Career Launcher will be holding registrations for their Online CAT Test Series on February 4 (Saturday) from 3PM to 5PM. The venue is Vegies.

Features:-

• 29+ All India Mock CATs
• 100 hours of online video classes on fundamentals
• Access online topic-wise and section-wise online tests in Test Gym
• Free GD and PI classes for IIM call-getters

Special Fee for IIT Kharagpur students: Only Rs. 699/-
You can also avail the comprehensive CAT study material and Test Series together for Rs. 2499/-

For details, contact +91 9874194346 (Mr. Gopinath).

WORLD OF GOO

With an IGN rating of 9.5/10, World of Goo is one of the most highly rated Indie games to be released in recent years. The game involves creating structures such as towers and bridges using sticky blobs called ‘goo-balls’ in a cartoony environment. The objective in each level is to reach the exit, represented by an open pipeline, using minimum goo-balls while carefully negotiating several hurdles like spikes, windmills, hills and above all, gravity. The story, told through cutscenes and witty signs painted by The Sign Painter, revolves around the ‘World of Goo Corporation’ and their attempt to find a planetary heaven for goo-balls. The game spans over 48 levels from 5 chapters, each with their own distinctive theme. All in all, World of Goo is sure to bring out the creative engineer in you.

SUPER MEAT BOY

Developed by Team Meat, Super Meat Boy is probably one of the most addictive, yet frustrating games around. Players control Meat Boy, a tiny red cube of meat, as he rushes through over 300 stunningly designed levels to rescue his love, Bandage Girl from the clutches of the evil Dr Fetus. The gameplay requires split-second timing and very precise control, such as when Meat Boy is running through a long tunnel trying to dodge lava balls and spiky wheels, or jumping from crumbling blocks in space while a ghost homes in on him. The upbeat soundtrack does a great job of keeping one’s energy high while facing the carnage up ahead. Rated as the Most Challenging Game by IGN in 2010, Super Meat Boy will have you tearing your hair for hours as you wait for the intense satisfaction of completing a seemingly impossible level.

LIMBO

Without any preamble, cutscene or explanatory dialogue to get you started, Limbo immediately thrusts you into an atmosphere of mystery and impending doom that pervades throughout the game. In this 2D puzzle-platform adventure game by Danish developer Playdead, you take control of a lad, who is a mere silhouette with a pair of brightly glowing eyes, as he makes his way through forests, deserted hotels and vacant industrial complexes to search for his sister. On the way you have to avoid a multitude of traps that can cause graphic, gruesome deaths and encounter a variety of puzzles that cause a ‘Eureka’ moment every time you solve one. The monochromatic tone of the game only serves to add to the film noir feel of this beautifully mysterious game.

CAVE STORY

When you start playing Cave Story, it reminds you of those games in the 90s that you somehow wouldn’t have minded missing out on. The not-so-fantastic graphics and the typical music that is reminiscent of older games like Castlevania gives this game a slightly old-school feel. But wait! That is where the similarity ends. For Cave Story is a mind-blowing adventure, so huge in its scope, storyline and character development that it resembles a grown-up fairytale, promising to take your breath away. Take control of an amnesiac robot as he wakes up in a cave and attempts to rescue a rabbit like character from a villainous Doctor. With 6 unique weapons, a complex and interesting storyline, fun-filled boss fights, endearing characters, hidden secrets and 3 different endings (including the aptly titled Hell!), this piece of art by Japanese developer Pixel promises hours of delightful and engaging gameplay.

STEALTH BASTARD

Curve Studios is the developer of Stealth Bastard, a fast-paced stealth game where the player has to hack terminals and reach the exit, while remaining unseen by various patrolling enemies such as robots and turrets. The game features extremely innovative level design characterised by elements such as portals to teleport you, shields to contain you and light to expose you and trigger traps which horribly dismember you. The game is essentially a puzzle-based one with elements such as moving platforms and switches playing a major role in clearing enemies and lasers out of the way. Apart from the 28 in-game levels, Stealth Bastard offers a fully equipped facility to create one’s own levels, over 400 of which exist on the internet. Huge wall messages offer humorous hints and timing plays a key role, serving to add to the appeal of this freeware game.

