Firefox Did It

Its official.Firefox 3.0 has set the Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours.Firefox was downloaded 8,002,530 times on download day(17th June 2008).If you've helped Firefox by downloading Firefox 3 on download day,you can download a certificate for your contribution.

Here's my certificate-

(S)painful Defeat

Spain managed to win the Euro 2008 Final against Germany.I've been supporting Germany for years,since World Cup 2002 in Korea and Japan to be precise.Germany's 2-0 loss against Brazil was a really sad one.I feel Brazil deserved to win that one.Euro 2004 and WC 2006 weren't too great except for the fact that Miroslav Klose won the golden boot in the latter.

I was expecting Germany to do it in 2008.But Torres Lahm and Lehmann took the match away from Germany.Here's an interesting question-Who was the person responsible for Spain's only goal?Torres definitely didn't deserve it.Lahm was substituted at half time perhaps because he was blamed by the team for poor defense.Though Lehmann is very old(the oldest finalist),his performance in rest of the match proved that he deserves to be in the team.

I feel that Lehmann is to be blamed as he should have waited for Torres' shot or let Lahm block the ball.The match was evenly poised for most of the time.It was just a moment that did it for Spain.

I hope Germany wins the FIFA World Cup 2010.

I'm Back

I'm back to Delhi after a week's stay in Jaipur.I wasn't really in sight seeing mood as I was relaxing at my paternal grandparents' place.I had a nice time with my cousins.Basically,I have nothing at all to share and don't even know why I'm writing this post.Now that I'm back,I'll be posting regularly on my blog.

Off to Jaipur

I'll be going to Jaipur to visit my relatives tomorrow,17th July 2008 which also happens to be Firefox Download Day.I'll return in about a week so don't be surprised if you see some badly formatted short posts as I'll be using my mobile phone for blogging.

I'm not sure how I'll manage to download Firefox as I'll be leaving early morning.Perhaps I'll ask my dad to do so.

AIEEE and BITSAT Cutoffs

Recently I've been receiving loads of queries about AIEEE ranks and BITSAT scores.It will take me hours to reply to all these queries if I visit each and every post and reply to the comments,all thanks to Blogger's commenting system.

If you wish to check your chances of getting admission to any of the NITs or IIITs etc.,you can check last year's opening rank and closing ranks by clicking here.The ranks will be more or less similar this year except for the fact that a few extra IIT seats can give people with ranks in the higher range some hope.

Here's a solution to your BITSAT queries.Last year's BITSAT cutoffs(I got these from Ankur's post)

BITS Pilani,Pilani Campus



BITS Pilani,Goa Campus



For Hyderabad Campus,don't expect the cutoffs to be low.The cutoffs for Pilani and Goa will definitely go up as this is the general trend.

384-256+512=640

A few days ago,while I was browsing/blogging/studying for BITSAT(I don't exactly remember),Firefox crashed followed by GNOME crashing and the login window appeared.I logged in and checked System Monitor immediately to see what had gone wrong.It displayed

Memory:128 MB

No,there's no typo there,I actually had 384 MB SD RAM(128+256MB).I immediately realized that there was something wrong with the 256 MB RAM.I talked to Ankur about it and we concluded that the RAM had died of an overdose of current.

I took out the RAM and saw a sticker and a hologram with 'Lifetime Warranty' written on it.It was manufactured by a company called 'DIGITAL Memory'.I realized that I had bought it from my Mama(Mom's Brother in Hindi).I called him up and asked him the exact meaning of 'Lifetime Warranty'.It turned out that Lifetime meant till the product is manufactured.

For noobs,a SD RAM is legacy stuff and almost nobody manufactures it anymore.Its the old stock which is sold these days.Anyways I sent it to him(He lives in Jaipur) through a relative(Uncle) of mine who had to go there to organize the IPL matches there.My Mama sent it to the company to claim the warranty.In the meantime,I had to work with 128MB RAM.Using my computer was an unpleasant experience.My sister used Windows and it was damn slow.Firefox took a complete minute to start.I booted up Ubuntu and was surprised to see that Ubuntu was pretty fast even with 128MB RAM.

Coming back to the main topic of discussion here,the warranty.My mama sent it to the company and told me that they would reply in a day.The next day,my Mama called me up telling me that 256 MB RAM is no longer manufactured.

Sad News?Not exactly....Read on.

The company thus sent a 512 MB RAM which is still manufactured or is still in stock(no sure about this one).

Hooray!

I was thrilled to hear this.I had already planned to buy a new RAM module and had no hope of getting 256MB back.

So this is the situation now,I will have 640MB RAM in 4 days from now.Effectively,I exchanged a dead 256MB RAM for a brand new 512MB RAM for free.All's well that ends well.

PS-You can boil your head on Vivek's blog for some action packed stories related to warranties.

200+42,000-A Double Milestone

Here's another blog update.My blog has just crossed a double milestone.I have two reasons to celebrate.

First Achievement-200 Posts.This is my 200th post on this blog-Naman Zone.Not a big achievement but I felt like mentioning it.

