Now, its only half as cumbersome

This has been easily the best week for me this summer. Not only did I get through two of my three jobs-to-do, I received a good reward in both of them. First of them being the driving license for which I was waking up at 6 in the morning all through the summer, the reward being a quick response from the RTO that I got my driving license in less than a week delivered to my house :D. Another effort pertaining to GRE paid off. Although not a great score I am content enough with what I got.

The test score is this satiating because I was very tense, in fact I was never this tense before for any other exam, because I preferred GRE preparation to placement preparation. Anything wrong if happened would not only have ruined my effort but also make the placements more crucial for me, that too with a very little preparation.

Coming to the test, nothing is allowed inside the exam hall except the passport,a must.
Then there is no extra section, a verbal or quant section,that I heard from so many people. There is only an experimental section which you may or may not attempt. And finally coming to applying for the four universities, one should better note their anticipated universities and their states as well, as there are so many universities, they were divided in terms of state. I missed out one of the universities I thought I would apply :(. The universities I sent my score card are: Univ of maryland,college park
Ohio state univ
univ of california,san diego
texas A&M univ

A respite in terms of encouraging your prep: do not be obsessed thinking that the words will be tough. I did not find any tough words in my exam: of course part of that happening can be attributed to the fact that there is still a possibility for 250 marks. But even then i think the most difficult is the most easiest question and that which uses simple words. I was very confused early on when all the questions I got seemed easy to me and since this is a CAT(computer adaptive test) test the level of the question remains easy only when u answer the previous one wrong. But there is a other way of looking at it which did not cross my mind then. The words or questions I know do not imply that they are easy or whatever, but with the natural negative tendency I became over cautious and lost some important time. Adding to my fear there came the reading comprehensions, which I feared the most, in the topic I feared the most(literature).I left out all of them, a whole of six questions which I guessed w/o even seeing the questions. These factors made me think of canceling the test, however the invigilator insisted on proceeding to the score, ultimately made me joyous. I didn't want any thing to prevent me from a good score, this made me resort to something I have never done before in my life wholeheartedly or by myself, devudi bottu pettukunna :)

my attempts at creating some ambigrams

the first one, an easy one to make, all it takes is some straight lines. of course, there is some imagination into it.the top left corner is the version i drew with hand in paint and the right bottom one is the 180 degrees rotated version of it.this pattern complies with all the bmps i have put up here.
second one is an ambigram of the name sunkara(my sidee and classmate for 7 years now). this one has taken a lot of time. difficulty is that the strokes are real hard ones to make in paint with a brush!! however it might look to each one of you, it had given me immense satisfaction once its finished.
third one is my mom's name.once again doesn't need much brain storming, only challenge is making the "a" look like "m" on rotation. one setback i faced doing this is a power cut that came just when i completed doing it, there by losing the work. hence had to do it again..
fourth one is my sister's name.actually used part of my previous work for this.

As I promised to upload a video in one of my previous blogs depicting the plight of being at pilani, I somehow succeeded uploading it this time owing to the supportive net. The post mentioned earlier is titled "Wanna see(read) how its like being here in Rajasthan?".

moreover,I uploaded two more posts after what you can call a small hiatus. some new changes to the blog are :page-view counter and button that takes you to the download page of firefox. the intent of the special button is to help firefox set the record, which is now accomplished and their hunger for success is never ending and they look to improve upon the margin.

IPL-08

happy to see the IPL teams abiding to our poll results :). Although unhappy with mumbai not taking a place in the final four, they deserve not being for the semis as for their inability to conquer pressure situations, not once but twice in the last three matches that they lost from what is a safe position to post a win. Anyway they have comeback strongly after the initial array of defeats, and brought the competition alive.
I was hoping to see how punjab would play when Marsh fails, he gave me only one chance and that proved enough for me to think that punjab is riding on marsh's luck. He buckled out to Dhoni's mightier fortuity ;).. things would have been different, then. Gambhir was as good as Marsh, only that he did not have his share of luck unlike the latter.My tendency is to support the weaker team when both the teams aren't the ones I was looking forward to see. So, for the final I wished and hoped for chennai to win. wish Raina had taken the catch of pathan. Rajasthan deserved to be the winners. they have come out to be the winners,out of nowhere defying everyone's views about them. One of the cheapest players in the IPL, shane watson, turned out to be the man of the series and rightly so. he had his impact felt in both the semis and the finals with both bat and ball.
lets wait for the next edition to see what surprise packages are in store for us!!

Firefox - innovation and quality personified

Had the firefox entered the industry a little earlier,it would have been the leading browser in terms of usage by now. I say in terms of usage bcos we all know its the leader in speed, providing security. Although it's not the most used browser now, it is the largest used single version evident from the monthly surveys by w3schools,a reputed website "http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp". Even though considering IE5,IE6,IE7 as one they lead only bcos of reasons like:
1)IE being the default browser in windows, the most used operating system.
2)internet community which is largely browsed by pedestrians, who never dare installing
any other softwares, and many of them do not even have a faint idea of any other browser. they are unfairly obsessed that internet is nothing but IE.
But fortunate for the mozilla corporation that for all the efforts they have put in the project starting from zero when the IE was the dictator in the arena they have improved a lot. one can understand that only a superior software can replace a leader, and firefox is taking large steps towards attaining that edge.
usage statistics comparison:
in jan 2004 IE-84.7 firefox-5.5
in apr 2008 IE-54.8 firefox-40.1
at this pace it doesn't take long before firefox engulfs more of IE users into its belly.
go for firefox. the traffic to the site was so heavy prior to the release on tuesday that the server could not handle so many requests.with the advent of the latest firefox,it's sure to catch many more an eye. wish firefox on its record(sure to be held) and increase its margin by downloading it either at "http://www.spreadfirefox.com/" or in the top of the side bar here.