing of Japan during WWII.

There is an extensive review of this movie by the Chicago Sun-Times here.
Highly, highly recommended film. The animation is brilliant and the emotions of each character are brought out really, really well. Setsuko is incredibly cute throughout, and you're almost left in tears at the end of the movie. 5/5 stars, without the slightest doubts.

It's been ages since I last added a new site theme, so I've just added one - it's called "Summer" and it's an equally bright and lively replacement for the earlier "Orange" theme, which has now been removed. Hope you "Orange" fans like "Summer" just as much.


I've also finally updated the monthly desktop page. Of course, I have changed my desktop several times over the last couple of months...just never got around to taking screenshots and posting them here.

I've been getting quite a number of Gmail invites over the past few weeks. Used up most of them, but I have 2 more that I haven't given out yet. Leave a comment if you're interested.


I'll need your first name, last name, and the email address that I should send the invite to.

I posted this over at OSNN a few days ago, but thought I'd re-post here for the rest of you.

In short, SFU 3.5 adds the power of the UNIX command line to your existing Windows installation, and works with XP Pro, Win2k and Server 2003. I've tried Cygwin in the past, but it never really appealed to me much. For a more complete review of SFU, along with a short blurb about how it's different from Cygwin, take a look at this page.

You can also check out my thread at OSNN, where I posted a set of screenshots, highlighting some of the capabilities of this system.

I'm really glad that I decided to give it a shot. It gives me the best of both worlds, in a sense. I'm more productive and familiar with the software that I use in Windows, but I've always felt that the UNIX command line is indispensably powerful. In my opinion, SFU 3.5 should really have shipped as part of XP Pro. It's that handy. If you'd like to use some of your favorite *nix commands and tools within Windows, I'd highly recommend installing it.

Looks like it's my last day here in the residential halls. Frantic packing time...in a few hours, I'm going to be back home. The room is almost completely empty now (actually, bags and suitcases are strewn all over the place).



I'm definitely going to miss this place, and some of the people I've been with here. But then again, friends are always going to be in touch, no matter where each of us is going to be staying next year, so it's all good. If it were the beginning of the year, I wouldn't be saying this...but as far as food goes, I think I've had my share of dorm food, so I doubt I'm going to miss that (well, maybe I will sometime...). I'm certainly going to miss the uber-sweet Resnet connection that I had all year. You really can't get 10MB/s (yes, that's bytes not bits) download speeds anywhere else, you know.

Ah, but despite all that, I'm looking forward to a week of complete relaxation at home starting today. Damn, it feels good to be done. And I'm not a Freshman anymore. Woo yay! \o/

I'm done!!
...at least for another week, until summer courses begin.

Thanks for all the good luck messages, everyone. Both of today's finals went by well, so I'm happy about that too. Time to relax for a while. Looking forward to keeping this place regularly updated again.

...ten (incredibly long and arduous) days remain, the amount of work (more than) doubles, tension rises exponentially with each new day, everything other than work comes to a grinding halt, motivation levels sink to an all-time low, and you just want the darn thing to end...FAST.

I have the last big CS project of the quarter this week - the design phase is due Tuesday, the complete working program is due Thursday. That leaves me with almost no time to prepare for the rest of my finals, one of which is on Saturday, followed by two, one after another, on Wednesday.

The gist of the matter - it's highly unlikely that there'll be any updates here until you see that countdown on top of this page reach 0. Wish me luck, and see you all on the other side.

Damn! It's June already. Every quarter since the beginning of Fall has just been zipping by so fast. Finals are just around the corner...and summer break bliss awaits! Can't believe I'm finishing first year of uni in a couple of weeks.
Time goes by too fast...not that that's a bad thing, of course.