Rant, Video Games

Playing GTA non-stop has made me crazy

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These days whenever I’m roaming around on my bike, instead of the care-free leisurely way I used to earlier, I’m constantly tensed and looking out for cops. Whenever I see cops anywhere, I either speed up and run away, turn around and go the other way or turn into an alley. Whenever I see a cop car moving slowly behind me, I always think that it’s following me, ready to fire it’s siren anytime and chase and shoot me down. It takes me a while to realize that I haven’t done anything wrong and I’m just being paranoid. I think this is one of the side effects of finishing all the versions of Grand Theft Auto, a game where you’re always breaking the law, risking your life and living on the edge. The worst part is, one day my bike’s tire got punctured and for a moment, I had the sudden impulse to ditch it and steal a parked mercedes, similar to what you’ll do in the game.

But whatever may be, life in the game is much exciting than real life. And the best part is, you can save and reload later.

Movies

Nice movies..

6 Comments

I’m blogging after a long time today. Today was a nice day. I saw two very good hindi movies. The first one was Gulaal which I saw at PVR. The movie is funny, shocking, meaningful and realistic, all at the same time. It kind of reminded me of Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi which is another one of my favorite hindi movies. The character are very well defined and each one stands out on it’s own. Leaving the hall, you can’t help but feel a little sad on how things turned out.

The other movie was Ek Chaalis ki last local. This is like one of those fast paced hollywood movies. You don’t feel bored for a moment as one event unfolds after another, full of surprises. The whole movie is 150 minutes and the events in the movie are spread over almost a similar time. Actually, I’d already seen this movie twice in the theaters but can never get bored of it.

Rant, Technology

My job is like a medical intern’s

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I’ve been watching scrubs a lot lately and I think I can relate to that lifestyle because I have a similar job. Now, I’m not remotely connected to the medical profession, but there are many similarities between my job and that of a medical intern.

1. We both work in shifts, mostly nights.
2. We both have to work under high pressure situations, time being of essence.
3. We both get to work on cases. Some are easy and get solved right away, some take months.
4. There are high priority cases where you can’t do anything unless they gets solved and there are normal ones. Just like an ICU.
5. You don’t feel that happy when you escape at the end of the shift because you know when you return the next day, the cases will be waiting for you.
6. Some cases you don’t know what to do but they got solved by themselves, some cases seem very easy but go on for months.
7. We all have to work on holidays.
8. Research is your best friend.
9. When you don’t know what to do, you go beg your mentor to tell you something.

Motorcycle

I can adjust pushrods!!!

7 Comments

DISCLAIMER: If after reading this, someone burns his engine valves or manages to get the pushrod off it’s rocker, please don’t come to me to claim damages.

This is one of the things that have been plaguing enfield owners from over half a century. The feature that gives the bullet it’s distinctive thump is also one of the performance bottlenecks of the engine and also a source of racket. Unlike other bikes which use a chain drive to open and close the valves, the enfield uses pushrods which are simply 2 rods which move up and down due to the motion of the cam and in turn open and close the valves. The most common drawback of the pushrods in a bullet is that if they are loose, the produce a lot of racket which only gets worse as the engine warms up. Quite frankly, I was tired of all the racket and even more tired of all the mechanics that “try” to adjust the “tappets” but the noise just doesn’t go away. The last straw was when the last mechanic loosened my pushrods even more and it was almost impossible to ride the back. It was time to take matters into my own hand.

Firstly, “adjusting tappets” is a wrong term because you don’t actually adjust the tappets, you just adjust the pushrods which in turn reduces tappet noise. I had tried my hand on this once before and even got a good setting but I forgot to tighten the locking nut and before I knew it, after revving the engine for a few seconds, the pushrod came off the rocker and I was left with a dead engine.

It took me almost 1.5 years to get my courage back and try this myself one more time. This is a step-by-step guide on what you need to do.

1. Bring the piston to TDC. On the cast iron engine, work the kick starter with the decompressor and wait for the moment when the Ampere meter shows 0. On the AVL engine, work the kick starter with the decompressor pressed till the time the decompressor is fully free. Open up the tappet cover while the engine is hot.
2. Feel both the pushrods and try to rotate them. They should just be free enough to rotate using some pressure from the thumb. If they don;t rotate at all, they are too tight. If they rotate too freely, or move up and down, they are too loose.
3. There are three nuts in each pushrod. The top HEX nut, the middle locking nut and the bottom adjusting nut. First unscrew the locking nut a little while holding the HEX nut in place with a spanner so that you can rotate the adjusting nut.
4. Increase or decrease the length of the pushrod by rotating the adjusting nut so that there’s no play and you can just rotate the pushrod with some pressure. Do this while holding the top hex nut with a spanner.
5. When you feel the setting is just right, hold both the hex and the adjusting nut in place with 2 spanners and slowly tighten the locking nut. This is the trickiest part because it is difficult to hold 2 spanners steady and adjust with the third one. It took me around 2 hours myself to perfect this part.
6. When you are done, just check if the adjusting nut is firmly tightened and if the pushrod setting is right. If you’re a newbie to this, it will take a few more tries.
7. Do the same with the other pushrod.