A brainchild of KGP alum, Prateek Agarwal (09 CS), GuruKools is a chat-room that aims to connect both students and alums of KGP.  It builds up on the familiar DC++ chat interface and efforts are on integrating GuruKools with the DC main chat. At present, apart from thechat, the site features a news-board and a Guess-The-Word game room. Special chat sessions with alumni where students can query CAT, GRE and placements funda are being planned.

You can register your nick here : http://www.gurukools.com/index.php

When you lose someone close it hurts to see their memory sullied. I believe the world needs to know the truth beyond the explain-all statement “Depressed Student Kills Self”. Definitely if a person wants to end his life something must be wrong; but does that mean they are all depressed?

My friend was the ultimate rationalist I knew.  No argument of his would be without scientific basis or logic. Not a bookworm, but he read more books than a typical student here. Not just academic books, but he read classics, psychology, and philosophy. He was the one who introduced me to Dostoyevsky. He had read all his works, and I dare say they left a deep impression on him.

I never found him in the dumps, troubled or angry. In retrospect, this lack of emotion was something peculiar about him. He always kept himself busy. Whether it be in the area of defense in which he liked to keep himself up to date or be it technology, he was most enthusiastic in all his interests. Computers were his passion, though it was not his major. Any problem with computers, he was the one who came to our minds. Recently, he developed a unique software that could be run live to boot a computer with any OS using a single CD or a USB device. It became an instant hit with over 60,000 downloads in 2 months. Computers were his passion, though it was not his major. Academics were not his forte, though he could pass an exam if he wanted to. Intelligence was not something he lacked.

Lately most of his time went into fine-tuning of the programme “XBoot”. Even in his last days, he was working, on the software, and answering queries and engaging in discussions on the software forum. I wish now that I had the maturity to read the signs of detachment he was showing and could have done something to change his final decision. Why it was that he had lost any spirit to live, to look ahead, is something that escapes me. It is something that we need to ask ourselves. What kind of a society are we living in which the youth reach a point where they choose the road to nowhere?

Pankaj we miss you everyday. I miss discussing the stupid, the irrelevant, the heartfelt. I will miss pestering you with my PC troubles. Shamurshamur you’ll be missed by all the fans of Xboot.

This was written by Manvendra Singh Rathore, who was a close friend of Pankaj.

ROBOTIX 2012 | EVENTS :

INFERNO : Extinguish a real fire with your botBuild a manually controlled robot which can retrieve people (represented by cylinders) from buildings affected by fire, bring them to the safety zone and fight fire using water.

Ah! Those Circuits!

VERTIGO : Controlled clasping and traversing on a “rope-way”Build a  manually controlled robot  that can clasp a zip-line and traverse over it, while dropping balls at targets.

STALKER : Communication through (or around) a glass barrier.Build two autonomous robots that can communicate, such that one guides the other through a glass surface.

STASIS : Use of suspension systems to balance a container of waterBuild a robot that balances a vessel filled with liquid without spilling the content while traversing an irregular terrain.

NUKE CLEAR :  Remote disarmament of bombs using Image ProcessingBuild an autonomous robot which can traverse around rooms, locate and disarm bombs.

ECHELON : Apply the basic principles of Natural Language Processing to identify people on a chat log.Write a program that can figure out “who could have said what” in a random multi-user Internet chat. Use of third-party libraries is allowed.

The Kharagpur Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Group (K.R.A.I.G.)

K.R.A.I.G. has been an integral part of the Technology Robotix Society since its inception. Its essentially a group of Robotics enthusiasts who study the nuances and techniques of building robots, both manual and autonomous.

When I look at the young men and the new graduates I have a feeling which is slightly akin to envy. Perhaps envy is not the right word but I can think of no other, because I see them launching out not only on their life’s career which is an exciting business for every young man and young woman at this time of life, but launching out on it at a time of peculiar significance to this country and to them.

