Academic Life...

There’s a good chance that my GPA during this term won’t be all that great; reason being my lack of dedication at the beginning of the term. I’ve fallen behind in nearly every single subject; I kept procrastinating, simply stating that I’d do them in the weekend.

These weekends came and went, but the work remained incomplete. In this manner, I managed to accumulate a shitload of stuff.

Well, the midterms started this month; it was a wakeup call, which (fortunately) I believe I heard. As such, I’ve started studying again. Everyday; I guess that with the amount of studying I’m doing now, I’ll be able to keep up with the class, and get a decent score. Unfortunately, owing to events described above, that is probably the best I can hope for. Anyway, I’ll be making efforts at intense study bursts; hopefully, I can improve my grade this way.

In other news, I’ve run out of space on my hard disks owing to the massive amount of stuff I’ve downloaded from my residence’s LAN. I’m thinking of buying a portable hard disk, of approx 500 Gb capacity. Friends here are telling me to wait for some discount periods; things are said to go pretty cheap. I’ve started hunting for it already, though; market research never goes to waste, after all.

Oh yes; I’m going into a number of activities; these include robotics & social service. Robotics sounded really interesting, and I’ve always wanted to participate in some sort of volunteer activity. We’ll be attending an old age home this weekend. Looking forward to it…

I'm In Toronto!

Yeah, that's right... yippee!

Sorry for not posting on the blog for quite some time; so much happened in the past couple of weeks, but they still went by so quickly. For starters, I made it to the University on time (almost, missed the first two days of classes).

My term started on the 2nd of September, but they had this celebratory sort of thing, called F!rosh week. I couldn’t attend it, coz my visa for Canada was real late in arriving back home in Saudi. Stupid people at the Embassy actually forgot about it, and sent it to us about a month late. Anyway, after we got our passports, my family and I headed straight for Canada. Yeah, I’m currently enrolled as a first year Computer Engineering student at the University of Toronto. Anyway, my family’s staying in Canada right now; they’ll be leaving in early October. I’m staying at my campus residence though; my family’s current location isn’t exactly close to the University.

About my life here so far: classes are intense, the speed at which they cover the course material is amazing. The way my workload is piling up is just frightening. I guess I should actually be studying than writing this stuff…
Too late for that now, though; I’ve started, and I’m not getting of the computer before I’ve finished this post.

A lot of people from Jubail (my town in Saudi Arabia) have enrolled here; I don’t really know them that much, coz they went to different schools. Loads of East-Asian people over here; most are pretty smart and hardworking. No wonder the east is rising these days.

Toronto is a pretty multicultural city; people from all over the world co-exist pretty well here; better than they would back in their native lands. It’s a good thing, really… makes people actually appreciate the world more.

For the past several days, I’ve not been in the mood for studying anything. As a consequence of this, I’ve been falling behind in nearly every course. Added to the 8 Gigs a week of bandwidth I get in the residence, which translates into late night anime watching sessions, means I’m sleepy in class (this started this week, by the way; I’ve got to make sure this doesn’t become a habit). Anime is addictive…

That’s pretty much all I really want to say right now; keep watching for further updates…

Retardation...

It has been about four months since I last read a book on a subject of academic interest. In simple terms, I haven’t really studied anything for the past four months. Apart from this, I’ve also not really taken part in any sort of physical activity, nor have I been taking part in any sort of constructive endeavor.
Apart from watching TV, listening to Music and playing video games, I’ve been doing nothing.
This routine has been the subject of previous blog posts; this time, however, I’m going to report on a very disturbing observation I’ve made; I believe that this problem is a result of the extended period of ‘intellectual inactivity’ which I’ve kept my brain in.

I’ve been finding it harder and harder to concentrate on tasks requiring higher mental skills; my mind tends to wander off in random directions mere seconds after I’ve begun them. In fact, I’m even having trouble holding a line of thought for more than the shortest periods of time. This isn’t something completely new; I did notice a slow rise in the amount of time it takes to complete such tasks over the time I’ve been here in Saudi Arabia.
Simple mundane tasks haven’t been affected (fortunately!); still, since I began reflecting on the implication of this observation (which was a challenge in itself), the true extent of the damage it can cause has become clear. Come September (when I start University), I’ll be in a hell lot of trouble because of this; according to what I’ve heard from people already at University, catching up is much more difficult than it was at school.