It is necessary that you do this while the engine is hot. If the engine cools appreciably while you’re doing this, your adjustment will be fine for a cold engine but the racket will start again when the engine warms up. This is what happened with me and I adjusted the pushrods too tight to compensate for the cold engine. After I had put the tappet cover back in, I realized that the kick starter was completely free and the engine didn’t have any compression at all. This was because I had adjusted the inlet pushrod too tight and the inlet valve wasn’t closing completely. I had to open it up again and start all over again by warming the bike. Just check that the kick starter should meet some resistance at a point on it’s way down. Also, adjusting them too tight may burn the valves, so be careful.

The best guide for bulleteers who want to maintain their own bike is Gurunandan’s website. This guy is an ace whom many people look up to for their bike queries. He’s very helpful and replies to your queries by mail(As long as they are valid).

Or, you can just go ahead and buy Pete Snidal’s bullet manual which is now for sale in India as well.

Rant

My trip to Las Vegas

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Apparently I had a fabulous weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada. Don’t believe me? Check out the google maps screenshot. According to the google maps on my mobile, my location with an accuracy of 700m is at or near Las Vegas. In reality, I spend my weekend rotting at home watching TV 🙁 Talk about buggy software.

Rant

Why I like the delhi metro

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Maybe because I like to be among the crowd. Maybe I feel secure lost in the sea of humans. But I really like just getting on the metro and going for a ride to no particular destination. One gets to see people of different cultures and places of different cultures. One of my favorite routes is Dwarka sector 9, where I park my bike to Rajiv Chowk. One gets to see the urban scarcely populated Dwarka residential subtown before passing through crowded areas like Janakpuri, Rajouri garden etc. At jhandewalan, you are greeted by the huge statue of hindu god hanuman and you can always get down at Karol Bagh, one of the oldest marketplaces of delhi which still challenges malls with it’s agelessness. At ramakrishna ashram, the train goes underground before you reach Rajiv Chowk where you can go topside and visit my favorite place, Connaught Place.

The trains, apart from being clean and comfortable are also very punctual. I prefer to carry a smart card with me so that I don’t have to buy tokens everytime. I recommend that everyone ride the metro atleast once though if a ride’s all you’re looking for, prefer to do it on a weekday as weekends can be a crowded affair. Also, make the return journey at night when the trains’s almost empty.

Rant

Bleak night

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No, this is not a futuristic laser weapon. It’s my bike’s headlight. The way it looks like this is because it’s trying to penetrate the thick fog before dying midair before managing to reach the road. Fog conditions here were at it’s worst tonight with visibility down to a few meters. The journey back home from office which usually takes a few minutes took almost 20 minutes. I couldn’t drive faster than 20kmph lest I bang into someone or a truck mow me down. When i did reach home, my clothes were soaking wet. A fun experience after all riding like that. The uncertainty of what lay ahead and whether you’re still on the road drove into a ditch.

Hate, Rant

To the 15(16?) year old wannabe

13 Comments
The post below was written a few years back, but somehow did not get published. I think it is about a girl whose blog I used to follow, though I am not sure.

Ah! It would be fair to start with the fact that you are as immature as your blog. I know that some people don’t age mentally as fast as they do chronologically, but they are immature in different ways. Remember the 10 year old kids telling each other how they had 10 servants, a huge swimming pool, how much money their dad earned??? That’ s how immature you are. Now, to rock. There are three categories of people there.

  1. People who love rock.
  2. People who don’t love rock.
  3. Wannabes

Sorry to say but you belong to the third category. You try to show that you are a rocker to be COOL!! You try to show that you are THE ROCKER. You post things about rock on your blog. But dear, have you told everyone that you like 50 cent? A person’s love for rock is not reflected by his ability to memorise the names of lots of bands, his bragging off or anything else. It comes from deep inside from his love for the music. Converting to buddhism to show how similar you are to Kurt Cobain doesn’t show your love for rock. It’s an insult both to Cobain and to the religion. You claim you are the President of the Buddhist Club of your society. I am sure the club has more wannabes and 10 years in it with nothing better to do. You claim to drink. Again, the ability to drink doesn’t show how cool you are. I am sure that wiff you had from that vodka resulted in a hangover. Also, Green Day is not punk rock. By puttin it in the category of punk, you are insulting great punk bands like The Ramones and the Sex pistols.The only thing that connects you to rock are your manly sideburns which make you look like Elvis Presley. In fact, you would make a great elvis presley impersonator.

All your emails end with the link to your blog. Frankly, doing this only shows your desparate attempts to draw people to your blog. Jumping your sitemeter to 1600 from 100 is not the ethical thing to do. Also, your terrible immaturity is reflected in your msn status messages. Ok, you spent some time with your friend and you thought it was great but that’s no need to put that up as your status message. Frankly, it makes me think you have no real friends. Also, playing flight simulator for hours on your computer doesn’t make you a pilot. Believe me, it’s a lot different in a real cockpit.

