Life changes

Recently I heard that Mood Indigo is close. It is one of the best student fests in India. It might be even the best according to claims. Trust me guys, I never went to see it in my 4 years at IIT. I used to stay in hostel no.2 which is closest to the place where is gets organized but no way I ever went. I just never wanted. I was too busy with my computer, and god only knows what else because I don’t remember anytime I spent in something productive. Well but now I feel “God, those were the days”. Now I can’t even go to such places even if I want. It just reminds me a few things.
There was a day which was my last one at IIT Campus. The night before that I went to roaming around campus. I even sat down alone in IIT ground for a while. A lot of thoughts came to my mind I still remember how I started analyzing my last 4 years. Certainly the most important thoughts were how I could have utilizes those four years. Well now there is no point in regretting that but yes people, I do believe one should not spend all the time on his adolescence sitting in front of a stupid box.
Now it has been more than 1 year since I have been working. Life is changed. Bunking classes can’t be replaced with bunking office. Extending deadlines aren’t as easier as they used to be. You can’t afford to just get passing marks and still get through it. It’s all changed. Life changes so much.
Ok, I know these are just some random ideas which don’t make much sense so I will stop now and will probably write something which makes more sense pretty soon.

Thanks,
Ashish

Tue Dec 30 13:00:00 IST 2009

One of the best innings of Sachin goes in vain ..

I am very sad today. Really very very sad. One of the best innings of Sachin goes in vain.

Sachin Tendulkar not less than God when it comes to cricket. He is a person who shuts the mouth of his critics by his bat. People were marking questions on his approach and his batting but today he showed the whole world yet again why is he the best batsman in the world. Today he achieved 17 thousand runs in one day cricket. This is nothing less than a miracle. A commitment he made to country 21 years ago. He still is as hungry as he used to be when he first started playing for country. He showed today that he can still hit ball for sixes and he is the best batsman in the world. I don't think India/World will ever have a great player like him ever again. I remember times when people used to switch off TV when Sachin got out. It used to be one man against great teams. Still it is not changed much. Today it was one man show again. But the thing which hurts the most is other batsman were not able to support Sachin as well.

I seriously want to know why the hell this guy Jadeja is in team. He can't handle pressure at all. He should either be sent up the order when he has nothing to worry or better just kick him off the team and why the hell can't we take Irfan Pathan in team. He is much better bowler than Ishant/Munaf.

I would let PK stay as he atleast is making some runs for the team with average bowling but seriously I am really disappointed with team today. Best knock by the best batsman goes in vain yet again.

I am not sure what Sachin's aims are but I wish Indian team can win a worldcup and give it to Sachin while he is in team. This can be the best thing for country and best gift for a player who has devoted his life to country.

Well not sure what all I might continue saying irrelevant but this defeat really sucks. Indians should start behaving determined under pressure.


-----
Ashish Meena

Love ...

This is a subject on which I never thought I would be writing something before just now. Anyways here I am.
Obviously love is something on which greatest of poets, writers, philosophers have written.
Wait a minute just when I wrote my last line I just thought may be I can read other people's point of view before I write mine (although definitely it should not affect my thoughts). I was surprised to see this article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love#Chemical_basis

Honestly I had never thought there can be a chemical explanation for love but here it is. Specially there are these few lines from the above article.

Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act in a manner similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side effects such as increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.

These lines have made me believe that there will be time when Science will be able to explain almost everything. Scientists may give a theory atleast for each thing in the world which would people accept and would be too difficult to prove wrong. A lot of people believe Big bang theory.
Seems like I am diverting from topic :P. But I am really out of words after reading this article may be sometime later I shall write my views :)


--
Ashish Meena

Default value of fields and local variables in java

Default value of Fields :--

When we are declare field they get a default value even if we don't assign it, we can check them with a small example

public class DefaultValueTester {
int i;
double d;
short s;
long l;
char c;
boolean b;
Object o;
public static void main(String[] args) {

DefaultValueTester t = new DefaultValueTester();
System.out.println(t.i);
System.out.println(t.d);
System.out.println(t.s);
System.out.println(t.l);
System.out.println(t.c);
System.out.println(t.b);
System.out.println(t.o);
}
}

The out put of this program will be

0
0.0
0
0

false
null


But if we work with local variables things are going to be a bit different.

Lets now try

public static void main(String[] args) {
int i ;
System.out.println(i);
}

It fails to compile, so we can clearly see that no default value gets assigned to local variables

Can we create a new Earth?

