Karthik’s Log

The obscure title not withstanding, it’s Food again

I made Gulab Jamuns today all by myself. Quite an achievement I say. And a definite upgrade from cooking instant noodles. Agreed this was ‘Instant Gulab Jamun’. Yet, man!! the amount of work you have to do is really laborious. Here I was assuming just because I can cook noodles, I can cook anything else that says ‘Instant’. Man was I mistaken or what ?

The Instructions on the pack was very simple really.

• Add 1/4 measure of water to 1 measure of mix and kneed the mix gently into a dough. Set aside for 5 min.
• Make small balls and fry in hot oil/ghee over a low flame until golden brown.
• Soak the Gulab Jamuns in hot sugar syrup until they completely absorb syrup and serve.
• Sugar Syrup: Add equal measure of sugar and water and boil for 15 min (this pack needs 1.2 kg of sugar.) Add rose essence or cardamom powder if desired.

 (Yea, it had the same instructions in Hindi, Tamil and a couple of other languages that I am guessing were Telugu and Kannada.)

Part of the reason I even ventured out into making it was because the instructions sounded really simple. Bachelors beware. Don’t be tricked into that one. It’s never as easy as it’s printed especially if you have had no prior experience with cooking whatsoever.

So I started with the simple task of mixing 1/4 measure of water to 1 measure of mix. I tried to kneed it gently as the pack suggested and all I has was powder flying in all directions, and the water no where to be seen. I was sure I had made some mistake with the measuring. How on earth was I to kneed it into a dough it I just had powder. This is where I made the first mistake. I added a little more water than necessary I guess. I thought what harm could come from adding just a little water. I mean now I could mix the powder with the water, but whoa!! how do I make this into a dough ? This is where I am glad my mom intervened and said ‘I told you not to experiment. I was sure you would screw it up’and asked me to add more powder. (Since this was my experiment, I did not intend on using the entire pack. That was my 0th mistake but at-least it came to my aid with the 1st mistake.) Now after trying really hard, I actually did make it into a dough.

Next issue was rolling it into balls. How easy it sounds again. Ad there it was sticking onto my hands refusing to come away form my hands let alone be rolled. Again I managed this somehow after a long time trying.

The frying part was quite easily accomplished for I have experience with frying paneer, and even bread. (But my mom tells me the Jamuns weren’t cooked on the inside-which means I did not do this well either. )

The sugar syrup was what I royally screwed. First I thought I had done enough but the syrup wasn’t syrupy. Looks like I over compensated in keeping the burner switched on for a tad too long. It became almost solid. The Jamuns aren’t absorbing the syrub. My mom again helped me by asking me to pour some hot water in it and I was thankful she did.

Finally the Gulab Jamuns came out pretty decently. They were not as good as they should have been, but with instructions like those and a cook like me, they could have ended up disastrously.

Ok, that isn’t my pic. That’s what I hoped my Gulab Jamun would look like. It resembled it a lot really. Until next time…

I have wanted to write this post for a long time now. A couple of friends wanted to know how to download a few things. I was just about to write a post on it when Demonoid shut down. So I thought maybe I will wait for it to come back online. But then, I might as well write about it now considering trackers are coming down. People who already know how to use torrents, can ignore this post or you are welcome to review it.(If you derive any personal satisfaction out of it.)

Here is what you need to do:

1) Download a BitTorrent client and install the same. A BitTorrent client is a program that downloads the files (movies/music or any other that is not protected by copyrights.   )

Some examples of BitTorrent clients include (with a Link of where to download it)

• MjuTorrent/UTorrent
• BitComet
• Azureus

For a comprehensive list of BitTorrent clients you can look here.

MjuTorrent is supposed to be light and works well. I present a screen shot of the same which shows a few details.

