The Death Clock - When Am I Going To Die?

Just to ensure all readers that I’m totally crazy, I am now going to talk about a site that has already been featured in every nook and cranny of the Internet. And in case you’ve never heard of this site, then kudos, there are always openings for more writers on this blog, with a similar mental outlook to mine.

It’s the Death Clock. Not a very scientific thing, just ‘Internet’s friendly reminder that time is slipping away’. Very simple, you go to the site, enter some details like your date of birth and that’s it! It will display how much time you have left to live, in seconds. There are different modes too, like normal, optimistic, pessimistic and sadistic for the ‘prediction’, but trust me, all will be depressing. Now to prove my craziness, I can tell you that I liked ALL the predictions. Loads of time to win my Nobel Prize in all scenarios.

Obviously, after digging deep into the site that the last time it was updated was sometime in 2003 or 2004, going by the posts or the polls. The creator seemed enthusiastic about the whole idea a few years ago, but now seems to care only for the checks from Google AdSense for the advertisements, like he says for his supply of ‘Pepsi One and video games’. I could sure do with a bit of more sarcastic, and sadistic posts. I like his style. And if you go to the contact page (you’ll need to figure it out, all the links have ominous titles), you’ll find that the creator is almost contemptuous in his disregard of updating the site.

In case you didn’t like this link because you got a deficit of time to live (or you’re the creator of the site) and would want to hear bad news about me, you can view my date of death.

Computers are like air conditioners, they stop working properly as soon as you have Windows open.

Ever had those Windows moments when you felt like going and launching a nuke on Bill Gates’ house because of the wonderfully crappy software that Microsoft dishes out? I’m sure most of you Windows users have. Here comes a new edition of Windows, called Windows RG (Really Good Edition) by James Cliffe. Actually, I visited this site after it was featured in BBC World’s tech show, Click. And I must say, I’m not disappointed at all. Try this on a day when you have loads of time, because you’ll need at least half an hour to read the malicious dialog boxes and understand the subtle sarcasm underlying the whole concept.

What these guys have done is that they have made a spoof on the popular Windows operating system as a flash-based interactive page, so make sure that you’ve Macromedia Flash Player installed. Then, hop on to this site and enjoy the experience. Don’t get worried by the messages any time, they are just for fun. Interact with them just like you would on your actual thing, you can click the icons, access by Start button, etc. Just don’t blindly go on okaying all the dialog boxes, read them and let the joke sink in.
You’ll find that the Windows RG interface is somewhat like Windows 98, but that’s just coincidence, honest. You’ll have Word RG, that will feature that pesky little paperclip who’ll irritate you first, and then you’ll feel sorry for it because it will be murdered. You can also make some ‘glorious artwork’ in Paint RG, if you can launch the application, that is. You have loads other features too, like playing solitaire, ordering food (!), Windows Update, going online etc., each delightfully non-functional.

Then, of course, you can listen to music, and perform some illegal functions along the way. Check your documents, and trash your computer from My Computer. Since a lot of junk has been piling up, why not empty your recycle bin.

After you are done with this ‘wonderful operating system’, you can try to shutdown. But as we all know, it develops a slight affection for the user and like a trusted butler, it’ll give you some advice. In the end, you’ll be lucky to complete the shutdown in less than five minutes and be able to view the names of the wonderful guys who created this.

With Microsoft, you get only Windows. Open-source software gives you a whole house.

I had tasted blood, and wanted more. So I dug up a few potholes in the Web and found an ‘alternative version’ of Windows XP (again, get your flash player out folks). This covers a wider net, and is critical of more products like McAfee, Kazaa, Flash and AOL, all in an interface mimicking the real thing. Although less irritating than Windows RG, it is definitely more sarcastic at times. This one has more options, so be sure to go through everything that’s clickable in the real world, even the system tray and the Control Panel options. It is particularly nasty with Kazaa P2P.