Today I watched Start trek. I generally like fiction and this was one of the movies I really enjoyed. Movie is about planet wars. Where planets convert to debris in seconds.

After watching movie a thought came to my mind. Well actually a series of thoughts came to my mind lets go through a few of them one by one. Its a very old question, does life exist outside earth somewhere in universe?

Many scientists have simply denied the possibility of life anywhere other. Some have claimed that series of events which make life possible are so rare that its just not possible. My question is all of us believe that universe is so big that we can possibly never know what is inside it. The light which reaches to us from stars, can we ever possibly go closer to even one of them and see what they really look like? When such thing like existence of life can happen on a planet near SUN, why cant such a phenomenon happen in billions of billions of other SUNS/ Stars. Besides that may be that there are things on some planet which support different kind of life. May be life without OXYGEN,WATER. I don't think we can just deny that life is just not possible out of earth , yes this might be true that we never come to know about it. In fact some things tells me we are not alone in this universe, there are people who are superior to us and there are people who are inferior to us. Its just a matter of time when someday someone will contact earth. I dont believe we are going to approach any planet with life though :)

Now here comes my main question, we have seen in some movies species moving to some new planet when there planet is going to destroy itself. Not now, may be after millions years there might be a time when age of earth gets over. It might just crash like an artificial satellite of NASA/ISRO crashes from orbit. Then what are our predecessors going to do? Should we move to another planet ? Can we ever find a planet which is exactly like earth, well if that is true than probably there are people thinking about us as we do for them. But lets say we can't find a planet like that. Can we create one ?

Can we create an earth?
Theoretically I would say we can, what we need for life is oxygen, water. Water we can make by chemical reactions if we have enough other chemicals on planet. Then we need oxygen/air, is there someway we can create a protection layer surrounding the planer which makes sure that no air passes through that layer then transfer air from earth to that planet. Once air is there it will never eave and it will be just like earth. We can experiment over this thing on smaller scale.

Well this is not gonna be easy but seems possible to me. May be someday technology really reaches such level when we can create our own new earth.

Regards,
Ashish Meena

Does life really have to suck ?

These days I feel many times where am I headed? What are my goals? What are my ambitions? Is there something I desire in life? Where do I see myself in 10 years? Its like I get millions of questions.

I am 23 now, and if I think in a way I have not done really bad so far. I thank god that he provided me with opportunities which helped me get today where I am standing, but what now? Is it like from now onwards I shall have to take my own decisions? Or I am still going to leave to fate and destiny to choose a path for me and I will just continue moving on it. I remember a quote from TV series HEROES "choose a path or destiny with do that for you. Well destiny might choose the best path as well or at least I can make myself believe that it is the best path as I never would have been to any other path but is it worth it? Can we just let destiny decide our whole life? Well we can if we have faith in God and we can choose a path ourselves if we have faith in self. Do I have faith in self? Do I have faith in God? Well answers to both the questions is both yes and no. I do have faith in God for I have always achieved things for which I have worked hard, thanks a lot God. Please continue your mercy on me like this. But wait I said things for which I worked hard. I never got things for which I didnt work hard, so does it mean that I can be confident on myself? After all, its you who does things for you isnt it ? God doesn't write exams for you, he doesnt appear to interviews in your place.Well but luck is something worth considering always sometimes I feel that a lot of things in life are determined by forces you have no control over. Luck plays a major role and we can say that luck is decided by GOD. So its ultimately God. Well if we keep thinking like this its never going to end.

Well there is one Sanskrit Shloka which

कर्मण्येवाधिकारास्ते म फलेषु कदाचन |
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भु मा ते संगोस्त्वकर्मणि॥


Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachna
ma Karmaphalheturbhu ma te sangostvakarmani.
Ch. 2, 47

In English translation:
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action। Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.

I believe this thing. I know that this is the best way to achieve happiness and success in life. I will try my best to follow this principle thought by great Krishna. Dear god give me strength.


----
Ashish

Thursday Oct 1 00:00:01 IST 2009

some great songs

There are some songs which I have listened people playing and liked but never played myself. A few of them I managed to listen today :)

Here is a great song from Pink Floyd


Here is one more song which is one of my favorite but managed to listen it myself recently only


Really great songs :)

Some Interview questions

Hi,
I was going through a site and found a few interview questions. I believe they are worth sharing. I will be putting answers to them as well.

1. Given a Binary Search Tree, write a program to print the kth smallest element ? Now can you do it without using any static/global variable. You can't pass the value k to any function also.

