The countdown clock keeps ticking away...

Life's been a perpetual countdown clock for me. The moment I get the Arrival Immigration stamp on my passport - this clock is reset. When landing in Qatar, the clock resets to the duration of my stay there, and when I land back in India, the clock resets for a much longer duration.

So the moment my entry immigration is stamped on my passport in Doha day after tomorrow, I have a clock that resets to 24 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes. And believe me when I say that this will seem more like a week.

The true proof of the concept of relativity is apparent from my bi-annual visits to Doha. Time DOES bend. The weeks and days and hours before my departure to 'home' goes crawling by but the time spent once I'm there, or at least the perception of it, goes by in a flash.

This has been happening for the past 9 visits, and I expect it to be no different this time.

That's where it gets scary now. Is my life all about being a perpetual countdown clock? Forget the non-resetting countdown clock of life in general, but this clock that resets every time I'm home and back? The thought of this actually makes me go insane.

But the sheer wait for that moment when I step through the Arrivals gate in Doha, to be greeted and hugged by my family, a long conversation in the car about the journey, life etc and finally the moment I step into my room and in my dear bed that I love so much, makes it totally worth it!

Well, I surely hope that this outburst is just the homesick lunatic in me ranting along!

Will the Real Gamers Please Stand Up?

So folks, it’s been a hectic few weeks as I was working on my research, and coupled with the odd hours of working during Ramadan. Things are back to normal now, or as the average IIITian might say: the Larkification of the Owl is complete.

You might have noticed that I’m a die-hard gamer – Most of the posts on this still-nascent blog will refer to gaming in some form or another. I know what some of you might be thinking now… “I wonder what this guy’s frag count in CS or how much time does he take to build 50 houses in AoE” and the like. So, to all such people: Here’s a major rant that I’ve sealed up inside for quiet sometime:

Gaming doesn’t start and end with CS, AoE and NFS. I’ve seen most of the ‘gamers’ here restrict themselves to this - unofficial “Universal Subset of Games” in IIIT. Very few brave warriors dare venture into uncharted territory with new games or old classics. This post is an attempt to open the doors to other ‘gamers’: Open your Eyes and see the light…

I have a real bone to pick with CounterStrike. Sure, it’s the world’s most popular game, and it has its reasons… one of which is primarily the fact that it runs on every god damn machine u throw at it. But seriously, after hours of running and chasing around the same maps over and over again, don’t you people long for more? Are the flat-shaded walls and the endless yapping of “(Counter)Terrorists win” enough to keep you all hooked? Some people just refuse to even try something else lest the presence of a new game on the same disk offend the grand 10-year old executable. Here’s a self assessment for all the CS freaks: If you know what game was unofficially modded to give you CS, ok, you guys aren’t as lost as I thought. Bonus points if you’ve actually played that game.

I know what you are thinking…”but d00d, how can we even think of playing games that come out today, the ones that require a nuclear deal to be signed with some country to just get enough processing power to play them?”. Ok, I give you that one. But try out some other games: if you are willing to play CS, surely there are other games that might be your fancy: How about Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament? For true adrenaline junkies, it’s just pure non-stop action with immediate respawn and not turn based like CS. One real classic to be mentioned here is Halo 1. It’ll run on any system, it’s got amazing multiplayer with a wide range of weapons and vehicles. You can even get into a tank and use it to run over your friends: How does that sound? Another awesome game is Serious Sam : The Second Encounter. I've played it from start to finish in co-op with ORB, and it was among the most multiplayer fun we've ever had!

"Look at how many people I can frag with this! Die Covenant Scum!"
Halo Multiplayer Screenshot

And now for Age of Empires, and just like the name, a game takes Ages to complete. And most people blindly assume that it’s the only good strategy game ever made. As a matter of fact, one of the best strategy games ever made, as well as one of the earliest genre-defining and bestselling RTS games is the Command and Conquer series, The latest installment of which just released recently called Red Alert 3. And the best part? Actual, real hot babes that call you Commander and obey your every command (well most of them at least). Tired of ramming Persian Elephants into walls all the time? Try sending in a F-22 Raptor to take out a Soviet Tesla Coil that’s frying your soldiers at the enemy base. The Red Alert series is all about the US vs. Soviets – and if you go with the Reds, it’s the perfect game to live your ultimate communist fetishes, hell ya!