Now version doesn’t come with any Office applications, but it makes up for that with an excellent Internet Venturer. The Run command had me rolling on the ground in splits. After you’ve checked this OS out, you can shut it down. Do notice the messages, the laugh riot continues till the end. But before you do so, make sure you read the Credits.txt ‘file’ in My Documents (can only be accessed from the Start button). You can visit the author’s site too, and discover more jokes on Netscape.

Till the time we get our hands on Windows Vista (Viruses, Insecurities, Trojans, and Adware) sometime in early 2007, this is one Linux enthusiast saying goodbye to you. ‘Enjoy’ your Windows RG experience.

eGurucool.com - The best courses for school, board and entrance exams

People usually ask me a lot whether I take tuitions or go to some centre (for class X Board exams) and I generally tell them no. That isn’t completely true though, because I DO consult other sources. There come certain times when you have to get your doubts clarified and your school teachers just seem incapable of answering it, because they don’t deal with such advanced concepts. It’s at time like these when websites like eGurucool come handy. I’ve been using it for more than a year, and it had really helped me a lot. Sure, it’s a paid service, but the cost is miniscule to what you may have to spend getting tution from horrible and unqualified teachers running the show from their houses.

Now, these guys have a classroom course too. Although I’ve not done it and can only tell you from their product info pages, they say what they mean. I have visited their centre and they are well-equipped. Maybe Siddharth Razdan of our blog can tell you more, since he did their classroom, as well as online course. I’m going to restrict myself to the online one.

eGurucool.com provides courses for CBSE, from class IX-XII. And I can vouch for the fact that the content they provide is good. They have notes on Maths and Science, and the student can to choose to enroll for either subject or both (I took both). These notes deal with the topic in a pretty easy way, so it’s easy to understand them yourself. Before each chapter, there’s a ‘pre-test‘, a short test of a few basic questions which calls upon what you may have learnt in earlier classes about that topic. Then there’s the introduction, and the objectives (which I found useful as a sort of a checklist while studying and preparing for exams). Then come the topics, which can be dowloaded as zipped files, and can thus be read offline if you want. In case you want to print them, there are printer-friendly versions of the topics too. Of course, you can read them online anytime, anywhere. After going through all the topics, you can move on to the practice exercises, which come in two different ‘flavors’, standard and difficult. Within these, you have a grading system, easy one have a green button next to them, the next level amber, and the toughest ones red. These practice exercises are not timed, and the student has to check the answers himself by clicking on the accompanying link. A marking scheme is given with the answers, clearly spelling out how much marks should be given for a particular point in an answer. Then comes the actual timed test. Although it’s multiple choice, choose-the-option, that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. The test has to be completed within a stipulated time and submitted. It is verified then and you are presented a report of your performance, with correct answers, your answer and an explanation of how the question should be solved. You’ll also get an analysis report spelling out how well you did within each particular topic in a chapter, by level of difficulty of questions (easy, intermediate or difficult) and by type of question (memory, comprehension or application). This analysis, although small, can be a useful tool in preparing yourself. After this you have a chapter summary (which gives a short summary of the chapter), and an activity page (but only in some cases).

Apart from the chapter tests, you also have section tests, which are subjective, to-be-evaluated-by-student-on-basis-of-marking-scheme in nature and cover a few chapters together. Again these tests are timed, you have to click the ‘view answersheet’ button before the time finishes, or you won’t be able to attempt the rest of the questions. No fooling around here, because once you take ANY test, you can’t take it again. The results of each and every test are stored in the performance tracker, from where you can view the results or answersheets of the tests you’ve given. This performance log while help you to keep a track of your progress. The only thing I don’t like about this is the interface, since it’s not divided subjectwise and you have to hunt down a test yourself.

You also have a doubt clearance tool that allows you to email your questions to their experts. I got a quota of 200 queries for one year, and I still have many left unused, so this isn’t going to be a problem. I’ve seen that their replies were quick and satisfactory in most cases. If you don’t understand their explanation, you can ask for a clarification. Many times, they do send you a full explanation as an email attachment.