I believe that the main reason for this problem is that I’ve become so used to not concentrating on anything for an appreciable time period (thanks to my wonderfully productive daily activities) that now it’s a challenge to do so, and hence I get easily distracted. *Sigh*; one of the numerous problems with extended vacations involving nothing more than sitting at home.
For example, when I got back to Saudi, I could study with music blaring in the background. Now, I’d be lucky to read a line less than three times and understand what it means under similar circumstances.

The first bit about understanding the problem was simple enough; now comes the hard part: how do I get my mind back in shape?
For starters, I think I’ll begin going through a couple of my sister’s textbooks (she also took science, and studies a lot of the same things I had when I was in XI). I think I’ll resume learning the piano; I decided to stop for a couple of days four weeks ago, and never really got back to it.
Also, I’ll begin writing some code again. Hopefully, by the start of my session, I’ll be in study mode once more.

Black Market Television!

Couldn’t think of anything to write; desperately wanted to write something. So I present to you, information on my Black Market [illegal!!!] activities in Saudi Arabia, and (*gasp!*) Animax is involved!!! Read on…
Here in Saudi, Animax isn’t available on the regular Satellite TV subscriptions (no cable in my province). As aren’t numerous Indian channels which my family wants to view. Some are available in the local Sat-TV provider’s subscription packages; however, these packages are relatively expensive. So a couple of people from the subcontinent came up with this business idea.
Satellite TV in India is provided by Tata Sky (collaboration between Tata of India and Sky of England) and Dish TV. They broadcast to customer set-top boxes via an Indian civilian communications satellite. This satellite’s effective broadcast area also happens to cover parts of the mid-east. So, you can purchase a receiver (and subscription) from Tata Sky or Dish TV in India and, via a large receiver dish, view their services in Saudi (also works in a bunch of other countries, like Dubai, Bahrain, etc.)

However, there’s a catch. Since we’re located on the fringes of the satellite’s effective broadcast zone, the signal we receive is weak; weather conditions here seem to have a negative effect, ranging from loss of clarity to total signal blackout. In all clear situations, it’s not that bad, but the problems don’t end there. Not all the channels are available (some sports and movie channels…aaargh!!!), and people haven’t figured out why this happens or how to rectify the situation. You also have to use a bigger receiver dish; the small supplied one won’t do.

All of this, however, is offset by the substantial financial gains achieved by this setup. Let’s take a look at the basic packages offered by the local companies and the ones in India (rates among companies in their respective regions is almost the same).
A 6-month subscription from local providers comes out to be about 1,500 Saudi Riyals (about Indian Rupees 15,000). Ouch! Quite a hefty price for TV, but when it’s all you’ve got, you cough up the dough. And it’s what quite a lot of people from the subcontinent were doing until last year. Some smart dude (I hear he was a Bangladeshi; no offence intended, but they are renowned for this type of ‘substitute work’) got a brainwave. A 6 month subscription from providers in India costs a mere 300 Saudi Riyals (Indian Rupees 3000). Five times less, plus lots of channels which were unavailable in the local provider’s packages; worth the lower quality, don’t you think?

He spread the word, and pretty soon, people returning from India were bringing set-top boxes (they would get confiscated if customs people were in a bad mood that day; overall, they didn’t care, and let them pass). The demand has really shot up these days, and owners of communication equipment stores have figured out (secret) methods of getting the boxes here. More expensive than buying them from India, but still cheaper than a local package.
Now let us come back to the issue of the local providers. Since the Indian community here wasn’t a major customer anyway, the drop in the number of subscriptions hasn’t really attracted all that much attention. If it did, the local companies would complain to the authorities, who would respond by conducting raids on shops selling this stuff and confiscate them from people bringing them back on civilian flights.
I went through Tata Sky’s Terms & Conditions of service, and it’s stated pretty clearly that use of their equipment outside India is not permitted and will result in termination of the service contract. By signing this contract, anyone using these services outside India is effectively breaking the law. But this law we’re talking about is applicable in India, not Saudi.
If Tata Sky takes a particularly aggressive stance against you, they can do quite a lot. For example, they can lodge a formal complaint against the people living at the address which you provided at the time of purchase (in most cases, this happens to be the home of a relative whom you asked to help you out, or maybe even your own house in India) and pursue the matter in court, and even attempt to get you back into India (extradition is the term for that) for further legal action. Basically, it means that you’re going to find yourself in a lot of legal hassles (and in jail, at worst) if you really piss them off. And waging your own legal counter offensive against them…well, Tata isn’t just a very large Indian conglomerate; it’s gone global, and with that come resources. It’s going to be a long (and expensive) road ahead. If you find yourself in this condition, well, God help you…