• Size is obviously the size of the file you are downloading.
• As you can see, the number of Seeders, Peers is enumerated on the client software. (The tracker takes care of this and it’s not necessary you know about this.)
• Down speed and Up speed can be limited. Go to Options->Preferences->Connection. You will find ‘Global Bandwidth Limiting’ Under this you can set the Download and Upload speeds. Remember that this is in kBps. So you have to convert your Kbps speed by dividing it by eight. Sorry I know this sounds dumb, but if you type 128 there, then you are actually allowing it to download upto ‘1024′ kbps or 1Mbps.
• ETA tells you in how much time the file will get downloaded. (‘Estimated Time of Arrival’ if you didn’t know)
• Ratio shows you the Up/Down ratio.
• Availability 1.0 means that the entire file is available. (If the availability is < 1.0 it means that the entire file is currently not available.)
• Priority can be made high, normal or low. If you dont want to download a file, right click on it and choose ‘Don’t Download’ 

2) Now go to a site (‘Indexing Websites’ or ‘Public Tracker Sites’*) that allows you to search for torrents and search for a the file you want. A .torrent (file extension) file is downloaded from these sites. Typical sites include,

• isoHunt
• The Pirate Bay
• Mininova
• TorrenSpy

Demonoid used to be one of the more popular sites where .torrent files could be found. Sadly it’s no more. It was forced offline.

(*- There is a technical difference between sites that host trackers and sites that are simply search engines which allow us to search for .torrent files that are hosted or tracked by other sites.)

A word of caution though. Some of these sites contain advertisements that might be inappropriate for people of some age groups. Always tread with caution and keep away from such sites.

You can either download the file onto your hard disk or it might give you an option of opening it with the client if the client is already installed. Downloading it (.torrent file) onto your hard disk is always a safe option.

3) If you have downloaded the .torrent file onto your hard disk, then there should be no trouble downloading the file now. Double clicking on the .torrent file should open it with your BitTorrent client. Else you can always use the ‘open with’ option to open it with the installed BitTorrent client software.

4) Now all you have to do is let the client run and in some time (depending on the file size) your file should be downloaded. Most clients display the time the file will take to download.

A few other things you might want to know:

1) Downloading of Copyright material is considered illegal in some countries. (Most countries actually.) You might want to avoid these files if you want to avoid trouble no matter how tempting it is to download a file.

2) In order that you use up your full bandwidth or to ensure maximum speed, you might need to enable ‘Port Forwarding’. Many sites offer help regarding the same. I shall cover this at a later date. It is slightly complicated and you need to be aware of the risks of opening your ports.

Links to port forwarding:

Port Forward

Wikipedia article on port forwarding

3) Be sure that you maintain the Upload/Download ratio more than 1.0. This is considered decency. You are expected to Upload at-least as much as you have downloaded. (I personally upload up-to 1.5 ratio) Some times your speeds are limited by the client software if you do not upload enough. This is done to avoid bottlenecks.

4) Make sure you are downloading in your free time** (by free time I mean time when you have free downloads.)  or you are aware of exactly how much you are downloading. Also remember that you are also uploading simultaneously. So if you downloaded 400 MB and uploaded as much, you will in-fact be charged for 800 MB by the Internet provider.

5) Keep your eyes open for spurious/spam files. Sometimes people upload junk and rename it as ‘filename.avi’ (assuming the file’s extension is .avi) After you have downloaded a file, you might not be able to open it and you will find that you have wasted bandwidth.(and I sincerely hope you didn’t pay for it)

It is always a good idea to check if a DVD is released or not before you download a DVD Rip. Or for any file in general, it is good to check if such a file in fact exists.

6) Make sure you know the language and other details such as quality of the file that you download. Some people are honest in labelling the files, others are not. If a file has a preview, then download the preview first and see if the quality is alright. (Your bitTorrent client allows you to download files selectively.)

7) Make sure that the downloaded .torrent file and also the data that you are downloading is free of viruses. I guess there’s no way to make sure of this but to download from reliable sources. Or after downloading the file, you can always run a virus scan. (Never trut the files you downloaded completely. It’s always a good idea to run a virus scan on the files.)

Some software like Free Download Manager (FDM) also allow you to download files using torrents. I have not tried it though. So I cannot comment on how good it is in comparison with some of the other software available.

9) A very important thing you need to look for when downloading a .torrent file is the number of ‘Seeders‘ ‘Leechers’/'Peers’ . Let’s just say the more the merrier. Seeders are people who have the full copy of a file and Leechers/Peers are people people who have part of the file, but not the entire file itself. If you have more seeders or peers, the downloads will be faster. Less popular files have very few seeders. That’s one of the downsides of using torrents.

