This concern is valid. Like most educated people, I have lost faith in modern journalism. India has generated a news channel ecosystem that dedicates solid portions of a day to exploring thought-provoking concepts like the afterlife, asks the leader of India’s neighbor (Pakistan) if surgical strikes by the Indian army on Pakistani soil would lead to war (I mean seriously, do you not know what sovereignty is?), spends time exploring conspiracy theories and here’s the kicker – engages in irritating nationalist worship. No, really. Since 2005, every article about Indians has had one tune: How rich Indians owning companies started by their grandparents, able to achieve monopolies in India through bribery, corruption and other questionable activities, are acquiring companies abroad and hence putting us on the world map.(nothing reeks of underdog behavior more than stating every Indian achievement as an assertion of our geographical boundaries) Every year we learn about Bollywood showing its power (they make movies. Why is it admirable if they can pull strings?).And every game India plays against Australia is about 24+ aged men troubled by Aussie mind games. They are fucking adult men. They don’t need you to defend them because they are just as big dickwads as anyone else who is playing the game.

The Indian media is a fucking joke. I guess this is the curse of 24 hour news. You hire people to generate so much crap 364 days in a year to fill 24 hours of every one of those days that on the one day something important happens, you have the collective journalistic capability and insight of a mediocre high school graduate.

Don’t agree with me? Monopolies and oligopolies are the biggest curse you can heap on an industry. Yet, all of India’s most powerful industrialists are the media’s darlings. The BCCI has been glorified by the media for the power it wields over the cricket world. Yet this one organization is responsible for the future of India’s most popular sport. We are a nation of 1 billion. We cannot generate opportunities for such a large population through one organization that conducts 2 domestic leagues. This organization is so caught up with its lucrative ventures that the Indian team is guaranteed to be tired before any major event thus putting our chances of winning the world cup at a severe risk. The BCCI is bad for the nation. The media doesn’t even question its monopoly status and its aggressive behavior towards any players who participate in a non-BCCI-blessed league.

And of course I read this economic times masterpiece: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/the-sunday-et/people/Its-time-we-beat-the-West-let-the-East-rise/articleshow/5681401.cms

The headline of the fucking story is, “It’s time we beat the West & let the East rise”. Really? Here’s  a 2-bit manufacturer no-one knows anything about and he uses his only marketing avenue to speak about how he is the soldier in a war against a civilization. And the paper which is the “exclusive” marketing avenue (self-proclaimed) has reporters and editors with the IQ to publish this article. The kicker is that product will first launch in the United States. How is that for building goodwill?

Gandhi achieved what he did because he ensured that the injustice he faced did not go unnoticed. He took the blows and then ensured that this went on record and that the world got to see it. Non-violent protest itself wasn’t a powerful tool. It needed journalism from an unbiased organization to achieve its goals since this gave credibility to the protesters’ cause. To combat non-violent protest, the oppressors had to adopt methods outside the legal system and it would be hard to pull this off quietly if you attracted the media’s attention.

I do not believe that our media is capable of assisting another Gandhi, if a situation ever calls for an individual to assume a role similar to his in India’s struggle for her independence.

Well, in case this doesn’t make sense, I managed to misunderstand a technique to populate an array with data (the data structs would work with this but oh no, in my interest to take the maximum from this course, I devoted long hours to getting the data structs right). There is a very good chance that the part I screwed up would end up being insignificant but that is not the point. The point is that once again my grade is going to shuttle between the first two letters of the english alphabet.

Anyway, in all this self hatred that I have been building up for myself, I have managed to learn some cool stuff in Dr. Kihara’s lab. The work there is pleasant, I can feel good boasting about it and when I talk to my friends’ parents, I can make them believe I am going to find a solution to poverty in 4 years and find a cure for cancer in my spare time (you can see I am not popular).

However, a weird question I was dealing with was that most of the stuff I have written for my work is in Python and it would be cool if I could call it from Java since there are a bunch of people in the lab who use it. I am not looking for something complicated, just want to call a bunch of methods from a Python module. JPype and Jython seem to the things I should be looking for but with my awesome constraints (Python 2.6 should be supported, It should make coffee etc), I will need to use my Uber-GOOGLE-SKILLZ.

Anyway, this blog has managed to get to pagerank 0 (I will interpret that as the pagerank o loner being relevant ) and I am now a suggestion on Google (yay! my plan for world domination is in full swing!)

And I love this Charlie dude who bites his bro’s finger, as for kanye, well even the prez thinks he’s a jackass:

The Indian media….

I am sure, the media is composed of a bunch of farts (except for Jon Stewart) and these nutjobs need a crash course in general awareness.

“If something is judged by you to be impossible, then it is sure to happen to you.”

Well here goes. Two days ago I chanced to look at my Toefl iBT profile on ets’ website and clicked on the “View Scores” button and wonders of wonders, 117 on 120. So I am safe I said and moved on to read Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

Today I sat for SAT 2. A comedy scene took place at the center.

Scene 1:

(Enter Shriphani Palakodety and Mother)

Shriphani Palakodety: Hmm… from what I gather by looking at the contents of the bag, I seem to have forgotten to get my calculator.

Mother: WHAT !!

SP: Yeah, I am without the electronic device that seems to be so needed to write this exam.

M: We paid more than a 100 dollars for that calculator!

SP: It will be useful at some later date.

M: It won’t be serving the purpose we got it for !! You made us go through a lot of trouble to get hold of this calculator

SP: Relax ! I can write the exam.

M: You wasted money ! That calc. was for your SAT

(I still think that calc. is for playing minesweeper and figuring out why the look-to-us-if-you-want-to-learn-about-open-source-and-linux company doesn’t have a linux version of their calculator-pc syncing software. I still managed to copy the binaries using pyserial to play games on my calc)

SP: Sorry.

M: hmph

So I went in and wrote my name, encircled the dots and came out. I did leave quite a few. I will probably cross 2250 easily. I should have taken the calc. DAMN !

man -k locate

The first line in there was:

blkid (8)            - command-line utility to locate/print block device attributes

Was this command the solution to my troubles? It indeed was. I then whipped up a script in no time. Here it is:

 #!/usr/bin/python

#mountcreatingdir.py

#Author:Shriphani Palakodety

import commands

index = 1

while True:

 dir = "/mnt/usbdisk" + str(index)

 string = commands.getoutput('mkdir %s' % dir)

 if string == "":

  continue

 else:

  index = index + 1

 device = raw_input('Enter the name of the device you want to mount: ')

 a = commands.getoutput('blkid %s' % device)

 import string

 number = string.find(a, " T")

 print number

 requirement = a[number+6:]

 s = commands.getoutput('mount -t %s %s %s' % (requirement, device, dir))

 print s

That’s about it.