Coming back to a more serious note, the scenario mentioned above is, in all probability, not going to happen. For one thing, mere use of their service won’t reveal your location to them (they’d have to do some advanced tracking to get your position); they take it on good faith that you’ve got their equipment at the address which you’ve provided to them. So as long as you don’t make the mistake of scheduling a visit from their maintenance crew, you’re safe. Otherwise, expect trouble soon; because it won’t take the crew too long to realize that your set-top box and all the other stuff provided by them isn’t there.
Even then, the worst that can happen is a cancellation of your subscription. And they won’t directly jump to the conclusion that you’ve taken it abroad. After all, in a country like India, it’s safety in numbers (2nd most populous country in the world!); the number of their boxes outside India is negligible when compared to subscribers inside. Even if they do somehow find out about the exodus of their equipment to the Mideast, I don’t think that any serious countermeasures will be enacted. After all, they are getting money from us, and unless it causes problems for them, it’s a win-win situation. Licensing for Direct to Home (DTH) technology, the technology which allows for the services provided by Sat TV today, is probably what causes providers to limit the geographical area within which they can ‘officially’ sell.

Apart from that, I also believe that this ‘idea’ is nothing more than an extension of a well known practice in the subcontinent. Countries surrounding India have people interested in Indian soaps (you’ve got to be acquainted with the culture in the subcontinent to appreciate TV viewing tastes here), and they’ve probably been ordering boxes from way before their proliferation here. And since nothing has really been done about them so far (once again, its thanks to ‘safety in numbers’), I think it’s safe to sit back and watch away. ANIMAX TIME NOW!!!

I Want An Alienware (and a better DSL Connection) !!!

I dream of owning an Alienware desktop someday. No, not a laptop; I’m not a particularly big fan of laptops. Sure, they are all the rage nowadays, with new models coming out nearly every month. And yeah, owning a new one would be really nice. But given the choice between a laptop and a desktop, I’d choose the desktop. You can always get a more powerful desktop for the amount of money you dish out for a laptop. Plus, I’m not that much of a mobile person. In fact, I use my laptop as a desktop replacement.
I recently visited the Alienware web site; apart from being awed by the stuff they had on display there, I also began to wonder that if, at some point of time, I do end up buying an Alienware machine, what exactly would I do with it. I mean, the games I play (Q3A, CS and SC) run very well on low-end machines. And I’m not exactly into running the latest games. Their just isn’t that much in them which will compel me to get a better machine, just for the sake of playing them. Who knows, maybe by the time I have the sort of money to buy an Alienware, something great might have come out; that ought to justify the purchase.

Apart from gaming, what will you do on an Alienware? The web site says that apart from gaming, Alienware products are suitable for a variety of CPU intensive tasks like CAD, among others. Well, yeah, with a heavy duty processor and loads of RAM, I suppose that would be true. Still, the statement “Working on an Alienware” seems rather ironical.

About four days ago, my DSL connection stopped working (please refer to the article entitled ‘Horrible DSL’ for more info). It hasn’t come back online since then. Even my neighbor’s unsecured wireless network (which I’ve used to get online and publish this post) has been behaving erratically. Because of this, I haven’t checked my Gmail or Facebook accounts in quite some time. It’s not that I have no choice; we have this dial-up service which happens to be on ‘pay as you use’ basis (I made that up myself).

Basically, you dial the ISP’s number, and it just adds its charges to your phone bill. You don’t even need to have an account with them or anything. Personally, I think it’s a pretty neat service; for all those times when you need connectivity but don’t have the usual sources (i.e. DSL).

I could use this service; but the problem is that I’m too lazy. Maybe I’m enjoying this lack of internet access; you know, the feeling of being freed from the routine of checking your accounts. There’s always this nagging little thought in the back of your head, constantly reminding you that something important might have landed in your inbox, or someone may have posted an urgent message on your wall. But then again, the feeling of bliss stemming from cyber isolation takes over again, pushing the nagging little thought to where it belongs. Ahhh…nirvana!

I’ve been browsing Uncyclopedia quite a lot. Plenty of very entertaining articles, if you can sort through the rubbish which occupies most of the site. Check out their series on states of the human mind, or their (strictly adult) series on crimes (kitten huffing is one of them…). In fact, I think the next thing I’m going to write shall be an article for Uncyclopedia. Hell lot easier than writing an article for the blog…go figure…
And yeah...I’m not going to tell you which article I wrote… (Reasons for that are obvious)

Procrastination...

