Ordinatrix 9.0 @ Tagore International School, Vasant Vihar was the biggest and the lamest creativity based computer symposium ever held.

Originally posted by Sopandev Tiwari @ his blog.

Ordinatrix Ordin@trix 2009 was a Disgrace. As u all may be knowing, it was a so called Creative IT Symposium held today, 22.7.09 at Tagore Intl School, Vasant Vihar.

Let me start with the inaugral ceremony,

A. They started off half-an-hour late

B. Their Intro Video was shit

C. They have this so-called speech gal, who is an over-excited despo. I mean, she starts dancing every now and then, and there’s no end to her over-excitement. Her speech was shit. BTW, shes been giving that speech for 2 years now.

Now, their events :

A. Animatrix :

Schools had turned up with animations made using pictures and characters obtained frm the web. Being frank, ours was the onli animation which was made from scratch. And the so called judges, said that they were focusing on originality. Oh really, then it is just impossible to understand how Delhi Public School, RK Puram turned up 1st, as their anim. was copied from here and there. Hey, No Offence to DPS RKP! I respect them for everything they do, but i just have a humble feeling that they did  not deserve 1st today.

B. Movieatrix :

Again, majority of the schools had videos copied from various sources, youtube etc etc, and we, in loving memory of our brother Akul Sareen, had paid a tribute to him in the form of a video for ordinatrix that was unmatchable. I m not saying it was the best, but it was surely one of the best. Damn, So much effort we had put into that video. May your soul R.I.P. Akul. These TIS VV People dont have any respect for a guy who’s expired.

C. Codeatrix, Turtleatrix, Palleteatrix :

I really cant say nything about these events, bcoz i havent watched these myself. Anyway, our skul had won the 3rd prize in each of the events. So i have nothing to say about these.

Now, Some things that i really fail to understand :

1. How do TIS VV and TIS EOK win a prize in each event every year? These TIS people dont even have the dignity for not taking the trophies and certificates for their positions. I mean, u can participate, but u cant take the trophies for urself. Thats just not good.

2.I think other schools start underperforing every year at Ordinatrix (read sarcasm). Probably it would not have been so if the TIS schools wont have taken all the trophies on their own.

3. What problem do these TIS people have if people are toking on their mobiles or for that matter, even toking to each other in the audi?

Every two minutes, a person came to us to tell us : “Please Keep Quiet”. I got so irritated.

I was indeed disappointed when to much of our sorrow, all the hard work did not pay off. I just think that the judges did not even have the foggiest notion of who Lionel Messi is or what on Earth FC Barcelona is.

And, how the hell can you give away prizes to the entries directly downloaded from Youtube et al when you boast of an entirely creative event with the judge yelling about ‘Origanality’ !

This is what we made : (I and Sopan. From scratch), Just Adobe Flash CS3 and Pivot Stickfigure Animator.

Shame.

I got the world’s longest email address possible. Sounds cool. Not so,

anunaykulshresthahasthelongestid@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com

is my new email address. Send me lots of spam! (if you can type out that!)

Time to Live - ?

(Click to Enlarge)

I encountered this long ago, took a screenshot and … forgot about posting it ! So, here it is. Can anybody tell me what is this about ?

This post is special. It is because this has been posted using my PSP 2004. The Playstation has a very crude but a nice web browser. I was just playing around with it when this idea of a post struck me. I will add screenshots and other details in next post.

There are many ways to memorize ?, including the use of Piems (a portmanteau, formed by combining pi and poem), which are poems that represent ? in a way such that the length of each word (in letters) represents a digit. Here is an example of a Piem: How I need a drink, alcoholic of course [or, in nature] after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. Notice how the first word has 3 letters, the second word has 1, the third has 4, the fourth has 1, the fifth has 5, and so on.

Amazing ! Isn’t it?
I composed a Piem all by myself. Here it is for you reference.

Its a trap, a witty recurring,
of hidden depth and maths.
Thousand scholarly attacks,
Uselessly, all to end thinking.

- Anunay Kulshrestha

Enso is a human interface designed to enable the user to perform various actions in computing just by typing it out. It has been built by Humanized Inc. founded by Aza Raskin. The software is freeware and installs as a service on port 7070. It has a lot to offer for developers and users alike.
It works as easy as 1 2 3. When you press a particular key (that you can assign to it), a translucent box appears and you can then type into it. Suggestions for the possible commands appear alongside. The commands are carried out as soon as you release the key. If your typing skills are polished then this all happens in a flash!

Having to change programs to perform simple tasks—for example, making a quick calculation, or looking up a definition—breaks your concentration, takes you away from the task at hand, and wastes your valuable time. Enso lets you do common computing tasks easier and faster than ever before. You get a huge productivity boost and a simpler digital life.

Enso : Home Page | Download
Humanized : Home Page
Aza Raskin : Blog

This easter egg in Firefox 3 can be found by typing out “about:robots” in the address bar.
It is unusual and weird but fun too.
The first screen goes :

Click on Try Again :

Click on the button again :

Ubiquity is an experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.

Ubiquity is an experiment with two parts. It’s both an interface and a development platform. Ubiquity 0.1 focuses on the platform aspects, while beginning to explore language-driven methods of controlling the browser. It searches when u say search, translates when u put in translate and a phrase along with the language you want to translate it to. It even mails your friends and does other web chores.
Find out more on Mozilla’s Website.
Links : Ubiquity Homepage | Download | Release Page

Hackers from the Linux On Anything group successfully installed Linux on a potato. It’s the first time the operating system has been successfully installed on a root vegetable

A potato doesn’t have a CPU, memory or storage space, so it was quite a challenge,” said Johan Piest of the Linux on Anything (LOA) group. “Obviously we couldn’t use a large distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu, so we went with Damn Small Linux.

After weeks of trying the group got a Linux kernel specially modified for a potato loaded, and were able to edit a small text file. Linux was loaded onto the potato using a USB drive and commands were sent in binary to the potato using a set of red and black wires.

The LOA group is a part of a growing group of hackers attempting to get Linux loaded on anything. It started on electronic devices like Gameboys and iPods, but recently groups have taken on tougher challenges like light bulbs and puppies.

The LOA group was in a race with another hacker group, the Stuttering Monarchs, to be the first to bag the potato.

The potato has been the vegetable that everyone has been gunning for, because it’s so versatile like Linux itself. You can boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew, You’d think we’d get some sort of reward for this, but it’s all about bragging rights for us.

LOA was the group that first installed Linux on a Shetland pony in 2003, but growing competition from other hacker groups have shut them out in the past five years.

We were close to being the first with Linux on a cracker, but those jerks from Norway beat us out!

The first vegetable Linux install was on a head of iceberg lettuce by a group of hackers in Turkey.

I just came across this cool Image2Text Tool which offers highly customizable options like choosing the width of the image, its orientation as well as which all characters to use to make it into text (ASCII Coding).

My image in Text | Tool Link | Steven’s Site