If you have any doubts/ queries, read up these likns before asking me questions

• Brian’s BitTorrent FAQ
• Wikipedia Article on BitTorrents

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about my semester exams. I spent some time after that claiming that I was bored sitting home and doing nothing. I did watch a few movies and play some games. But still, most of my time was used up on sleeping!! 18 hours a day!! Now that was nice for a few days after exams ended. But of late, even that’s getting a little tiring. I know it sounds preposterous that sleeping could be tiring. Try 18 hours a day and you will know. I have a feeling I have put on weight, but my weighing machine sternly disagrees with me. Maybe my flab just redistributed itself around my waist .

So the final semester begins in another 3 days and I already have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I hate my college and on the other, I badly want to go to college. Here are some reasons why people claim the last sem to be the psenti sem.

1) I have been going to the same college on the same bus ( with changes once in a while. But of-late the bus co-coordinator has been working extra hard for job satisfaction.) on the same route and back, eating breakfast in the mess, having lunch again, sleeping in the class almost everyday for the past three and half years. To think that in another sem, that routine is going to take a hit is kinda scary.

2) All these days , all I have had to do is go to college. That’s it. They keep giving us tests which we never study for. We never do anything productive till exams anyway. (Half because we are lazy and half because engineering colleges do not allow us to be productive here in India.) Now all of a sudden at the end of college, I’ll have to think of my job, my income, my investments, my income tax!! Man are you kidding me ? Life is going to take a whole new turn and everything will just go spinning out of control.

3) Agreed I haven’t made too many great friends in college. I have made a few good ones.(Isn’t that the norm with books and friends ? ) I am essentially a loner. But again I’ll have to make new friends and tolerate their annoying habits   I hope people don’t read my blog.

4) Accommodation, food , transportation…Man everything is going to change.

5) Even before fast forwarding to another 6 months, the present semester is going to be slightly different. We go to college 2 days a week, work on some wretched project and every now and then have to go to college for the project reviews. Now there will be the usual monthly tests and some symposia. The college tests we shall conveniently ignore. Hope I have some luck with the symposia to fund my project.

6) College makes us aimless cattle. I have had no aims in my life for the past three years. Just move along. Do this, do that. Land a job with some IT company, slave for people there, get paid peanuts. Now in the outside world we will have to think and make decisions. As Hari said out “I was born a  Genius, Education ruined me.”

I have taken a vow to enjoy my last few days in college. But my college guys treat us like LKG kids  . So nothing assured there. I am at-least happy they will get to torment me only twice a week and if I have my way just once a week . I am sure once college starts I am going to be cribbing about it anyway. For now, I just want to go to college and maybe restart out T-3 tournaments.   

The Good German is a movie by Steven Soderbergh(of Ocean’s 11,12,13, Erin Brockovich fame) starringGeorge Clooney( Danny Ocean himself. Also voted World’s Sexiest Man), Tobey Maguire (Spiderman ), Cate Blanchett among others. Its a film adaptation of the novel by Joseph Kanon. The movie is Black and white. (film noir) The effect of black and white doesnt do anything for me. It’s not as good as classic B&W movies, but doesn’t measure up to even modern ones like ‘Schindler’s List’ , ‘The Pianist’ , ‘Sin City’…etc, even if its not fair to compare these movies. It’s poster and closing scene at the airport is supposed to be a homage to classic film ‘Casablanca’ (Take my advice and watch that instead )

IMDB Rating:

Coming straight to rating the movie, it wasn’t that great. I did not peek into IMDB’s  6.2/10 before I watched the movie. Maybe I should have. 6.2 sounds pretty fair considering the movie fails to live up to anything at all even for a Clooney fan like me. It was a disappointment. It wasn’t outright bad, but could have been made better.

Wikipedia:

I didn’t understand most of what was happening in the movie. Yes, I got the essentials, but didn’t have any prior knowledge about many of the references made in the movie. So I decided to look up Wikipedia. According to Wiki, it hints at NASA’s origins and American postwar employment of Nazi rocket scientists in Operation Paperclip. (a good read)

Man, how can you take such an interesting subject and make a mess of it ?

The film revolves around Clooney’s character and is set in 1945 around the end of WWII. It also touches on Holocaust and what Jews had to go through in Nazi Germany, though not in great or graphic detail. Also references are made about (Concentration)Camp Dora and slave labour used there. Blanchett’s husband Emil is a mathematician and a SS officer, and is associated with Camp Dora. Emil has proof that it was not him but the missile scientist Franz Bettman who ran the camp. But all evidence points to Emil and no written references are available to prove Bettman’s involvement. The Americans want to eliminate Emil so that they can take Bettman home to work on their projects.

