Beers and Bananas

Elephants and Coffee, sounds absurd. But they have named it. The coffee shop at one of Business Incubation hotel has it. The combination makes any sense, off course, not at all. And so does beers and bananas. But this weird combination has a story behind it. I was returning home on my friend's bike from the office and it started to rain heavily. To our respite, we halted at a petrol pump to save us from getting drenched. God showed no mercy and the rain did not stop. A distance of 17km back home, could not make us gain the courage to move ahead in the rain.
No other option left, the rain doesn't seemed halt, we started. My friend thought of grabbing a beer, to beat the chilling rain's effect. While he was drinking his beer, I too kinda felt hungry and saw huge bananas hanging in a panwalas shop. He too liked the idea of having a banana along with beer and relish the same. The unusual combo of beer and bananas thus came into the picture. And did I forgot to add that before that we had hogged sev puri(an indian spicy snack) and maza(a mango juice brand) as well just after leaving the office.

Last Day @First Company .. few last words

The last day at my first job, few noticeable last words.

Delivery Manager : All the best, come back to $%$^% !

HR ( at exit interview ) : Had you told this in the interview, you could have asserted even to the head of the company, that I will work only with that profile. (It's a good learning, you have full rights to claim what was promised to you in the interview)


Security Guard (at final exit, I don't have the ID card, but the relieving letter)

(me) : I have the relieving letter

(sg) : Ok. That's fine. But it's my duty, show the letter. (Opens up the letter and takes a glance). Kisi acchi jagah ja rahe honge (you must be going to some good working place)

(me) : Yes. Kaam accha hoga wahan (Work will be good there)

(sg) : Laughs. Waise mujhe kehna to nahin chaiye, ^&^&%& aane se pehle main bhi sochta tha yahan bahut accha kaam hota hai ( Before joining here as security, I had an impression that work is great at this company, all because of the big name)

(me) : India main naam bade and darshan chote ( Bigger and branded name, but the work profile is low )

(sg) : Bilkul sahi (That's perfect)

My first job, excitement turned otherwise !

17th June 2006 :
No. 72. Rakesh Gupta
No. 73. ..... and so on.
Hurray ! I was floating on cloud nine . I had made in to the company . The on campus drive at my college hyped as arduous process had been a cake walk for me. The faculty member read loud the list of the students who had made in. Celebrations were inevitable .

24th September 2006 :
Hey, did you collect the offer letter ? No, have they come? Cool. Having an offer letter in your hands of a big shot MNC, with a year more still left to complete your engineering degree, sounds fantastic. I had made my mind, I will join it. Become a fundoo coder shoder !! All things seemed to be so perfect. My future path was decided. But, I failed to realise that heavenly signal. As they say in literature, when you desire something, universe conspires to let you have the best. But, I was blinded by the charm and glamor and was not able to see that I had something better to achieve.

10th May 2007 - 25th June 2007:
Desperate wait for the receiving the joining letter at the company. As the history says, it should be something in the middle of June. Perhaps, this was one of the firsts of heavenly signal which I failed to realise. The signal that I am destined for something better and I should seek or continue with some other opportunity.

1st July 2007:
For the first time on the college's history, a database giant had arrived interviewing our batch. The coll was over and everyone was relaxing at home. But the offering and name of the database giant tempted everyone to rush back to the campus from even their remotest abodes and try their knowledge and luck. The selection process was strenuous and I was pleased to make into top 18 out of the 500 people appeared. But unfortunately, they needed only 12 folks. Hence, had a narrow setback. I was disappointed, but this was another heavenly indicator that destiny has something else in store for me and I should realize my potential.

10th July 2007:
The joining date of the company came(23rd July). As expected, it was in their huge training campus. I had mixed feelings. But, I had made my mind and was careless to hunt for any other opportunities.