I suppose that I am partial to India in my thinking. I cannot help it because India is in my blood and bone and everywhere and in my thoughts. But I try to think, nevertheless, objectively, in so far as one can and to see this India in the larger context of the world to-day, in the larger context of history, and looking at it in this way it seems to me that at the present moment there is no more exciting place to live in than India. Mind you, I use the word exciting. I did not use the word comfortable or any other soothing word, because India is going to be a hard place to live in. Let there be no mistake about it; there is no room for soft living in India, not much room for leisure, although leisure, occasional leisure is good. But there is any amount of room in India for living the hard, exciting, creative adventure of life. It is, therefore, that I said I rather envy the young men and young women who, having acquired a certain training, launch out on this adventure at this particular juncture of India’s history.

I have no reason to complain, because people of my generation have also lived rather exciting lives and have had our full measure of adventure. We have also seen many things happening. There was a time and the time is not past when we indulged in all kinds of dreams, and it was exciting to work for those dreams and to see those dreams come true. There is no greater joy in life than to work for a great purpose and gradually to see the realisation of that purpose and so, people of my generation in India, we joined ourselves to this great purpose of freeing India. Because we allied ourselves to a mighty purpose, something of the greatness of that task fell on us also. Because the higher you act, the higher you think, the nobler your enterprise, something of that nobility comes to you. If you indulge in small activities, in small thinking then you remain small. But if you dare and go in for the really big things of life then, even in your endeavour to realise them, you become big in the process. So, I have no reason to complain of our lives because we had had adventures and even fulfilment in full measure.

Nevertheless, the great part of our lives was spent not in building directly, although there was plenty of building in a sense, but rather in breaking up political and economic and other structures which had grown up and which confined India and prevented it from developing. It is true that during the last eight or nine years, we have had a chance of constructive, creative, building effort and we have taken advantage of it to the best of our ability and this process no doubt will continue.

Here I stand at this place and my mind inevitably goes back to that infamous institution, for which this place became famous, not now but twenty or thirty years ago-the Hijli Detention Camp. Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands this fine monument of India to-day representing India’s urges, India’s future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India. That where there was the Hijli Detention Camp we have the Indian Institute of Technology and seeing these young men pass by, taking their various degrees, looking at their bright faces, I felt happy and shall I say again, a little envious that I was long past my prime and I could not live this hard life of working for India, building India, creating things here-that is left to you now in this country. It is well that it should be so because no generation should impose itself upon another. The world would soon be in a bad way if there was too much imposition of one generation over other. There is always a tendency to do that. As we grow older, we tend to impose ourselves upon the younger people. We tend to bully them a lot by good advice and the like. Well, good advice is often needed, I suppose, but ultimately the good develops in us not by the advice and the sermons that we hear but by other factors. If you have been trained here in this Institute in the proper way, leaving it to you to develop your personality, your thinking, then you are developing along right lines and whenever difficulties face you, you will be able to overcome them. So I am not here to offer you good advice-be good, do this or that. We are up against far too great and tremendous problems for us to solve them by some cheap advice to each other.

It is true that all your training or the training you may get here in your Institute of Technology or in any other Institute, will not take you very far if there is no strength of character, strength of mind somewhere inside you, strength of purpose somewhere, about where you are going to, some objective in life, some content in life, some real function in life-not merely getting a salary and doing an odd job. I do not call that a function. Doing something that is worthwhile and unless you have that function of doing something that is worthwhile and putting all your heart and soul into it, you do not really understand or can experience the real joy of life. And the moment that function goes, you may live, of course, as we all, most of us, live, but it is a life without much meaning to you or to anybody else. Most people, of course, in this world live that life which has not too much meaning for anybody, least of all to themselves. They may be interested naturally and rightly in their domestic affairs, in making money and in spending it and so on, I do not blame them-that is the common lot of most of us. But it is a very common lot and do not imagine that you are doing nothing uncommon-if you do that and nothing more. In India to-day uncommon things are necessary-uncommon efforts are necessary, uncommon application to work, creativeness and the like, because remember that in India to-day we are attempting a task which in its own way is rather unique. As a matter of fact every country has a unique task. I did not mean that India is superior to other countries ‘and in that sense’ our task is unique. Do not fall into that error of a narrow nationalism, thinking that your country is somehow superior to others. The people of every country often think in that way and take pride in the fact that somehow or other they are superior to others. That is not a wise approach. Every country has its good points and bad points. Every country has to make good through its own efforts and, therefore, for every country it is an exciting adventure. That is true. Nevertheless, I said that India is going through a rather unique period of her existence; and even from the world point of view, there are very unusual and unique features about our present endeavours to go ahead. Other countries are far ahead of us in many ways, in this very matter which you are learning here, in technology and science, in the applications of science and in the wealth that those applications have produced, far ahead of us. There are again countries in Asia which are behind us, we are ahead of them. But, broadly speaking, we still are classified as an underdeveloped country in this respect, and rightly so. We are underdeveloped. The developed countries have gone through that process for 150/170 years or more and gradually adapted themselves more and more or more or less to these changing circumstances. Some countries like the Soviet Union and others have bustled and hastened through those processes in a particular way and certainly arrived at a certain goal of technological efficiency and progress. There is no doubt about it, having paid a very heavy price for it and having adopted a system, which I am not here to criticise or to praise, but which is different from the system that we endeavour to follow here.