Very recently, I realized that my progress, in all the constructive activities which I had undertaken on my return to Saudi Arabia, had come to a standstill. Basically, I’m at the exact same position/level which I was at about two weeks ago.
Sure, you need a break every once in a while; but TWO WHOLE WEEKS? It’s not like I have anything else to do. Hell, a day or two of inactivity would have been understandable; even a couple of days would have been permissible. Yeah, two weeks is definitely OVERKILL!

Now that some time has passed since my realization of the situation described, I’ve begun to ponder over the exact reason I entered this ‘zero-productivity’ period. And I’ve come to certain conclusions. More on these conclusions later on in this post. Oh yeah…I’ve resumed work in all the activities as well.

Let’s make a couple of things clear from the onset:

(1)By ‘constructive activities’, I mean stuff like learning the piano (via free piano lessons at pianonanny.com [great site, completely free!]), the C++ project I was working on, etc. Anything which I find to be productive; this brings us to the second point…

(2)I like doing something productive. Anything productive, in fact. It gives me a sense of worth…satisfaction...and eventually makes me happy. I’ve been at home for nearly four months since the end of my Board examinations in March (was in India for sometime too), and I’ve spent most of my time…doing absolutely nothing productive. Been sitting in front of the TV (zero productivity right there…); man, it’s probably been the most depressing four months in my whole life!

Now let’s expound a little on my wonderful stay at home a little more. Quite a lot of my previous posts had talked about it; I intend to do so in more detail here.

Some people would kill for the opportunity to get four months with nothing to do but eat food and watch TV. I just know one thing; I certainly won’t be yearning for that anytime soon. It can drive you insane. During some mornings, with no one at home and absolutely nothing to do (DSL down, no signal on TV, not feeling like reading), I found seriously depressing thoughts creep into my mind.

Four months at home…great time for family bonding, right? WRONG!!! Household calm actually deteriorated during this time; I got involved into way more fights with both my siblings and parents than I would have if I’d been going to school or something.
Have you seen the movie ‘Disturbia’? Originally by Hitchcock, I saw a more recent remake. I now agree with couple of statements made in the movie. One of them was about how house arrest affects people. I wasn’t under house arrest; but this is Saudi Arabia, the closest you can get to being under house arrest for doing nothing wrong. Being outdoors is outside the question; mercury shows 40+ everyday; no rains. Plus, there’s no real place to hang out with friends (not many of them; either gone somewhere on vacation or weren’t here in the first place…).
Yup, sounds like house arrest. I hope you have a better picture of my time here now; NOT an ideal vacation.

Anyway; let’s come back to the reasons for my two-week lull. And it’s actually very simple, and unfortunately for me, very common. Procrastination. I won’t be going into the details of how it all began; however, it’s the same for nearly all such episodes. One thing leads to another, and before I know it, I’ve fallen behind. Very behind…
Procrastination has been a serious issue with me; it’s plagued nearly every project I’ve gotten involved with. The end result of this bad habit has often been the proverbial ‘last minute’ effort. What this eventually leads to are projects which could have given much better results, had more consistent, uniform effort been put in.
Sure, you might say that there’s a different kind of joy on completing something while racing against a very tight deadline; however, nothing compares to quality work.

Hopefully, we’ll be leaving for Canada somewhere in the middle of August. My parents and I, that is. They’ll stay for a month; I’ll enter one of the University’s hostels. I got a place in 89 Chestnut Road. That’s actually the most expensive residence at the University. I didn’t know that when I applied for residence. They had 89 Chestnut listed in the residence choices, along with statement that there were 950 seats available there. I selected it, believing that:
(a)More seats meant a greater chance of my getting one of those seats.
(b)More seats probably meant that the place was cheaper.
And without performing any further inquiry, I selected 89 Chestnut as my first preference. And I got it.

My parents aren’t too accommodating to the idea of renting out a place. They say that the total cost of my living at this rented place, by the end of a year, will come out to be about the same as the hostel’s charge (the rented place will probably require heavy initial investment). Anyway, there’s a good chance of me being at Chestnut this academic session. Maybe I’ll get a seat at a cheaper hostel next year.