There are discussion forums too for each individual subject, where students can discuss their problems among themselves, but they are not very active. Hardly anybody posts there, because I think all get their doubts clarified from the eGurucool experts. Still, it’d be a far better atmosphere if there was more activity there. Another facility on this site that needs work is the search facility, which is totally defunct and can never search anything out, just gives silly apologies all the time.

But the best thing I liked about this site is the question paper configurator. This tool is a really useful, because what it allows you to do is to generate your own question paper on any subject, any chapter, and you can even choose individual topics from a particular chapter anytime you want. You can choose between objective and subjective-type too. These can be accessed later too. It’s really helpful, because let’s say I’ve a class test coming up, then I can practice and test myself on any topic I want. And since there’s no limit to the questions you can make and their database of questions is huge, you get a different paper everytime.

There are other tools to, like bookmarks (which allows you to add bookmarks), and notes (which allows you to store your own memos on anything online at eGurucool). You can discover these yourself.

In the end, you also have the FLTs, Full Length Tests, which are for better practice before the Board exams. These are really good too, and they give 10 of these in both subjects, and thus cover all possible mark-distribution schemes that may come in the Board exams.

eGurucool also releases the solutions to all sets of the Board exam papers, so that post-exam, you can check out from a reliable source how well your exam went. This particular service is free and anyone can access it from their site.

Their customer care department, dealing with user problems of a non-academic nature also responds swiftly. In fact, I’ve met the division head of eGurucool a few times and he’s a really nice guy (I went to their office to enroll myself, and even though it was beyond office hours and many people had left, he personally saw to it that my account was activated that same day within 20 minutes) . He responded personally to each of my ‘complaints’, and had them rectified quickly. He used to keep a track of my progress. Altogether a nice chap.

I joined eGurucool because I wanted help, but didn’t want to be tired out by rushing to some tution centre right after coming from school; it becomes too hectic. eGurucool is the perfect solution for stressed out kids running about like bunny rabbits to and fro from school and tuitions, and finding no time left for themselves. What I like about the whole thing was th
e anytime-anywhere convenience. Even if I couldn’t login for a few days, that didn’t affect my schedule. I could login anytime of the day I wanted, even at midnight if it pleased me, and could access my notes on any topic even if was not at home (because of being dragged to some pesky relative’s house). Another advantage is the excellent doubt clearance and question paper generator, which I’ve already talked about.

There are many more online education sites catering to Indian students (most of them are totally useless), but the other major player is Compassbox.com, a division of Career Launcher. Although I’ve now joined Career Launcher for IIT coaching, still I’d say it’s not as good as eGurucool. I’d joined them for a test period and they have a better image, but they try to retain more control over a student by specifying an exact schedule to follow, which I don’t like. You could check it out too, but my advice, eGurucool is a really good way to prepare for the class X Board exams.

Finally, it feels so nice to be back! I was just itching to blog for so many days, plus my computer had problems, and I had to prepare for the CBSE Class X (2006) Board examinations too. Okay, okay, for rulebook addicts, that’s the All India Secondary School Examination 2006.

As they had said, this year’s papers were pretty easy in most cases. They lived up to that promise. So for the benefit of the future students of class X students, here’s my ‘review’. Highly personal, but that’s the kind of reaction that you sometime want to read. Do note though that I’m an A+++++++++ student, so my definition of what’s easy may differ from yours, but I’ll try to give the general reaction of the students too. Also, I’m talking about the Delhi set papers 2006. I’ll be giving my own board tips along the way too. Quite frankly though, this was the first school level exam I took very seriously; because I’m always studying way ahead of most students, and that doesn’t help in school exams. I may prepare many months in advance for a quiz or an olympiad, but for school exams, I start only maybe a week or two before, and that too not with the same gusto as for extra-curricular activities. That is, until three months before the Boards when I junked the other higher level books (not totally though) and tried to parrot out the prescribed ones. And to tell you, I was totally BORED by this exercise. Maybe they should spell it as ‘Bored exams’, or even better, rephrase them as ‘Boring exams’. Are you listening, Mr. Ashok Ganguly?

