Choosing an online course .

No I am not a showoff. Starting since yesterday I have decided to blog about stuff that occurs in my life .And since I havent received any recommendations I chose to write about that I am familiar with .

The start of every May means one thing . Heat and boredom .  A complete disorientation with day and time. Spent lurking in my bedroom , sleeping till noon and having coffee at 12 . Nights stretch into the wee hours of the morning , dozing off only when I am too sleepy to realize that I am lying on the keyboard face down. And I thought to myself one fine day ( yesterday  doesn't sound dramatic)
 "I am sitting here wasting my life , and the hard-earned money of my parents . Who gives  a fuck if the cat can do somersaults or the dog knows to sing a song ? . I must get on with something useful and stop slacking off. "

I decided to do 2 useful things over the summer and the next 6 months (intern sem ! yipee !) . Learn to write better programs .
Draw dragons .

Seriously. I am not kidding when I mention that I want to draw dragons . It started with the Harry Potter mania when I first saw the Hungarian Horntail on the cover of the Goblet of fire and was all the more encouraged when I read the Inheritance series (remember the series starting with Eragon ? ) . Big bad-ass creatures breathing mouthful of fire  and growing as big as an entire village  inspired pure awesomeness . The only thing I could breathe out is the stinking vapor of onion   from last night's  chutney . Govind therefore resolved to learn how to paint your dragon  over the next semester.Its what people call extra-curricular activities.

Point 1 is my primary target . I do code. But not as much as I like . And certainly not as good as I want to . Knowing C , C++ , Java, Guava , R,S,X,D is like learning French,German, Watusi, Inuit .
It certainly helps to know languages . But there IS a difference between literature and  advertisement (read Shakespeare vs Arindham Chaudhari).Mere knowledge of programming lang. wont help. The ones that actually worth learning are techniques and principles.

To enhance my insubstantial skills in programming I have decided to do an online course with 2 constraints .
1. Take  only one course at a time
2. Any course as long as it doesn't involve Java

Point 1 is the wisdom resulting from years of experience trying to multi-task and failing in all of them miserably. I have taken 10 courses so far and have left all of them in the middle without completion . Either I cant finish the exercises on time , or get wrong answers or dont understand the questions or all of them .  Single tasking is like playing test cricket . Takes time and is boring but in the end is the best way to do something .
Multi-tasking is like IPL . Full of glitz , glam , energy and stupidity . Our mind isnt designed to handle parallel tasks by nature .

Point 2 is a very  important one from a personal perspective. Java is like learning Hindi or Tamil at school . You dont like it . You dont want it . You would do away with it . Yet you have no choice but to learn .

Imagine that you are doing something. You are a mature person capable or reasoning and taking your own decisions . But your nanny doesn't think so .She thinks you are mischievous like you were as a child (read C and buffer overflow). She automatically assumes that anything you do has an unstated intent to it . So she decides to discipline you. You cant just go to pee. You'd have to say (throw clause): "Dear Ms.McNanny. It is my intention to pee.Can I go to pee and come back in exactly 2 mins  ?"
To that Nanny would reply : "Certainly my dear. Take 5 minutes and not more else I will have to whoop your ass" (try catch)
Then you would go into the bathroom , take your wiener out and take a pee. And if you take an extra second to make sure that you do the deed without messing yourself, the nanny would come  right in bursting into the toilet with a stick to whoop your ass(Exception e)

Sounds boring ? Imagine this 10 times over everyday. Welcome to Java 101.

Unfortunately this nanny behavior is so much enamored by the Academic world in India that everyone insists that you use Java . Its type-safe , garbage collected , platform-independent , safe, generic blah blah blah .....

Kill me please.

Anyway apologies if you my dear non-programmer couldn't understand half the shit I posted above. Don't worry. I didnt either .I do hope you get the gist of what I said though.

Anyway coming back to the point , my search for an online course is still on. 5 years ago , there was just Khan academy (I think) . Today you have tonnes of sites with thousands of courses to take and work on . Going through all of them is a course in itself.Let me see  if I can get my hands on a good one .

resolution of the day : blogging with regularity

I know it wont last for more than a month. Still worth a try . I have blogging irregularly for the past year and  a half. After the initial euphoria of getting readers for your article , the elated feeling inside your heart dies down and as usual you get bored and stop writing . My tablet , laptop , phone has made me their combined slave , making me check for content every 10 seconds. From a producer I became a mere consumer of content , groking blog posts one minute and forgetting them the next .