Honestly... Who do you really want to Command right now?
Age of Empires II vs. C&C: Red Alert 2

So a final appeal to all you people: Don’t restrict yourself to a single game because you believe that it’s best game ever made – That’s akin to saying that “The Matrix” is the best movie ever made, bar none, and you flatly refuse to watch other movies. Expand your horizons in gaming. I’m sure that you will be pleasantly surprised. Expecting fanboy counter-ranting in 3...2...1...

Ramadan Woes...

In case you people haven't noticed yet, I'm a Muslim. And this is the holy month of Ramadan (or Ramzan) for us. Since a lot of people have been asking me about it (understandably since there are only about 25 Muslims on this campus), here's quick blog post to inform everyone.

During Ramadan, a healthy, able Muslim must compulsorily fast for the Month of Ramadan in the Islamic Calendar (this year it's from 2nd Sept - 2nd October). That means no food, water, sex etc. from Sunrise to Sunset. We break the fast at sunset (which is calculated scientifically nowadays), traditionally with a few dates and water, and then a huge feast! Here's what a typical 'break'-fast looks like:

Being brought up in the Middle-East was an amazing experience during the holy month. The moment Ramadan started, the entire place would change. Mornings and Afternoons would be lazy, most shops would down their shutters, schools and offices will get at least 1-2 hours off. Everyone suddenly becomes pious and good-hearted.

Our neighbors (all arab, btw), will send huge parcels of food that they have prepared at home (Kebabs, Haleem, Biryani, Cutlets etc), and that too every single day! Needless to say, Ramadan was a time when everyone used to double in size in spite of starving all day long. After the evening prayers, the entire city used to bear a festive look. Shopping Malls, small stores, Footpath vendors will all be open till the wee hours of the night, the aroma of freshly cooked delicacies will be everywhere. Ramazan was also a time of roaming around and eating, since everyone wants to host an Iftar (break-fast) party at their homes. Mosques run by influential sheiks would set up a huge tent and host a public buffet every night, for everyone, come and eat as you like! Ramadan is treated like a month-long festival there, with a delicious spread served for all 30 days. Check out one such iftar feast:

It’s been about 5 years since I’ve been with my family at home for Ramadan and year after year it’s been getting worse. Given the small number of students who are fasting (~25) we cannot make elaborate arrangements for our food. And we are forced to rely on the canteen to feed our only meals for the day – the Iftar (sunset) and Saher (sunrise) meals. The first week was extremely bad: Food was coming in Late, and one day our canteen-wallah tried to make Biriyani, but ended up like Pongal. (I wish I clicked a snap of it then to convince you people). The two UG1 Muslim students have opted out of the ramzan mess arrangements after falling sick and are now fending for themselves.

There is pretty much nothing that can be done about this situation. We all know that our canteen is in a deplorable state, but it is our only option to get food during this month. It’s pretty ironic that Hyderabad is one of the best places to be in India during the month of Ramadan, but inside the Institute, it’s a real downer. One silver lining is that we believe that during this month, we are expected to suffer and work as usual, and not take it easy. Going by that, we are sure to receive extra ‘credits’ from the God Almighty for this month.

I would like to mention however the goodwill and support extended by our faculty in letting us make all the arrangements for this month – from the prayer areas to finance and mess arrangements. Compared to other institutes with Muslim minorities in the student body, we have been treated very well. I’ve heard stories from friends in institutes like IIT-M about how much they have to bear with the indifferent attitude of the administration to get their Ramadan-related issues sorted out, year after year. I’m not sure if this is the case with other institutes but it doesn’t really sound too farfetched.

Bottom-line, I’m ranting about not being with my family during this month!

Tech-Nostalgia Part II – First Time Surfin’

On a hot summer day, sometime in June 1996, my dad came home with an envelope – I grabbed it from him and ripped it open. It contained a 1.44" floppy and some instructions. The envelope contained our first Internet Access Account and Package.

