Vivek's Blog

My world, My views

Archive for category General

Checking In

Nov 27

Posted by Vivek in Education, Gaming, General | 1 Comment

It’s been a while. Things have happened. Some were good, some were bad.

Managed an above average grade on my second Thermodynamics exam, which was a good sanity check after a below-average grade on the first one, but I’m not in the clear just yet. Need an above average score on the final to lock in that elusive B. Doing okay in my other class – just need to not screw up the final.

On the research side, things have been moving along at a canter. We created and characterized our first batch of samples and are currently trying to figure out the best fabrication approach to take in order to achieve better results with our second batch. I also did a literature survey recently and will be presenting to my subgroup on Dec 1. I’ve been through lots of training sessions and there’s more to come yet. On the whole though, I love being at MIT. Classes are brutal, but being constantly surrounded by smart people is great. I wish I could get to research directly without having to take classes, but it is what it is. Just need to survive. Getting used to being average took some time.

I won’t be going home this winter – first time in 5 years. I have to take a week-long microfabrication training course in January, so I decided to hang around for the entire break. However, I will be heading down to New York for the Christmas weekend and could possibly also make another trip to visit my cousin (and my nephew!) in West Virginia.

Since I got done with midterms recently, I’ve had time to indulge in video gaming. Picked up Left 4 Dead 2 after being persuaded by a friend and it is awesome. Really expands upon the original in several ways and makes the original look boring in comparison. Also picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum, Braid, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. courtesy of crazy Steam sales. Yes, the very Steam I’ve ranted about in the past. I have been converted. While I still like getting something tangible for my money (i.e., physical media), Steam is a great distribution platform and something that’s improving to the point of being as good as Xbox Live (although it still lacks several features compared to Live). Two games I’m eagerly anticipating are Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2, both releasing next year. Now that I know ME2 will run on my laptop, I’m going to get myself the Collector’s Edition. It will hit retail January 26, and I should have a week to blaze through it before the spring semester starts.

Well, that’s about it for now.

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The Life of an MIT Grad Student

Sep 9

Posted by Vivek in Education, General | 5 Comments

This post has been simmering in the back of my head for a while now. However, a multitude of orientation events and more generally, “getting settled” has taken priority. There’s also the small matter of finding a research group and a project that I like before all the good ones get taken. But that can process in the background. Let’s get on with the blogging.

So, after a largely comfortable (albeit hot) three months at home, I arrived in Boston/Cambridge on August 27 and immediately got to work taking care of administrative nonsense and settling in. I have a nice room with enough space to store all my belongings and still have room for a few people to sleep on the floor, shall the need ever arise. My dorm has a small gym, a games room, and a decent DVD library for residents to utilize. Our incoming class is pretty large (60 or so new students in the department) so I’ve been meeting a lot of people. I haven’t had much opportunity to explore Boston yet, but I have five years to rectify that.

My stored items showed up on Saturday and I’m oh so thankful that I have my speakers back. After spending a week using only my laptop speakers, I had forgotten what bass (not necessarily the instrument) sounded like. At the same time, it sounded too deep for my liking initially so I had to turn it down! Speaking of music, this will be a busy month for me. Porcupine Tree, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam are releasing new albums and I have a ticket to see PT live on the 27th. You can rest assured that a review of their new album is forthcoming, as is the concert review. I won’t be doing a review, but I saw District 9 recently and loved it. If you like sci-fi, do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It does get a bit nasty, so I wouldn’t recommend it for the squeamish.

I had my first class today. Now that I have an MIT ID, have registered for classes, and started attending them, I finally consider myself an MITian. I’m happy to be here and I keep reminding myself that I can’t slack off at all. People are nice, but most professors are notoriously difficult to get hold of, which explains why I haven’t picked a research group to join yet.

Some people have asked me to put up pictures of MIT and the surrounding area. I do have some pictures but I’ll take some more before uploading everything in one go, so please be patient. In other news, I dumped Firefox 3.5 for Opera 10. The other day, Fx was hoarding 1GB of RAM which convinced me to finally make the switch – Opera is speedy, stable, and sexy. I dislike how some websites won’t work with Opera, but the “Identify as/Mask as” option seems to work pretty reliably.

P.S.: That title really doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of what’s in the blog post. Meh.

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Vacationeering

Aug 10

Posted by Vivek in General | 6 Comments

The numbers: 4 places, 8 days, about 1400km, 1 upset stomach, 4 (maybe more) marriage proposals, dozens of relatives

I don’t think that visiting relatives counts as a vacation, more so since this entire summer is one long vacation. However, I like the title and it stays.