Blanchett as Lena Brandt tries her best to keep herself and her husband alive. The Movie tries to imply that all of the German’s were not associated with Nazi policy and were helpless.  As an SS officer who had no involvement in Camp Dora, Emil is my Good German.  

Well if you have to watch this movie, make sure you don’t have any other better movie to watch. But yea, rather than watch stupid regional movies you might as well watch this. Atleast it makes sense.

I had earlier written a post on “ Main Dimensions of a DC Machine-C++ Program“

I thought I’d tweak the program a bit to make it work for AC 3 phase Induction Machine. There’s a lot of work still to be done, but the initial results were satisfactory. As before, I have stuck with just main dimensions without any constraint checks. (These, I will try to add later.)

Tried it for a couple of Problems from A.K.Sawhney’s “A Course in Electrical Machine Design” and the answers were close. The code still needs a lot of refinement. So again, not posting it or the .exe.  I think it would be a better idea to put the whole thing in one program.

I am again presenting screen shots of the outputs along with the problem numbers.

Example 10.1

Example 10.2

Example 10.3

*Please ignore typos and other errors in the output. I was trying to make sure I got the C++ syntax right and not concentrating on English syntax.

Ok even I am getting bored of this, but religiously following the Google and Orkut doodle for three days now, didn’t want to let go of the same on the fourth day. So here are the holiday logos for the fourth day running.

Google Doodle:

Orkut Doodle:

The Orkut logo change is very subtle. In-fact it’s just a .GIF. So it alternates between today’s and yesterday’s logo.

This has nothing to do with Radioactive materials and does not refer in any way to the game. It’s just about me and my short lived interest in things. Just now I was cleaning my books rack and half way through it, I got bored of it. So here I am writing a crappy post on my blog for a break. (A break that will extend , God knows for how long.)

It’s just a thing with me. I want to do everything. I cannot limit myself to one thing or a set of things. I guess that’s the reason why I suck at a multitude of things. . See with others they would only suck at a thing or two. I suck at a whole gamut of things. My short lived interest is one of the reasons why I’ll never make it big at anything.   Sadly. Unless of-course I find a way to turn things around.

Ok, alright, I am actually bored of writing this post…I call it quits for now.

Ok for the third day running, google doodle has been updated. So has the Orkut one. Guys, enough!!

Google Doodle:

Orkut Doodle:

If you observe, the Orkut Logo is just a modification of the last two days. Neat.

I just wrote a post yesterday about Google Doodle. I thought that for a holiday season, they did not change the logo more than once. Well guess what ? After just one day, the logos have changes again.

Google:

Orkut:

Google Doodles otherwise known as Holiday Logos are modifications and/or humorous features such as cartoon modifications of their logo that Google displays for use on during some festive occasion such as holidays, birthdays of famous people and major events like the Olympics. You can read more on the Google Doodle here:

Wikipedia article on Google Doodle

This time around to, Google has put up their Google Doodle. What’s interesting is I found Orkut also displaying some form of modified logo. Orkut Doodle ? perhaps. I know they did it for Diwali and stuff. I am trying to find out if this is the first time Orkut logo has been modified. (Apparently not. They had it for Independence day and before that Valentines day.) Here are the Google and Orkut Doodles for this season,

The Google Doodle:

The Orkut Doodle:

I saw if any of the other Google owned sites also sported a modified logo. This search included YouTube, Blogger and various other Google websites like Google news, Google Earth, and even Gmail. None of them to my disappointment has a modified logo. Bah!!

I thought of uploading a few recent Google Doodles, but then Google has an official site where they have archives of the entire thing anyway. So here’s a link to their site. (” Please do not use them elsewhere.” is Google’s plea. The ones I have used here is not from the online compilation. You won’t even find it there yet. These are screen shots.)

Google Doodles/Google Holiday Logos

I didn’t find an online compilation of Orkut doodles. (Maybe it’s not even called that.) So I searched for it and found a few interesting logos. Clockwise from top Valentine’s day, India’s 60th Independence day, Diwali, Orkut’s birthday. (I can’t spell Buyokutten. )