Now, therefore, we wish to solve our problems in India, that is to say, we want to advance in the technological sphere and the scientific sphere rapidly. And yet we want to adhere to certain methods which, normally speaking, do not help rapid advance. That is the problem before us. Well, only the future in history will show how far we have succeeded, all I can say, that even in the present and even with the brief experience of the last 7/8 years one can look upon this problem with a measure of optimism. We have done well, I think, in spite of any number of difficulties and obstructions. Difficulties and obstructions coming from where? Not from anybody outside us, not from any other country, or any other people. Difficulties and obstructions arising out of our own failings. It is because of our own failings and weaknesses that we stumble and fall and sometimes are pulled back. At no time have I ever had the slightest sensation of fear or apprehension from any external quarters. I am not afraid of what any country big or small can do to India. Of course, other countries can do good to India or do ill to India. They can make a difference to India, to our problems, I do not deny that but what I said was that I have no sensation of fear from any country-and that is saying a very big thing for me-because there is plenty of fear in the world to day, one country fearing another. Fortunately among the many lessons that it was my privilege to learn working under Gandhiji-there was this lesson-not to be afraid of anything and so I am not afraid of any external thing happening to us but I shall be quite frank with you. Doubts and apprehensions arise in my mind about our own internal weaknesses and failings not things external to us. If we function rightly, if we, in India, function with unity and co-operate with each other and go in the right direction, more or less, then there is nothing in the wide world that can come in our way.

Unfortunately one sees certain pictures of India which are distressing, which break up the unity of India, which divide up the people of India into numerous compartments, thereby taking away from that co-operative and united effort which is so necessary for any big undertaking. We saw in the last few months a tremendous to-do about this business of re-organisation of States, as to what part of India should be in this State or that, what should be a separate State and so on and so forth. Important matters, no doubt, but are they really so important that we should lose our heads and that above all we should forget Indian unity and that we should glare and stare with bitterness at our neighbour who speaks a different language or lives in another State? Surely, if that is so, then we have lost all sense of India’s unity, then we have reverted back to some past period of history, and not realised that we are living in this exciting period of the middle of the 20th century in India when we have not only attained our freedom and independence but we have made good in other ways too in the world and in India, and we are determined to make good in future. All these are big problems for us to do, to tackle and people go about doing satyagraha and some kind of formal disobedience of laws or something and there is a lot of shouting that they do not want this, do not want that. Is that not something which can only be explained by the mentality of an infant? Are we grown-up human beings to behave in this manner and try to solve our problems in this manner? I am astonished I can understand that this kind of things may be used for other ends, because politicians work in devious ways. Nevertheless, there should be some sense of proportion. Look at the world to-day. Full of most tremendous and exciting problems. Apart from the political problems, apart even from the mighty problems of war and peace, here we are, as they say, on the verge, on the threshold of atomic age, something likely to bring in changes in the world comparable or perhaps greater than those brought in by industrial revolution. Industrial revolution has come only partly to India but it has revolutionised living conditions in Europe, in America, etc. The industrial revolution is coming to India now but at the same time the atomic revolution is also coming here. They both come together and we dare not finish one and then go to the other, we have to take both at the same time.