The last time I went on such a trip was exactly two years ago. The next time I will be able to go on such a trip is unknown. So, it was important for me to meet the people I wouldn’t see for a long, long time. Not all relatives are fun to meet with but I think I had mostly pleasant experiences on my trip. Some assorted memories from the trip:

- Met my newest and youngest niece for the first time. She cries a lot.
- I tutored my younger cousins (father’s side of the family) for their exams. Yelled at them occasionally.
- Managed to get some reading done. I have a backlog of MRS Bulletins I need to clear.
- I got sick with gastritis thanks to the medication I took for my cold/sore throat issues from the week before. Saved me from a reportedly awful dish at dinner that night.
- Was constantly reminded that I looked weak.
- Ate lots of Ras Malai, including some from Jaipur’s famous Lakshmi Mishthan Bhandar (LMB).
- Ran into about two and a half dozen relatives on Rakshabandhan in Jaipur.
- Bought some nice shirts and a tie. Also bought a Manchester United tee (not the team jersey) and a replica Team India (cricket) tee as well. I look forward to wearing both at MIT on days either team is in action.
- We got invited for dinner by a relative who failed to follow-up and left us in limbo. Ended up going to Pizza Hut to satisfy my Mom’s pizza craving of the last 4 years.
- I had to explain my educational present and future a bunch of times.
- I like how most places in Rajasthan have scheduled power cuts. That way, you can plan your day around the cuts instead of cursing the electricity supply company each time there’s an unscheduled cut.
- It was cooler there than it is here, despite the lack of rain. Seriously, so much traveling and not a single drop of rain anywhere.
- I also found out that my 13-year-old niece is into Hannah Montana. Having not seen her for six years, I didn’t have the heart to break to her that Hannah Montana is manufactured, corporate crap specifically created by Disney to scam teenage girls into buying their shit.
- Mom got calls from someone interested in marrying their daughter to yours truly. B.A., M.A. in Hindi and a B.Ed.? I don’t think so, guy.

I might do a part 2 in case more vivid memories stir up between now and my next blog entry. By the way, what’s up with these near-weekly WordPress updates?

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Going Away

Jul 31

Posted by Vivek in General | 1 Comment

No, not to Boston. At least not just yet.

I’ll be away traveling and visiting relatives in Rajasthan for the next week or so. Hence, you shall find no new joy when you a visit to my humble blog from August 1-9. Since I don’t feel like coughing up premium SMS charges while roaming, no updates on twitter either. Sorry tweeps. Not like any of you fine readers will send out emails, but in case you do, I can’t promise a reply will get to you in a timely fashion. I am not setting a vacation auto-reply on my email accounts.

Once I get back, I’ll have a little over two weeks to start preparing for MIT. Time has flown by so quickly – it’s not even remotely funny.

Always the summers are slipping away.
- Steven Wilson

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Where would you go tied up to a lasso?

Jul 21

Posted by Vivek in General, Updates | 3 Comments

Yes, now that my blog is back from the world of the dead, I’m calling on all five of my readers to join me saying a solemn w00t.

For a while, I dithered about wondering if I should dump my hosting and move to tumblr or wordpress.com. However, I decided that the kind of control afforded by your own webspace is not available elsewhere and I didn’t want to undo all the work done in the past 4 years. Hence, I now present to you, v5.0 of Vivek’s Blog.

After a long time, I’ve found a theme I love out of the box and apart from minor color-related changes, this theme has not been modified from the original. Arclite, my current theme, also uses CSS3 webfonts (Firefox 3.1+, Safari 3.1+, and Opera 10+ only) which means I can place fonts in my theme folder and it will render them on the fly, regardless of whether or not you have them installed on your local machine.

Take some time to look around – the pages have been modified and updated from their older versions. While the dual-sidebar has some info, don’t forget the footer which also houses widgets for Meta, Recent Comments, and Pages for your convenience. A few more color modifications could be forthcoming, but as of right now, I think I’m happy with the look.

Also, I assure you that posts will keep flowing from now on. Not on a crazy daily basis like last year, but more than what it has been this year. Also, my Twitter account is updated far more often then my blog is, so feel free to follow me: http://www.twitter.com/ElectricTool.

**UPDATE: I’m afraid I prematurely shot my wad on what was supposed to be a dry run, if you will, so now I’m afraid I have something of a mess on my hands.**

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