My PC at the time was a Pentium 133 Mhz PC with 2 GB HDD. It was fully loaded back then – An 8 speed CD-ROM drive, Soundcard, etc. This was also my first "Assembled" pc as I had branded machines before this: MiTAC, Compaq, AST. The PC also ran Windows 95.

Also, about a year before that, Qatar had an old-skool Bulletin Board Service (BBS) working via a dial-in server on a terminal. I've checked this out with some of my friends; it's pretty cool and is basically the text-only precursor to the Internet.

So I start up the computer and frantically follow the instructions to the dot. Luckily, the ISP has DHCP enabled, so all I had to do was configure the DNS servers (back then, DNS configuration was also manual). So I saw things like IP Address and stuff, really made no sense to me back then. So after setting everything, I said a prayer and clicked on 'Dial'. The 28.8K modem sprang to life, opened the telephone line and started dialing the access number. Then, all of a sudden, the computer starts making funny noises (I later found out that this was the most famous modem handshaking noise, something which is now pretty much defunct). Also, this was one of the first Internet access dialer programs, so the moment the handshake was completed, a terminal screen showed up with the login and password to be keyed in then (much like today's putty). So after logging in to the Internet terminal, I wait patiently as the terminal window starts showing weird characters, and then poof! , the modem disconnects. After resolving the Issue (which was merely to close the login terminal after dial-in), Windows 95 reported that I was connected to the Internet, with the small modem icon in the system tray!

So I fire up MS Internet Explorer v2.0 (which came pre-installed in my copy of Windows 95), and then wait patiently for something to come up. I was just staring at a blank page. I picked up a magazine that I had got about a month back which featured some Internet websites, so I randomly choose a site from their list. I typed in the address patiently, and hit enter. Suddenly, a animated logo Windows appears to by flying, and after a full 5 minutes, I saw a green-colored page.

I was seeing my very first HTML webpage. It was a Star-Sports cricket page made for the Cricket World Cup of 1996. Since Google didn't exist back then, one of the engineers from my dad's company recommended a site called Altavista for all my searching requirements – (the site was decent, it kept me company until Google was launched in 1999-2000). By the end of the day, I downloaded Doom in a file format that I'd never ever seen before (.zip), and also discovered a nifty little application called WinZip. I was totally hooked on to the Internet!

At QR 6 an hour (approx. 75 Rs.), it wasn't cheap, and the arrival of the Internet bill was a monthly scolding session from my parents. Within a few months, I switched to Netscape Navigator 2 (the precursor to Mozilla), Then when Windows 98 was released, IE completely obliterated the competition and Netscape became defunct. It's nice how Netscape is kicking IE's ass with its rebirth as Firefox now.

Even after I came to India for Higher studies in 2003, Dial-up internet was still the only way to go online. Also, my previous college had sucky 64k ISDN lines to its labs only, so the only way I went online back then was using GPRS through my mobile. I'm greatly indebted to Airtel in Kerala, since they allowed me to go online at a reasonable rate of 250 Rs./month unlimited access. Sure, the speed was just a little better than the first time I went online on the 28.8K modem, but it did a good job of keeping me connected to the world as I slogged away for 4 years in a village to complete my B.Tech.

Tech-Nostalgia (Part I)

Sometime in 1992, back in Doha, I was sitting at home, doing my Homework like a normal 7 year old, and my Dad pulls into the driveway. My big bro (12 years old at the time) sprints out and jumps up and down. Dad's got a smile on his face as he gets out and opens the trunk.

Inside, there were 2 big heavy white boxes. I was still trying to figure out what was going on. The excitement was clearly showing on everyone.

I had not much to look forward at that time. There was just that State-run TV that showed 30 minutes of cartoons a day, and otherwise, I was just a kid who sat at home, reading some of the children's books that were lying around.

So we bring the boxes inside, Mom gets a cloth to wipe clean a table we had to put it on. As we unboxed the containers - I saw what looked like a small TV, and a big white metal box. It was a sight to behold at the time: Like some contraption that came from the future. My brother was busy glancing at the manual, and we placed all the equipment one-by-one on the table. After frenzied searching in the manual, we figured out what needs to be plugged into what. So finally, when everything was in place, we said a small prayer and plugged it in to the wall socket and pushed the power switch.

