Manas Garg Speaks

This is a poem by Emily Dickinson. It was in my course book in class XI / XII and left a mark on me: 

“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!”

Dickinson tells us that it is not the winner who knows what success is, but it is the one who has failed and has been defeated who really understands how sweet success is. It is only when we fail that we think about how great it would have been to get admission to that college or to get that job. When we succeed, it is hard to actually value your accomplishment.

 I’ve had my fair share of being on both sides of the line. And I’m happy about it. It would be much less fun to always be on one side of this game.  

For a change, let me write about my favourite book - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

I have in general disliked books with stories of immigrants written by authors from the Indian subcontinent. They tend to portray India and the neighbouring countries as primitive lands, which people want to flee.

However, The Kite Runner changed my view. It is about friendship between two little boys, of different stature in the society, during happier times in Afghanistan. The author describes this beautiful land so vividly that you can actually form the pictures in your mind. Every incident is narrated in a manner such that it comes alive in front of you.

The pain that people of this nation have experienced had been portrayed in such a touching manner that for the first time in my life I actually sat down and tried putting myself in place of a person living in constant fear. The misery of the people of war-ridden countries is nothing more than tea-table gossip for most of us. It is easy to give out suggestions about what policy should USA adopt and that terrorism is haunting people who fed it before. I think only someone who has experienced pain that so many Afghans, Kashmiris and Iraqis have experienced can understand the depth of the whole problem. The author brings us as close as I’ve ever been to understand their struggle.

The latter part of the book is about how the main character of the story, Amir, tries to overcome his guilt for past mistakes. It presents before us the way immigrants from war ridden lands suffer and still find joy in small things in foreign lands. Such a touching account of human nature, will and courage.

“For you - a thousand times over” encapsulates the whole spirit of love, dedication and the joy we get from doing things for someone else - the spirit of this beautiful book. To understand this, you need to read the book.

If you decide to read just one book, let it be this one. I promise you - you will thank me for it.

Here is a screenshot from Word ‘97 :

Here is a screenshot from Open Office:

Interesting, right?

Note: Any  similarity with real life events is highly hypothetical 

One of my best hypothetical friends, whom I call chutkoo, has lately been doing everything to make life difficult for himself.  He forgot to submit his CV on time for his placement, and then when the D-Day was three days away, his marksheet was no where to be found. I have been telling him, hypothetically of course, to stay more in the real world, to prioritize, not to postpone things. But, even in this hypotherical world, his attempts to be better can only be termed hypothetical.

To add to my hypothetical frustration, every time something like this happens hypothetically, I get the same hypothetical assurance - I’ll take care from now on.

I can only wish - hypothetically. 

Such a simple sentence. However, it has a meaning so deep, only when you mean it you realize its deapth.

 I did today.

Its easy to programatically generate XML instances from XSD schema if you have BizTalk libraries installed. All you need to do is this (Replace “http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003″ with the Target Namespace of your XSD):

XmlSchemaCollection schemaCollection = new XmlSchemaCollection();
schemaCollection.Add(null, “c:\\schema1.xsd”);
System.Xml.XmlQualifiedName rootName = new System.Xml.XmlQualifiedName(“BAPI_PO_GETDETAIL_Request”);
DocumentSchema docSchema = new DocumentSchema(schemaCollection, “http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003″, rootName );
Stream stream = docSchema.CreateXmlInstanceWithData();
//Do whatever you feel like with the stream!

The class Microsoft.BizTalk.ParsingEngine.DocumentSchema can be accessed by adding a reference to Microsoft.BizTalk.Pipeline.dll.

Update : To do the same without using BizTalk assemblies, this code will help you : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302296.aspx

Around 1.5 years back, I wrote this post titled Another Addict where I described how I enjoyed being online. I was in IIT Kanpur, and the connectivity there was much better than in NIT Trichy.

Long back, when all I had was a dial-up at home, internet access was quite expensive (See here). Being online meant doing nothing but looking for information you needed and disconnecting as soon as possible. I used to think that in the US, computers are always on, and always online - It must be so wonderful to just minimize Internet Explorer and continue with other things!

Well, now I’m out of college. I have corporate internet in office, broadband at home and EGPRS on my phone. I do not shut down my office computers - ever - ‘coz that way I can access them from whereever I am, whenever I want to. Always on, always online.

Basically, it has come to a stage where the only time I’m not online is when I’m sleeping. I’m obviously online when I’m in office, I’m online at home and I’m online while on the move.

Do I need to sleep more?

The ad goes like this: “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else … ”

Wait a minute! Those some-things-money-cant-buy are the only things I crave for!

Love Firefox? Try Internet explorer with this add-on: http://www.ie7pro.com/ 

Its amazing! Mouse gestures - to close tabs or to move to next / previous tabs is cool. Even cooler is drag drop a link to open it in a new tab and drag drop selected text to google it! Block ads, search inline, restore sessions and loads more! A real must have. I have it on all my systems (Don’t ask me how many :P)