Its very hard to maintain regularity while blogging . I do not like blogging about general issues or about my life or first-world problems . Usually I brainstorm about the topics I want to blog about , choose one and proceed. However the fun wears off and it becomes a chore to think of new issues to rant about. Given that my blogs are what I consider sarcastic and mostly about dissing of something or the other , it becomes very hard to think of new subjects to make fun of . I ran out of topics after the first few months.  Everything else feels the same with minor variations like today's smartphones . A tweak here a tweak there and boom , its the defining phone of the era. And I am still curious about the smart part . It reminds me of stuff when I forget and presents me the weather . so does a dairy and the newspaper .

Getting back to topic , in my attempt to blog more I am planning to dilute the subjects I usually take on. Granted this might alienate the core readers of my blog ( only my alter-ego probably) but I am doing this to attract more readers with more family friendly content than adult-content( think PG era vs Attitude era) . I think of blogging more about the latest power rangers series , Top Chef Just Desserts, Justin Beaver ( sorry my fingers automatically replace ieb with eav ) , plants , food , pop songs and bullshit. That way I would take less that 2 years to reach the next 1000 page views . And thank you dear readers  by the way. My blog has reached a 1000 pageviews over the past 2 years .Half of it probably are mine .

I also thought of another way to attract page reads . I could probably blog about technology and stuff , the real purpose for which I started this blog .But  turns out  that its a surefire way to stay virgin for the rest of my life and I am not some saint wishing to remain so that way for the next 70 or so years . Plus with all the goddamn tech pages maintained by every goddamn tween and teen wanting to buy a smartphone I doubt that even a tech blog from a person of my caliber and aptitude would get more 5 views a year.


I would like your suggestions on topics which you would like me to blog about . It can be anything from cats to kim kardashian's underpants.I wouldn't take offense if you ask me to write on the next big movie in Bollywood. Although a fair bit of warning , my alter-ego Darthvader doesn't really like fluffy ,colorful and masti stuff. He is a moody guy having lost his computer at a young age and listens only to Death metal by Cannibal corpse. You wouldn't want to face his wrath on your wall now  , wouldn't ya ?

So please post your suggestions below and I would try to blog something about them . Or else keep it bare like usual to let me choose my own.

Why I dont really follow football these days

I have nothing against God . Its his fan club that I hate with a passion.
                                                             -Anonymous atheist on the internet

The situation with football fans isnt different either .
Its a polarized world where racism is still rampant . However the color that matters depends on the jersey you support. You are trolled mercilessly , taunted and mocked at for supporting Red , Blue or Yellow . We need a Nelson Mandela and a Martin Luther King Jr to bring a Civil Rights football act to prevent such racist attacks on fans of other teams .

I'm just bullshitting but you get the gist.

Football fans these days are or of the 2 types .
a. Colorblind club supporters ( read ManUUUUU fans)
b. Messi or Ronaldo fans


 Its hard to find a football fan these days with real passion for the game and appreciates a wide spectrum of clubs , players and tactics . Fans these days are mostly tweens and teens playing FIFA XX 24X7 online , calling each other  fags and gays . To them the only thing that matters are the trophies their teams won recently.Granted like exams ,trophies are the hallmarks of a club's success . But its just doesn't end there . Football is a beautiful game with more than meets the eye . Tactics , strategies , the passing style  all combine to form a wonderful 90 mins . Lets explain that with a cricket analogy . You dont watch Rahul Dravid for his record scores  or how he trashes the opponent in T20 and stacks cup after cup in his shelves . Rahul Dravid is admired for his classy batting style and his ability to piss off any bowler in a Test match . Football in  the same way isnt just about trophies or goal differences . Its the style and the way it is played that makes it one of the most elegant sports on the earth .