2. Given an array of size n. It contains numbers in the range 1 to n. Each number is present at least once except for 2 numbers. Find the missing numbers.

3. Given a string,find the first un-repeated character in it? Give some test cases

4. You are given a dictionary of all valid words. You have the following 3 operations permitted on a word: delete a character, insert a character, replace a character. Now given two words - word1 and word2 - find the minimum number of steps required to convert word1 to word2. (one operation counts as 1 step.)

5. What is the time and space complexities of merge sort and when is it preferred over quick sort?

6. Find the second largest element in an array with minimum no of comparisons and give the minimum no of comparisons needed on an array of size N to do the same.

7. Given an array of size n, containing every element from 1 to n+1, except one. Find the missing element.

8. You have 50,000 html files, some of which contain phone numbers. How would you create a list of all the files which contain phone numbers?

9. Given two sets, Write a function to provide the union of them.

10. Design an algorithm to calculate the most user viewed pages

11. Design an algorithm to find duplicates in an array.

12. Design an algorithm and write code to serialize a binary tree.

13. Design an algorithm and write code to find two numbers in an array whose sum equals a given value

14. Given two binary trees, find whether or not they are similar.

15. Assume your computer is reading characters one by one from a stream (you don't know the length of the stream before ending). Note that you have only one character of storage space (so you cann't save the characters you've read to a something like a strong). When you've finished reading you should return a character out of the stream with equal probability.

16. You are provided with a stream of numbers, design a data structure to store the numbers in the stream along with their no. of occurrences.

17. Given two sorted arrays A1 and A2, of lengths L1 and L2 , L1 < L2 and the last L1 slots in A2 are vacant, get me all the numbers in A2, sorted in the most efficient manner without using extra space. This was a written test question in which I blabbered quick sort will do..

18. In a array of size n , there is one number missing and one number repeated twice. Find them.

I am 23 ....

I turned 23 now. Well when someone turns 18 he says "yippe, I am 18." Similar thing happens on 21. In a ways we can say that each birth day deserves celebration until you reach 21.

But after 21, its like counting gets reversed. Each new birthday you feel "damn it, one more year of my life is over".

All we can do is just wish and resolve that we shall try our best not to waste the next year we have ahead.


Thu Sep 10 23:57:51 IST 2009

Want to trace a caller ?

Many a times we receive calls from unknown number and we might want to figure out where is the person calling from. Well we can't determine the exact spot but definitely we can narrow down to a city. All we need is the first four digits of the number and we can determine the operator and circle of the caller.
We can use these links to figure this out.

http://coai.in/msccodes.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_telephone_numbering_in_India

So next time you receive a call and you have access to the net make sure to use this :)
--
Ashish Meena

Guitar !!!

Life seems to have been really very monotonous in recent days. Seems I hardly do anything. Well obviously I am getting older and daily I am losing a day of my youth which I could have spent in something better way.

People say that life becomes monotonous when you get a job. But really now I believe it has been for me.

I believe I should atleast do something which adds something to my personality, have tried many things.
Thinking of trying hands again on guitar. Let's see if it is helpful and I am able to achieve some milestone. I atleast want to be able to lean guitar up to a point where I can play a song after some practice at times.
Let's hope I can do it :)

Do terrorists deserver a trial?

It has been 8 months since terrorist attack on Mumbai.
A few days back I read this news. The lone survived terrorist confesses. I was like WTH.
This seems really ridiculous that a person caught shooting innocent on a crowded railway station caught on camera needs any trial. I read that around 200 witnesses have been summoned to court against him already. I don't understand why, does anyone in the world think that this guy can be innocent?

Well, that is true that by his confession now whole world knows the truth, but still I really don't think that such terrorists deserve any trial.

A great example of unity

I came through this news on times of India. Definitely we should learn something from this incident.  Someone wished in the comments section to see the day where we arent surprised to see such news. I just hope that day is close enough so that our country and whole world can be happy

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Muslim-priests-at-900-yr-old-Shiva-temple-in-Kashmir/articleshow/4751800.cms

--
Ashish Meena

Time management

Is it too difficult to manage time?
Well I always end up saying I don't have time to do this/that etc.

Lets say from now, I am going to start a few things roughly as below

1. sleep at 12
2. get up at 6
3. do exercise for around 1:15 minutes roughly daily.
4. spend around 10 hours in office daily.

So lets say I get up at 6 O' clock.
I come back from exercise etc by 7:15. I have up to 8:15 (1 hours free which I can use to read newspaper etc)
I have a bath get ready for office and reach there by 9.
I come back at 7:15 from office.

