Category: Technology

Guest blogged by Anuj on April 15, 2008.

Yep, my life is one infinite loop, it doesn’t stop, just when I thought I had screwed up things and they can’t get worse than this, then I suddenly open my eyes and see reality, and I close them again. I mean I can sell things to people but I am not a good people person, I can’t talk to anyone properly, it’s some inherent disability, but I can’t and I mess things up. One thing I forgot to foresee was introductions, basically the teacher asks you to stand up and say some crap about yourself, so what should I say? I am obsessed with robots and I dream of owning and running everything I touch? That I am in control not some friktard like you? No I decided that I would say something true and generic, I just said “my motto is ‘Think Different'”; which really is but that’s besides the point, my English teacher called me a ‘Einstein’ and then after class I gave her a lengthy lecture that she was degrading standards by calling me that and told her not to do it in future. She wasn’t pleased, she was twitching to slap me; wow first day, first enemy. However something was reinforced today semantics not syntax.

In short I don’t care who’s in my class and who’s not, I care only about myself and the teacher, that’s the important thing, not attempts to show off, although you should do that when you sell something, but still most of these people are like the borg, who say “You know we did that to irritate people”. I mean come on. We’re here to do one thing gain knowledge and this time the knowledge in front of me actually matters, I am sure as hell not going to be distracted in anyway by anyone else. That’s the key don’t give a damn about the others, but learn what I need to learn and what I may need and then squeeze her in, somehow.

“We’re here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?”; Steve was right, I need to find my inner peace and inhabit it, these friktards don’t matter, nothing does except for me and my work. I need to be Apple not Microsoft; concentrate on things that are truly important and get them right, and forget the rest.

So in the end it doesn’t matter if I can talk to friktards or not, as long as I am able to sell her to them it’s okay.

Anyway check these XKCD comics out, they’re so classy.

Our maths teacher today invited people to do things on the board, I was tempted to draw this one.

One more thing, guess what there’s this XKCD toon that describes me down to the last decimal place.

You may have realized by now that I love XKCD, guess what? I am thinking of buying on of these insanely great “science it works bitches” T-shirts, and then wearing it to school.

Guest blogged by Anuj on April 28, 2008.

Just got news today that the stupid soft-board I made won some stupider competition, proving my teachers wrong. More on this as it develops.

All I want to say is; Thank you Apple. I honor the place where your design strategies and my free time meet.

Peace out.

The developments: Okay here’s the deal, what apparently happened was that some guy apparently appreciated what I had made and decided to award it second place, not that I care but I have only one question to ask; why not first? I mean it is nearing perfection; it’s minimalist beauty, it’s an assault on the senses, a note in the symphony of life. It’s a tribute to the creative spark in humankind, what else do they need? Cheerleaders (that’s a nice idea)? Even a kid can figure out what it means by looking at it. It’s not just a soft board, it’s a work of art and it should be treated like that.

Even though I am a bit too sore over it, I mean I failed in one of my basic intrinsic premises; it was supposed to be a secret that I made it, but the kids who were supposed to do it went around squealing my name, I mean which part of a non-disclosure agreement you don’t understand? Next time I’ll make people sign it on a legal stamp paper, then maybe they will honor something called a contract. Whenever any teacher asked who made it fingers were pointed in my direction and I had to step in and defend it. I had a very lively debate about it with my English teacher. I like this teacher, she admitted that she was wrong and agreed to correct her mistake, now that’s a quality I respect. So it doesn’t matter that we had a mutual disagreement on the subject before.

I managed to squeeze out Rs. 20 from my class teacher, she has agreed to pay for my ticket to that science museum outing we’re having tomorrow, sweet. To tell you the truth, she was kinda shocked that I had such low demands but the thing is that I am thinking in terms of mass production, what I can do is that I can start a consultancy firm dealing in this; there are nearly a 100 classrooms in the school if I manage to sell my services on a monthly basis to 80% of the target market then I would be making around Rs. 1600, which isn’t that bad. However, I would need word of mouth to advertise my services, and if I made majority of the soft boards then it could reach stagnation. No I think what I should do is that I should charge for quality experience I could make it 10 times that Rs. 200 and instead focus more on customer satisfaction. Now I just need to figure out how to get the word out, maybe mass interpersonal communication, after all this is the age of the Internet.

Maybe I am losing my mind.