Second Achievement-42,000 Hits.My blog has just had its 42,000th visit.I consider this one a bigger milestone as my blog is just about 13 months old and I had never thought I would get 42 thousand visits this soon.

800+ Hits

This is something which is making me feel great.Its 9:42, 2 hours and 18 minutes to midnight.My blog has already had 800+ visitors today.I have a feeling it might reach 1000 today.Two of my recent posts on IIT JEE 2008 have broken all records on my blog.My post titled IIT JEE 2008 Solutions has already had 365 hits in an hour and believe it or not the speed is increasing rapidly.Yes,its not a typo.I'll post the final visitor count tomorrow.

PS-My visitor count settled at 1908 by the end of the day

Back To JEE Preparation

Now that I have 9 free days before my Maths Bored Exam,I can get back to my JEE preparation.English,Physics and Chemistry went fine.I can't expect anything in English.I'll get something like 60/70 in Physics and 65/70 in Chemistry.English was really simple and if things work out well in terms of checking,I'll get a decent score.Lots of things to revise so I'll keep this short.

Email Address Update

This is an update for my feedburner email subscribers and other blog readers.Note that all blog updates will now be e-mailed to you from a new id-feed@namanb.com.

My new contact email is contact@namanb.com.For feedback on my blog,you can contact me at feedback@namanb.com.For any communications regarding my blog,the above email addresses will be used.This is just to make things simpler for people who don't know me.For others,you can obviously contact me on my Gmail ID as well.

NamanB

Here's another blog update.NamanB,that's my new display name.I changed it because I thought that Sports Fan was a name restricted to the 10-20% of me which is passionate about sports.I,being a person interested in a large variety of things can be completely represented only by my name.Another aspect is that now my display name matches my domain.For those who don't like typing long names,you can call me Naman or NB in short.

Decreasing Number Of Posts

You might have noticed the decrease in the frequency of posts on my blog.The reason is pretty obvious.I'm a student of class XII and attend classes at VMC for IIT JEE 2008 preparation.Thus I rarely get time to maintain my blog and write some posts.

VMC has a tradition of completing the syllabus not before the month of January.December is a month of frequent classes.The so called pre-bored boards are scheduled for January.Topics like Inorganic Chemistry,Biomolecules and Modern Physics are tough on the mind as all these require mugging up the awful book published by the NCERT.

The insignificant Bored Board exams will keep me buys in March.13th April is going to be a date to watch out for.No,I'm not talking about the harvesting festival,Baisakhi.It's the IIT JEE day.I'm better off not keeping the date out of my mind.It can interfere with my preparation.

Basically,the next few months are going to be the months with the least number of posts on Naman Zone.Though you will find a new post in the next 2 days,don't expect too many posts.

I'm Mobile

This post is special as it is the first post I've published using my mobile phone-Motorola SLVR L9

NAMANB.COM

If you look at your address bar you'll see that the address is http://www.namanb.com. Yes,what you're thinking is absolutely true.I have bought a new domain and http://namanbagga.blogspot.com no longer exists although it is redirecting to my new domain.

Two days ago,I just thought of getting my own domain.I was planning to do so for quite some time but finally I did it at the right time.I had a talk with GQ regarding various registrars and their schemes in short.I looked around for some good domains and I had lots and lots of choices.

Initially,I wanted just naman to be in my domain name.That was possible but only with a .biz or a .us domain.Since I am not an American,naman.us would make no sense at all.I have no intension of converting my website to a business website which rules out naman.biz.Then I had 2 names in mind-namanb and namanzone.

I had almost all options with namanzone and namanb.I chose .com and ruled out namanzone.com on the basis that it would not make sense if I change the title of my blog.Also,my sub-domains would not make sense if I chose namanzone.com.

Finally I knew the domain I wanted.I was happy with namanb.com and now I had just one more problem.I needed to select a registrar for my domain.ankur suggested 1and1,Go Daddy and Yahoo Domains.Yahoo Domains had a nice scheme in which they were selling domains at $2 for the first year.Unfortunately the scheme had ended.

Go Daddy offers free hosting with domains.This is an attractive offer as nobody else offers free hosting.But I chose 1and1 to buy my domain as they offer .com domains at $5.99 for the first year and offer free private registration for all domains.I finally confirmed my order and got this domain.

It took long before it was activated.I later discovered that I could customize my domain before it was ready.My domain was ready 48 hours after registration. I was tensed about the fact the namanb.com might not redirect to www.namanb.com but I managed to redirect it.

Overall,I had a nice experience with 1and1 and would recommend it to people seeking .com or .us domains.

MY FIRST CENTURY

This is the 100th post on 'Naman Zone'.Since it's cricket season,I call it my first century.I wish I get as many as Sachin Tendulkar.

I'VE TURNED A YEAR OLDER

Guess what day it is?It's my birthday.This is one of the shortest posts on my blog.You can call it a short update.I bet this post could fit a SMS.I had a nice time at school today.The Ubuntu community wished me today,something which Microsoft would never do.This is another reason to shift to Linux.I have other things to do right now.So enjoy yourself while I do so.I'll write a post later today.Till then just scan through my archives.