So in this period when people talk of one world and realise that even the nation-state is no good, it is too small of us to get wildly excited about this province and this State, this linguistic boundary seems to me to indicate that some of us at least live in a remote past age, which has no relation to the present age. In any event, however right our thinking and our urge and our desire might be to achieve something, the major thing now is to work to that end. How do we do that-what is the method or what is the means to achieve that end? Remember, always what Gandhiji used to emphasise so much, means are often more important than ends. Ends, of course, are important, everybody knows that, but means, the method you adopt to gain a certain end is of vast importance. Obviously it is not enough for you to say that you want to travel from here, let us say, to Madras and then the road you adopt leads you, instead of Madras, to the Himalayas in the north. You won’t reach Madras, you will get somewhere else. The road, the means you take, must be the right means. Means and ends-that was perhaps the basic lesson of Gandhiji. He taught us many things and 1 am afraid, that we tend to forget his teachings although subsequent generations will go back to them, again and again. Well, here we are in this India which, I said to you, presented to me a spectacle of exciting adventure and as I go about this country and as I deal with the day to day problems which are often very difficult and very overwhelming, it is this sense of excitement and adventure that fills me and that perhaps adds to my energy. Well, I should like to have that sensation of excitement and adventure. I should like you to feel that wherever you may work, you are partners in a tremendous and historical process or undertaking. Something very big is happening in India, all over the world but after all you and I are most concerned with India. We can’t take the world’s burdens on our shoulders. We take India as a big enough burden for us.

India, I say not Bengal, not Bihar, not Maharashtra, not Gujerat, not Madras. India, I say. I have had enough of these names of provinces thrust on me and people going about committing Satyagraha for this province and that province. It is about time that men of goodwill and good sense stood up against this provincialism that is becoming the curse and ruin of the country. Mind you, there is no harm in your being proud of your province, wherever you come from, of your own language. Undoubtedly, you have every right to be so. It is not that, but it is the spirit of negation, it is the spirit of being against the other, it is a spirit of separateness. We have enough of separateness in this country. There are the communal barriers which separate, the other provincial barriers, the other caste barriers, there are so many things which separate us and the essential thing to-day in India is to bring about what I would call the emotional integration of India. Politically we are one, of course, in many ways we are one, on the-map we are one, in Government we are one but we want something deeper than that. We want the emotional integration of the Indian people. That has not happened yet. It is obvious that if that had happened you would not see these things that are happening to-day, so much shouting about a State boundary or something like it. Emotional integration means this understanding coming to all our people that we are, in a sense, members, of one vast family, the family of India whatever our State or Province, whatever our religion, whatever our Caste, whatever our language. Once that comes and come it will, sometime or other, then India becomes unassailable, unbreakable and nobody can touch India. But so long as that does not come the weaknesses are in us and not in some external adversary. Now you are Engineers and this world to-day becomes more and more, shall I say, it takes shape more and more under the hands of Engineers. There was a time when administrators played the primary role in the country’s Government and development. Administrators always had to play an important role, we cannot minimise it. But the time has now come when the Engineer plays an infinitely greater role than anybody else. Engineers, scientists and the like-in fact, these divisions of Administrator, Engineer, etc., gradually fade away, as I see it, many of our administrators in future will have to be Engineers and many of our Engineers might well have to be administrators because the major work of the country to-day deals with these vast schemes, engineering schemes of various types. We are building up a new India and the administrator who is completely ignorant of engineering does not help much in administering. He can not understand this new domain. You will find in a country technologically developed, how Engineers and Scientists play a far more important role even outside their sphere of Engineering and Science. That is right and that is bound to happen in India.