I have time 7-8:15 for free (will have to decide what to do with it )

8:15-8:45 dinner (with random episode of friends)

8:45-12 (I again have free)

So it turns out if I can manage time and be regular I have time to do a lot of things .. hmm lets see how it turns out


I am saving the time when I just planned time management just to remember how many days I am able to follow it :)

Thu Sep 3 11:15:55 IST 2009







--
Ashish Meena

Mahendra Singh Dhoni Again

When I made my last post about MS Dhoni, he was being seen as a person who was considered to be over. India's failure in twenty twenty worldcup had raised questions on Dhoni's leadership.

Now on India's tour to West-Indies, MS Dhoni has yet again proved to be a solid wall. I am bent to call him a great successor of Rahul Dravid, who can even hit the ball at times.
For the ones who watched 3rd ODI will not forget the six (when 10 out of 5 were required) for quite a long time. I myself was getting frustrated when India reached to this condition from where they seemed in quite comfortable position. But then this man, MS Dhoni struck the ball along the wind over fans. This was really the hit which sealed Indian victory and few man like MS Dhoni can do things like that. I am sure critics will keep watch their toung for quite sometime when it will come to MS Dhoni,


--
Ashish Meena

Mahendra Singh Dhoni

In last 1 year this name has been synonym to a person who is believed by 1000 million Indians. Well Indian captain in whose captaincy India has reached heights of being the best team. Defeated newzeland, westindies, England, SriLanka, Australia on their own soil. Won first ever T20 wordcup where no one was expecting India to even reach semifinal. Dhoni is the man who still is ranked 1 batsman in icc rankings. Dhoni has been one of the greatest finishers in ODI cricket. He is just rock solid who never gets out easily.

Still in recent two cricket, India could not reach semi finals. Everyone was surprised why. Is it over confidence?
Is it IPL fatigue? Is it just that Dhoni's honeymoon is over?

Dhoni really has struggled in hitting the way he used to be. We all really miss Dhoni style. The shots which only dhoni could play. Dhoni was a batsman who could hit six on each ball. Well now he is transformed into a rock solid batsman who doesnt hit but doesn't get out easily as well.

Well I don't know what is the reason behind the defeat. I believe probably failure of Rohit, Suresh Raina (who had been really very great in IPL). Whatever be the reason, Indians should not just get carried away and start questioning Dhoni because of just one defeat.



--
Ashish Meena

--
Ashish Meena

My radio appearance :-)

A lot of people have had trouble with the way I speak :-)
Most of the people start understanding me after spending some time with me.
Today on thinking over this thing I just recollected some memories. Actually I can say some good memories.

I was in Bikaner radio studio on a show in which some kids from my school had been selected for some reading some poems songs etc. I had been given task of reading a poem on BASANT (spring), I finished reading it. After that a very tough situation came to me I had to read one more poem along with a girl. Till that time I was very different person. I didnt like any girls and wanted to just stay away from them. You cant imagine how embarrassing it was for me to read a poem with a girl :( (the reason why I hated girls was that in school days there was no guy who who got marks even closer to what I used to get but there were some stupid girls who used to come closer at time and again :( )
Anyways the radio jockey who now I think was a pretty girl :-), asked me "Ashish wil be reading one more poem, Ashish are you reading one more poem again or Sandhyan is with you(dont remember if name really was sandhya or not). I was like in my mind "WTH, how can I say she is with me but I cant deny that either". I just thought of a diplomatic answer and said "YES" :-P and continued reading the poem with that girl.
Really when I think about those days I feel "wow those were days, so pretty girls wanted to talk to me and I gave shit to none (well this is pretty much the opposite case now except a few excetptions :-) )

Well atleast I used to be eloquent sometime :-)

My New Laptop :)

Recently I got my new Laptop Dell Inspiron 1525 with configuration ,
processor core 2 duo T6400 Intel, 160GB harddisk, 2 GB Ram.
I have seen many of my friends have opted for faster processors and more Ram.
But I believed that I won't need a faster processor and so much Ram as well.

It seems quite fine. I tried quite many applications and few games as well.
Hmm anyways I have got my own computer after quite a long time now. So since last many days it has been acting like my whole time companion :P.
Although till now nothing productive was done :(.

I have also not gone to gym since many days and living quite an irregular life :(
Lets see if I can change things from now on.

Thu Jan 29 03:08:12 IST 2009