A friend showed me an article detailing the salaries of undergraduate students across North America. Engineers were the highest paid of all graduates. Makes me happy (I’m going to study Computer Engineering at UoT), but the statistics were only for one year; things might be different when I graduate four years from now.
Whatever; I decided that I was going to study computers and electronics around the same time the great IT Bubble burst. I was interested in it, not in the amount of money I was going to make. If something like the fall of the IT industry couldn’t change my mind, I seriously doubt that salary rankings will.
I have dreams of starting my own company too; not exactly in software development, but actual hardware design and production. Sure, there’s a lot of competition out there; plently of talented people who can, and probably are, doing things which I can only dream of. I recently read some stuff written by this guy who actually started programming when he was 11. By the time he was 15, he was into hardware programming, and by age 20 into designing Operating Systems. I only started doing something on computers (that would be programming…) apart from gaming when I was 14. And started studying C++ when I was about 16.
But…I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to try…

I Don't Like Piracy...It's Just That The Lure Of Free Games Is Too Great!!!

I recently downloaded an entire game using Livewire’s bit torrent protocol facilities. The game was Starcraft and its expansion, Brood War. The total file(s) size was 1.299 GB. It took about a week and a half on a 128Kbps DSL connection; yeah, I know it shouldn’t have taken all that time. You see, with an ISP which decides to shut down whenever it wants to, you get an unstable connection. Which means downloads will take more time.
It would have taken more time, because my dad wants the computer powered of at night when we go upstairs; so instead of downloading the stuff on the computer, I downloaded it on the laptop via the router’s wireless features. What more, by using my laptop, I could access my neighbor’s faster (256 Kbps), albeit very weak and often unavailable wireless network. No, my neighbor hadn’t given me the key…it was just unsecured! :)
It’s been about 2 days since I completed the downloading the game. Since then, I’ve completed all the scenario missions, and come to bit of a realization. Although I really like games like Starcraft and Warcraft, I’m not very good at them. I become impatient, then enter some random phrase which just so happens to be a cheat code, and then go on to own the enemy. Yeah, like, pretty stupid. I suppose I just don’t have the patience to sit through the resource gathering, army formation, arsenal upgrade, etc.
Yeah, RTS games can get painstakingly slow; however, this problem probably exists only for rookies like me. Just watch professional Starcraft players (Koreans, mostly). They add a whole new dimension to RTS games…one of speed. They can finish off beginners in less than 10 minutes. Well, you don’t call them pros for nothing, do you?
Anyway, let’s talk about games in which I have achieved a suitable level of proficiency…like Quake 3 Arena. I am proud to say that I can now play against computer controlled bots set on the Nightmare difficulty level (hardest difficulty level for bots). Reflecting on the past a little bit, I suddenly realized that it had been about 5 years since I first played Quake 3. I started playing on I CAN WIN, the easiest level…
Probably would have progressed faster, but these times came when I completely stopped playing, like when I got a new game. Often, the reason for lack of play was that my access to the computer was restricted to a very small amount of time each day…time I needed for carrying out more pressing tasks.
Now that I’ve finally seen the light and realized that FPS games are probably more suitable for me rather than RTS games, I’ve…decided to do nothing. I used to play Quake more than anything else for the past several years (and a lot of Counter Strike too), so I guess this realization doesn’t mean a shit. Hell, a resolution concerning video games…what the hell…to each his/her own (my sister likes Q3A too…)
Coming back to the more serious topic of my having downloaded Starcraft via bit torrent; I feel sort of weird whenever I play it. A strange gut feeling comes into the scope of my conscious perception…yeah…I don’t like piracy. This blog post was written on a pirated copy of Microsoft Word…which was running on a machine with a pirated copy of Windows XP.
Really being a hypocrite, am I not? Yeah, I know…I don’t know since when I started holding this view on piracy and all, but I’ve decided to take it a bit further. I’m downloading Open Office, a freeware alternative to Microsoft Office. And I play the free-to-download demo of Quake 3. I’ve deleted the ISO of both versions of Starcraft which I downloaded (stupidity, some may say…something off my cyber conscience, for me). Nearly all the software on my laptop is freeware…not pirated. I’m looking for free alternatives to the ones that aren’t. Hopefully, I’ll make the transition from XP to Ubuntu some time in the future…
One thing about the open source community and effort is that the best way to promote it is to get involved. I read this on some random forum while surfing the web. I agree; to this end, I’ll try and see what I can do.
ANIMAX viewing is now my most time consuming activity…apart from a couple of shows every weekday and another three during the weekends, I constantly find myself staring at some random series every now and then…I wish I could draw like that…
THE BIG EYES! THE AMAZING STORYLINES!!! THE COLORED HAIR!!!!! THE WIERDO CHARACTERS!!!!!!!
*Sigh*