Your Director, I think, or someone said something about employment of the graduates who go out of this Institute. If we take all the trouble to put up this expensive Institute and train up people here and then do not utilise the services of those people, then there is something every wrong about the governmental apparatus or whoever is supposed to deal with this matter or the Planning Commission or whatever it is. Because that state of affairs can only be described as fantastically stupid, that one trains people for certain ends and then wastes them and not for a moment thinking in terms of the individual’s employment and his living, etc. That of course, but I am thinking in terms of the Nation- is fantastically stupid. To make a great effort to train people for particular types of specialised activities and then allow them to go to sea. To some extent that does happen to day. I think much less than it used to be and I have no doubt that this kind of thing will almost completely end. As a matter of fact, the proper course should be for our big enterprises, either run directly by Government or indirectly as corporations, which are all the time hankering after Engineers and the like, to keep in touch with such Institutes all the time, to tell the Institute-we want this type of trained person or other so that even before the person has finished his course here, he has practically been allotted to a special job elsewhere that will, of course, be, to begin with, as an apprentice. He must make good. You may be good at your examination and perhaps not so good at the actual job. But any how, he or she must not after training merely wait for something to happen, some job to come his way and go on applying from pillar to post when actually there is so much work to be done. As a matter of fact to-day apart from our own great needs in India and they are growing, all kinds of demands come to us now from friendly countries, chiefly of Asia and partly of Africa. Demands for technical personnel, demands for administrative personnel, demands for people, i.e., specially, who have some training in our community projects and it will become very difficult for us to meet these demands from our friendly countries. We want to help them, of course, and we do help them. Even now, I should say there are several hundreds of our technicians whom we have sent to countries in Asia and Africa but the demand gradually will run into not hundreds but thousands and I would like to send them because we want to help these countries of Asia and Africa. We are all in the same boat, you might say, we under-developed countries. If we are a little ahead of them it is up to us to help them. There is going to be no lack, in India, of trained people having opportunities of doing worthwhile work. If there is some difficulty, it means that our organisation has gone wrong-it has slipped somewhere. The fact of demand is there ; it may be a concealed demand, if you like, not so obvious, so that it becomes a question really of planning and planning not later but planning in the earlier stages, who is being trained, where can he fit in and keeping track of that and then the next step is easier.

I came here just a little more than 4 years ago to lay the foundation of this building. A big drama is being enacted on the stage of India to-day ; it is a part of the vast drama of the world which so often verges on the tragic and which may, if we are not wide-awake and careful become absolutely tragic and end in disaster. In doing the work so, we see this and I want you to see this, the dramatic aspect of what we are doing in India to-day, because there is a great deal of drama in it, this building up of this ancient country, and then see yourself as partners in this vast undertaking. Individuals, of course, are something more than individuals and in doing your little bit you are sharing in this great work. Then you get something in you which makes you bigger and as I said at the beginning-those who are engaged, in big undertakings imbibe something of the bigness of the undertakings and grow bigger. Consequently, it is given to all of you to grow bigger and bigger because the job we have to do and I and all have to do is a tremendous job and if we put ourselves into it in the right way, in the right spirit, then we shall find that real function in life which means so much to the individual and without which it does not-matter what you do, does not matter how much money you may earn-you will be unhappy, you will be purposeless and you will become, not you, but as people become to-day-many of them all kinds of neurotics-who are being produced in our modern world in spite of all the progress made. I am not a neurotic-whatever else I may be. I am full of functions. It is not a person of function who becomes neurotic. So rely on yourself, think of this your work, in this big way and grow big with it.

Thank you.

The resources required for maintaining our academics as well as reaching the next level are daunting. The Institutional Development team is working closely with many of our stake holders and is active in mobilizing needed funds. Our feedback from the student community was that more support is need for student amenities, programs and numerous other services, one example being providing support for student teams to participate in Institutional Competitions.

The outcome of our brain storming is the “My Imprint” idea. It is a program of students helping students.

A key part is that that an Imprint endowment was set up where all contributed funds will go and only the interest will be used to augment student services. Over the years the endowment will grow and become self-sustaining funding for students.

My Imprint will support the existing student services as well as help create new services to make the campus experience a memorable one. This year graduating students are going to be the founders of “My Imprint”. The success of the pledging program is dependent upon your participation.

Thank you in advance. Wish you all Kgpians a bright future.

Chinna Boddipalli, a Kgp alumus, is the MD of Institutional Development (AA&IR). View My Imprint’s poster here.

Career Launcher will be holding registrations for their Online CAT Test Series on August 6 (Saturday) from 3PM to 5PM. The venue is Vegies.

Features:-

• 29+ All India Mock CATs
• 100 hours of online video classes on fundamentals
• Access online topic-wise and section-wise online tests in Test Gym
• Free GD and PI classes for IIM call-getters

Special Fee for IIT Kharagpur students: Only Rs. 499/-

For details, contact +91 9874194346 (Mr. Gopinath).