Another new rule introduced from this year was that we’d be given extra 15 minutes, apart from the usual time of 3 hours for answers, just to read the question paper. We weren’t allowed to write anything during this period. It really helped to plan out how to attempt the paper, and what the possible answers could be. In some centres I heard that some dimwit invigilators had allowed the students to write, but take my personal advice, don’t. Extra 15 minutes of writing won’t help, but proper planning surely will. In the end, you’ll gain more time by writing than by writing during that time.

• Social Science: Conducted on 2 March 2006. The paper wasn’t lengthy, and was relatively easy. There were a few questions that may have stumped the average student, but most would have been able to get some marks in those by atleast guessing from what they had already read. But the topic of discussion turned out to be a measly 2-mark question in which a photo of a monument from the NCERT history book was given, and we had to identify and write it’s features. Now since the current history book is a tad boring, many hadn’t even opened it and had studied from other books. Even those who had read the NCERT book, never expected that they may have to mug up the photos to (mug-shot, got it? heh, heh). So most of them ended up getting it wrong. Of course, not me.
• Mathematics: Conducted on 9 March 2006. This paper was definitely lengthy, and many people I spoke to said that they were writing almost till the end, me too. Although most of the questions were easy, there was one question on coordinate geometry, where we had to find a missing coordinate, that foxed many. Although I was not foxed, but I solved the question using a method described in senior classes, because it’s much easier and requires less complicated calculation. I didn’t think it over then, but in retrospect it doesn’t seem a wise thing, because the examiner could possibly mark me wrong. It could have been done by a method taught in our class, but the process is lengthier that way. So it all depends on the examiner, whether he/she marks me for that question.
• Sanskrit: Conducted on 13 March 2006. I had chosen this as my second language. It was easy, and I finished about 45 minutes early. The delay was a bit because these days we are supposed to copy down the questions too in many cases, which is a bit tedious. Also, this year’s paper had quite a few errors, especially in the translations of the question in English. Overall, the paper went well, but you never know what may go wrong in Sanskrit. One advice - think about the answers properly the first time, and revise less. That would make you less confused about your answers.
• Science: Conducted on 20 March 2006. This was my best exam out of the lot, because I like it. I think I submitted the perfect paper in this subject. The paper was nice and easy, with some spelling mistakes in the questions though. The questions were lifted straight from NCERT, so no point in studying from other books. Passages were lifted straight from NCERT, so the answers were supposed to be too. Fortunately, I had stopped consulting other books before the exam, so that really helped me. I finished this paper 30 minutes before time. Advice - Revise Section A (Physics & Chemistry) before going on to Section B (Biology), even if you have less time. That way you can rectify errors of a more serious nature since Section A has more weightage.
• English: Conducted on 27 March 2006. This was my first language by default, and another of my forte’s. I finished my paper an hour before time, that too after repeated revisions while I was writing the answers. Everything was pretty simple. Tip for the writing section topics - they generally come from some major event in months of July-October of the previous year, notwithstanding the fact that something major may have happened later. For example in 2005, the question came on Olympics, held in the Summer of 2004, rather than the Asian tsunami that came later.

So there, hope these help you. Also, I’d taken Spanish as an additional subject (third language), but I dropped it in tenth because it was stretching me too much. But I would really advise all to take Introductory Information Technology as an extra subject (I couldn’t take it since it was too late to change), because it’s really easy, just the basics of Internet, MS Office etc., and it’d replace your second language’s score if it’s higher.

What’s the answer to the gazillion dollar question (well, at least for me), ‘How much would I get overall?’. Well, I can’t say that, and I won’t shoot my mouth off on this topic and possibly embarrass myself later. Come back some time in June for the result. Till then, if you have any doubts, just add it to this post as a comment, and I’ll surely answer it (here).