This, my friends was my first contact with a computer. It was an 80286 IBM-Compatible PC manufactured by a Taiwanese company called MiTAC. The specifications (as I remember) were:

• 80286 Intel processor Clocked at 12 MHz
• 4 MB RAM
• 40 MB HDD
• Colour Monitor attached to a VGA Graphics Adapter
• Standard PC-AT 101-key Keyboard

So, we waited in awe as the Computer fired up, Saw many rolling digits (which I know know is the BIOS), and finally this prompt showed up:

C:\>

That’s when we knew that the beast was alive, and ready to take input. So, my brother and I sit on the table, all excited, and type:

C:\>HI

We saw some lights flash, we were scared out of our wits, as the computer took some time to process what we just typed. And then, all of a sudden, the computer spouted out:

Bad command or Filename

OK. The computer was talking back to us, but didn’t make much sense. I thought I'd try to introduce myself. I tried typing:

C:\>MY NAME IS SUHAIL

Again, as the computer tried to process it, it then said the same thing:

Bad command or filename

Dad comes in and says... “Boys! don't spoil the computer by typing garbage. I'll get an engineer to help you people use it.”

So, we then switch of the computer, and after a day's wait, my dad brings home a computer engineer from the company, who taught my big bro some fundamentals. He brought a big bag of 5.25" Disks and put them in one by one and typed so many commands as the computer just kept generating screen after screen of text that made no sense to me. Finally, after my begging my brother later when he left, He taught me the first few commands I’ve ever used on a PC:

C:\>CD GAMES

C:\GAMES>CD PRINCE

C:\GAMES\PRINCE>PRINCE

That, my friends was the point where I fell in love with computers and computer games :)

Meanwhile, check out the promotional video for MS-DOS 5 (the OS described above), back when M$ was desperate for the $$$'s here.

(Re) Introduction - README.1ST

Hi Folks! A few of my previous posts will be surely visible below, those were from a gloomier, depressed and maybe even psychotic period of my Life that I'd like to forget, (a.k.a My B.Tech)... Maybe I’m making it sound worse than it really was, but truth is I'm much better off now than I was back then...

For those of you who don't know me, well I'm Suhail Rehman, now officially MS-2k7 here at IIIT-H. I was born approximately 23 years ago in a place called Doha, Qatar (known more famously for the Asian Games, Al-Jazeera and the 'Doha' round of the WTO talks). I spent my entire childhood there and finished my 12th in 2003, came back to India as an ABCD (Abroad-Born Confused Desi), and spent 4 years of my prime in a Village (kind-of) in mid Kerala to pursue my much coveted (or so I thought) degree in Computer & Engineering at the MES College of Engineering.

As a kid, I was fascinated by computers. My dad brought home an old 80286 desktop when I was in second grade, and back then I started fooling around with DOS 5.0 and all the games that I could find that fit on either a 5.25" or a 1.44" Floppy. The rest was then, basically history, and I was fortunate enough to witness the evolution of personal computing and grow up to be absolutely crazy about them.

Crazy enough not to care about the other things actually, so I was pretty much an 'above-average' kid in school, which is why I landed at the above said college. Life was miserable there, we had no decent Internet access until year 4, and the rest of the posts you see below are remnants of my attempt to blog using my GPRS connection. I'll rant about how messed up life was there in another post, but here, I’m just trying to restart something that I’ve not bothered to do for a very long time...

Meanwhile, now that I'm in IIIT-H, having the time of my life, and indulging in my favorite geek work, let me take this opportunity to thank god and everyone who's supported me throughout the years as I finally ended up in an Institute that actually matters. With this blog, I'll probably post things about my life, maybe a bit of tech, and the occasional rant about missing home (just to justify the existing blog title). And this time, I hope there will be people to read and comment, and I also hope I can do my part to revive the blogging culture here at IIIT, which according to an interestingly anonymous fellow, was once flourishing. Meanwhile, explore the following few posts that I managed to put out on the blogosphere ages back, when the anger was intense and the internet speeds were abysmal.