17th July 2007:
The company had altered the joining date and location to 6th August, to a place where I had never been too. Perhaps, this was the biggest heavenly indicator. Again, I could not sense it. What could I do ? I was not seeing things beyond joining this company, which eventually turned out to be a big mistake of my life. I have been avid passionate about Java and Open Source technologies since my college days. With an expectation of getting similar kind of work/training, I joined the company at the new location

6th August 2007:
Lush green campus and huge glassy buildings, good enough to dupe anyone. I was joyous. The training process started and things went on smoothly. Till one fine day, we had the catastrophic event .... MAINFRAMES, yes your batch has been identified for the mainframes stream. Happy hunting folks, Its gonna be a wonderful time. Man, I was shattered, I never desired to study those outdated legacy systems. The company was not willing to cater to your personal interests.

10th October 2007:
I started pumping my resume like anything. I wanted to get out and do anything but not mainframes. Ill-fated, nothing much happened. Only ray of hope was to complete training and expect to get a different technology project. Chances are meager, but you never now.

1st Feb 2008:
After successful completion of training, off to production. Seems, a whole new world is going to start. Fortunately, I managed to sneak into a non mainframe project after persuading one of the managers at the company. New energy and enthusiasm started to reverberate again in me.

10th April 2008:
All that glitters is not gold. I could perfectly understand that. This one was the biggest and best heavenly indicators, you need to work hard, you are destined for something else. Now I started feeling it hard. The project, they call it support and maintenance barely requires you to be smart, logically and technically sound. There was nothing much crucial I was playing. It started striking me that I am losing, losing rapidly; everything, my knowledge, my analytical and logical skills. What would my future be ? A dumb box. Oh no ! I won't let that happen. Job hunt began with more fierce efforts. I needed to move out. No kidding this time. It's a high priority to give justice to my career life.

15th July 2008:
Filed the resignation, a sense of relief or moksha.

20th August 2008:
I walkout like a free bird. With lesser apprehensions about my next venture.

Summary : Always listen to your heart and understand those heavenly signals, because if you have an intent desire and willingness for something, then universe will definitely conspire and let you get the best. And in DJ (Rang De Basanti) style, I would say Zindagi jeene ke do hi tarike hote hain, ek kisi Indian IT company join kar lo, aur jeete raho, appraisal ki cycle chalne do, doosra, jimmedaari uthao ise badalne ki aur startup join karo :)

GIMP - Cartoon Effect

Step 1 : Copy the background layer ( Dialogs -> Layers -> Duplicate Layer [duplicate layer is the button on the bottom with the two sheets of paper] )

Step 2 : Gaussian Blur top layer ( Filters -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur [I use 8 px ] )

Step 3 : Divide Layers ( Go to your Layers Dialog and under the Mode drop list select Divide )

Step 4 : Flatten Image ( Layer -> Merge Down )

Step 5 : Apply Cartoon filter ( Go to Filters -> Artistic -> Cartoon and play with the settings till you are happy with the preview, then hit OK )

One thing that makes cartoon drawings stand out from other drawings is the heavy use of black lines. Every wall, all the items in a room are given dark black outlines in a cartoon.

IITs today do more harm than good

My response to the news IITs today do more harm than good ( click to read )

I strongly contradict the whole scenario. Coaching institutes drill your brain and enhance your logical and analytical capabilities. I felt my learning and analytical capability enhanced after joining a coaching institute in Kota. IITs are lacking in faculty and unable to impart proper education . Consequently, they are blaming coaching institutes to hide their fallacies. They are most elegant institutes of the country, can't they conduct an examination to extract the raw intelligence from whole bunch of students appearing.

There is no such magical formula or key which coaching institutes give. They just boost you way of learning and approaching problem. Which I feel is far better than normal schooling and makes a student sharper. Which is larger, 1-2 year at a coaching institute or 4 years at IIT. The IITs have lost charm and ambiance to instigate a successful engineer and are transferring blame on others. It's ridiculous.

Also you would like to read ( click to read )

Error while loading shared libraries: libx264.so.56: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I recently ran an upgrade on my Fedora core box. All the library files got upgraded . Unfortunately, VLC player which used to run normal stopped working .

The error thrown was 'vlc:error while loading shared libraries: libx264.so.56: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory'.

What I discovered is that the file libx264.so.56 had updated to libx264.so.60. Hence, I created a soft link ln -s libx264.so.60 libx264.so.56 . This solved the issue. And VLC runs file now.