I know these few days are very hard for you(We know why!!) but do try to grow up and hang out with people more your mental age(10). And remove the link of my blog from your’s. It’s embarassing..

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Music

The Wall – Live in Berlin

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I had heard of the Pink Floyd Wall Live concert in Berlin for a long time but never got around to watching it. After hearing and reading about it a lot, I decided to watch it. After all it had great names associated with it like Roger Waters, The Scorpions, Bryan Adams and Van Morrison. The Wall Live concert in Berlin is a live rendition of their album “The Wall“. The playlist is almost the same but the similarity ends here. While the album had a very raw, cruel hard rock feeling to it, the concert is more of a Musical Show with the whole orchestra sitting there. It completely lacks the raw hard rock feeling the album had. The album was psychedelic, depressing while in the show, most of the songs have 6-7 singers singing and a 100 piece orchestra playing in the background. It gives the show a soft gentle feel which is completely out of tune with the feeling the album gave. Can you imagine a flute playing anywhere in the Wall movie?

So with great expectations, I start watching the concert. A white limo surrounded by harleys move onto the stage and The Scorpions get off to give a high voltage performance of In the Flesh?. All is going good when the song ends. The next few songs are by different artists and keep getting softer with a Sax Solo in Another Brick in the Wall Part 1. Another Brick in the Wall Part II is by Cyndi Lauper who is in a School Uniform and keeps jumping around as in the Circus and making faces. In the solos, she is behind the guitarists and seems to be trying to smell their asses. I say solos, because there are 3, each almost the same but by 2 guitarist and 1 Synth by Thomas Dolby. The first Solo is something like I would be playing after my first week’s practice of the song on the guitar. At this point, the stage crew start building a huge wall on the stage which gets completed in the songs to come. The song I was looking forward to was Young Lust by Bryan Adams. The song seems really great and Bryan seems to be playing the guitar himself in his trademark kneel back style. Somewhere into the 2nd paragraph of the song, Bryan gets too much into the song and swings his guitar away and lo! The guitar seems to be still playing. After a while we notice the real guitarist standing somewhere behind the edge of the wall in the darkness, with th spotlight on Bryan. I did not understand why Bryan needed to mime the guitaring. He could have just sung the song and be done with it instead of moving his fingers in complicated motions and seeming to concentrate really hard on the guitar. Anyways, I tried forgetting about it and thinking that the song sounded good anyways. Jerry Hall has a brief role as a slut groupie who comes on stage to admire Pink’s imaginary room.Hey You is performed by Paul Carrack and sounds good, though nothing like the original song and no feeling. Comfortably Numb performed by Van Morrison and again, sounds good but nothing like the original. It’s almost kind of soft and it seems you are listening to an opera. The solo is kind of a duet between the two guitarists and in trying to make it different from the original solo, they screw it up completely. The song In the Flesh is again performed by the Scorpions, though this time, it’s very very obvious they’re faking it because the guitars start playing even before they get off their posh limo and throughout most of this song and also Run like hell, they’re just running around and giving each other high 5s while the real guitarists keep on playing in the darkness behind the wall. The Trial is really good performed by mainstream hollywood actors at the end of which, they break down the complete wall ad finish off with The Tide is turning which is not very much unlike We are the world performed by Michael Jackson and various other singers, blind and otherwise.

Overall, the concert is quite entertaining, but fails to capture the original essence of the wall. In fact, it doesn’t even sound anything like Pink Floyd and it would be quite disappointing to the fans of the band and the original album. Roger waters plays nothing in the whole concert and his total singing time is also somewhere around 20 minutes. It would be better if watched from a neutral mindset and no comparisons made to the album. Personally I think that David did a much better job with Pulse tour.

Rant, Satire

Bride needed for Kayastha boy

13 Comments

I am looking for a prospective bride for my Kayastha roommate. He is now frustrated and needs a girl. Since he cannot get a girlfriend, he has turned to marriage. Criteria for the girl are

1. Should not be taller than my roommate i.e. 5 feet 4 inches
2. Colour no bar
3. Same caste is preferred, though some other caste would do fine if exceeding the other criteria.
4. Should be working. Company doesn’t matter as long as money is good.
5. Should be fine with my roommate drinking till late night with friends(us) and not coming home at all.
6. Should not wear revealing clothes.
7. Should know how to drive car/bike as my roommate doesn’t know either.
8. Even if superior to my roommate, should pretend that she’s inferior to satisfy his male ego.
9. Should be fine with a balding husband.
10. Should be used to abuses and curses floating around the house.
11. Should be aware of a low-rent spacious apartment in Gurgaon where me and my other roommate can move into after the groom is gone.
12. Should cook well and be prepared to feed us whenever we drop in for some nice food.
13. Should be able to pour beer with expertise without spilling it while retaining just the right amount of foam.

If there are any revisions, will update accordingly. Guy working in a German ERP company. Guy’s parents are ready and marriage can take place within a year. Interested girls, parents please contact me by comments here.