HORRIBLE NEWS CHANNELS

News channels are supposed to be a source of information which is true and unbiased.Some news channels seem to have forgotten this.We have channels like CNN IBN messing up news.They told my friend Ankur Banerjee(GQ) to act as a student of class XII when we were in class XI.He was told to act as if he was to appear for IIT-JEE 2007.Almost everyone who knows GQ knows that he is a Linux enthusiast and simply hates Microsoft.How did CNN treat him?They said that had an ambition to become the CEO of Microsoft!!!They also renamed him-Ankur Bhattacharya.This is how a news bulletin is generated.

In another incident,Delhi Aaj Tak reporters asked three students of our school as if they were horrified over the CBSE syllabus change for Class XII.They were asked to express their anxiety about unavailability of textbooks.The textbooks were more or less available on time and nobody faced any problem.

I hope you are convinced about the fact that News Channels telecast more fiction and very little facts.They twist up the news and depict it as they want to and force their views on the public.Moreover,the crime shows are meant to scare and entertain people more than spreading awareness.The host looks like a convict ho escaped Tihar Jail.

Let me talk in terms of cricket now.Yesterday,when India lost to England in the first ODI of the series,the news channels grabbed this opportunity to fill their empty time slots with rubbish news about the match filled with exaggeration.The news bulletin said that all of the three senior players-Sachin Tendulkar,Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid failed to score well in the match as if the rest of the 8 players were incompetent and were playing just for the sake of playing.Cricket is supposed to be a game in which one team has to lose and the other has to win.Yesterday,it was not India's day.You can't just say that India performed poorly.The other aspect is that the England batsmen did a good job.Nobody blamed the bowlers who managed to get just two batsmen out.

I really prefer newspaper over a news channel as news looks like news in a newspaper and it is fiction once a news channel telecasts it.

MY ADDICTION TO BLOGGING

While surfing yesterday,I came across a cool website http://www.mingle2.com which had a short quiz on blogging addiction.Here is my result-

68%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?


As you see I'm 68% addicted to blogging.All the bloggers and those who read blogs should take this quiz and check their score out.

I'M A CODE WARRIOR

In my post titled 3rd AT TECH EDGE I had forgotten to mention a point which GQ had added in his comment.I am now officially a Code Warrior.I wasn't expecting this at all.The reason being that I didn't go to BVN with a goal to win or to become a Code Warrior.Ankur had asked me before summer holidays if I was ready to go for a few competitions.I didn't say anything and he took it as a yes.

Later,Ankur told me that he would send me to a few competitions to gain experience and to get me used to the type of programs I'd have to make in those competitions.I hadn't done really well at the C.W.Intra.The day I had to go to BVN,I heard Bani Das,the teacher who is in charge of the Code Warriors asking Ankur why he wasn't sending the two children selected by the Intra.I had a brief thought that this could be my last chance but I knew that with Ankur as the President,my first chance could never be my last chance.

I feels great to be a code warrior.But that also means that I have an additional responsibility.I wanted to make this post short as I'm spending time on C++ graphics which is a must for all competitions.

WET DAY, HALF-DAY

Today, when I woke up it seemed to be a normal day for me except for the fact that it was raining as it had been all night long. I went to my bus stop at the usual time-6:40am. After waiting for 50 minutes, by school bus finally arrived at 7:30am.This was just the start of a tough day for me. My bus reached Dhaula Kuan at 8:00am.Here’s where all the drama started.

My bus had moved 500m in 1 hour at Dhaula Kuan. Time was passing by a bit faster for me, as it was entertaining to watch cars cross dividers. The traffic jam was a result of water logging at the underpass. Things were hopeless and started thinking in terms of reaching home and school was out of the reckoning.

At 9:00am another school bus had come from school to rescue us. The children of two bus routes were loaded into one bus. The other side of the road was clear and the teacher and the driver discussed their next destination. Finally, the bus left at 9:30am and the destination surprisingly was school.

It took the bus another 90 minutes to crawl to school. And there I was, reaching school during the recess. It took me a few minutes to explain this experience to everyone in the class. I was told that I had broken the previous record of 9:30am.

I hadn’t missed much as my chemistry teacher was a bit late. I enjoyed my half-day at school. I also made an observation that many students get tired by recess time. I felt very energetic. This was perhaps the only positive that came out of it.

The inter-class football matches scheduled for today were called off due to rain. Now I had better things to worry about. I had to reach home. I wasn’t carrying my mobile phone with me and knew that my parents would be worried about me if I wouldn’t reach on time. But I killed this thought after realising that my dad would have informed my family about the state if traffic on the roads.

I reached home one hour late at 3:30pm.The return journey had taken me 2 hours. At the end of the day I realized that I had spent more time in the bus than in school. This is all about my experience. Don’t you think it could have been worse? After all it was the first proper rain of the season. It rains for a few hours and this is what we have to deal with.

Who is to blame for it? You can’t blame rainfall as it is supposed to be natural. Now let’s move to our next target which is the target of the so-called news channels-MCD. What I feel is that blaming people for faults is not the end nor it is the solution of the problem. Forget about accountability we can’t do anything about it. The only solution is the improvement of drainage system which should be done by the MCD.