Lets me illustrate with an example why modern tween gay fans make it really hard for other fans to retain their passion for football . In my list of friends there is a person called Deep Shit ( name changed to preserve anonymity but retain stupidity ). Deep Shit follows a club which has only recently ( in football time) become popular . Deep Shit is a big hater of the colorblind team and tries his best to troll them . Unfortunately for him , Manure  ( I cant type ManUUUUU everywhere) beats Deep Shit's team most of the time so his chances to troll them are limited . Now Deep Shit( lets shorten it to DS , no not Data Structures) as far as I know doesnt really update statuses about how his team's players passed or how they played a beautiful game. His status posts are in undecipherable baboon speak , like for eg "OOO!!Awwww We won 2-0 . Suck it looozers ... " or "fag ! referee . Manure won with the 12th man ////. you suckzzzzzzzz ". Occasionally he posts shit like this on the pages of football team that are about to go head to head against his team .

The funniest part is I dont think DS can even run 100m without throwing up 3 times.And takes 15 mins to do so .
The colorblind fans are even worse . I recall an fb status where a Manure fan in my list asked his fellow Manure fans to wear their lucky Manure coated underwear to watch a match on television at his home .And I know for a fact that the particular Manure fan is a shitty football player .
Most of these fanboys are . Fan boys are just that. Boys . Here are  a few qualifications from for fanboys
a.memorize players , stats and strategy of team you support.
b.Take a piss at every other team in the league of your team.
c. Troll other fanboys with words like gay , fag , tween etc.

and here in comes the most important factor
THOU SHALL NOT PLAY FOOTBALL ON A FIELD WITH REAL PEOPLE .
yeah . download the latest copy from P2P and enjoy it on a console with others . Way to go football fans .

Its also  about the hep factor of the club  or the players these days . The giants Barcelona deemed the best football team on earth are crumbling these days . Perhaps not as much as Arsenal or Liverpool do but still they arent the unbeatable , tiki-taka passing , crazily instinctive team they once were . Each and every team has an era . Like Leeds United did .  Once the Catalans of the 70s and 80s ( I think ) they are hardly looked upon today . Would the fanboys still support Barcelona after they become something like Leeds United ?

And then you have these even less knowledgeable Messi / Ronaldo fans. Ask them why you like them and they go " They are the best football players ever " . So you mean people like Socrates , Marco van Basten , Gerd Mueller , Dennis Bergkamp ,  Nistlerooy, Zidane , Henry are amateurs who played sunday evening football wearing sandals and beach shorts ?

 There was once this PT Teacher  at a school where another friend of mine studied  When he was asked the team he would support during Euro 2008 He replied "Argentina" .  The reason ? "Because Maradona still plays for the team ".
The irony of this coming from a PT Teacher .  Even Deep Shit and Manure fans are a lot better compared to this guy . It takes the fun out of football.

These days its hard to not come off as a poser . When you mention a popular team people think you are one of the tween gay fanboys . When you mention an underdog or a less popular team as your favorite , people think that you are a poser because you DONT WANT to come off as  a poser . So I am a poser if I support either Manure or Galatasaray . This seriously sucks ( and no I am not a Galatasaray fan ) .

The trouble with  fanboyism  is that these fanboys ( a majority of them) are dungeon dwellers . They don't play football at school or at home . They dont go out with friends and kick a ba
The trouble with  fanboyism  is that these fanboys ( a majority of them) are dungeon dwellers . They don't play football at school or at home . They don't go out with friends and kick a ball across the grass or sand , taking a breath of fresh air . They dont go out in the heat and sweat like a pig from head to toe . They don't know whats its like to get to head a ball correctly or give a pass  . They don't know how to stop an aerial pass . No sir . All they know is to press D  when the forward gets to the goal post and press A to pass the ball . I seriously doubt if half of them have even been near a football post in the last 6 months .
ll across the grass or sand , taking a breath of fresh air . They dont go out in the heat and sweat like a pig from head to toe . They dont know whats its like to get to head a ball correctly or give a pass  . They dont know how to stop an aerial pass . No sir . All they know is to press D  when the forward gets to the goal post and press A to pass the ball . I seriously doubt if half of them have even been near a football post in the last 6 months .



Football must be  enjoyed for the pure exhilaration it gives . When I get into the ground I don't play it 'cause I like the teams or players . I like it because football lets me run like a dog chasing balls across the field . I like to think of strategies  to get the maximum score and tactics to cross defenders . I like it because it tires me physically and gives me kick of adrenaline . I like it because I get together with my friends and we play it as a team . And we dont care about who supports which team or player because all that matters is that we have fun playing the sport we love.