GEC.. again..!!

The GEC-ien saga continues.  The 7th ISTE Students' Annual State Convention saw the emergence of GECT as the undisputed champions. The runners up at the sixth convention, the GEC team had an unchallenged run at the SJCET, bagging 7 first prizes and 6 second prizes of 13 events.

The GEC Team

Among the prizes were the first and second in technical quiz, technical debate, mechanical paper presentation and electronics and communication paper presentation. Sweet revenge for losing the champions trophey last year for just two points. Winning 53 of the total 104 points again proved our metal. Hats off people.

Ponnonam '08

Onam is a festival of colours. It is a time of the year which other than the summer holidays many students look up to (for reasons that are obvious).
Ponnonam '08 in college, as always, was grand. The competitions included Pookalm

• Pookalam
• Chakkilottam
• Naaranga Spoon
• Panchagusthi
• Vadamvali etc
  

We started off at 9

Teamwork

Co-Designer and Director

In progress

Team Work. MEx SpiritFinishing touches. Almost done

Lighting the first flame. Gopi doing the honours.

That's it. We're done. S5 royal MEx, Reining champions, (Pookalam)

With the pookalam finished, the entire Royal MEx embarked on a procession befitting Royal MEx. Accompanied by Chendamelam and ilathalam and occasional bursts of good quality crackers, we rocked the college.

400 people. One Sound. Royal MExThrill. To it's max

The entrance of the college was decorated by a magnificent floral by College Union, one for 'Mathrukam' and one depicting 'Che'.

That's the Floral by College UnionMaathrukam

The results of the pookalam competition came at 3. And sadly, we got only 3rd. But seeing the pookalam which got the second, we're really disheartened. We really deserved second. But, first was unanimous. Akhilesh and the chemicals really deserved it.

First prize. the gradient looked really superb in person

The Vadamvali(tug of war) was another affair. Of the 8 teams, 3 were mechanical teams viz, mechanical A, mechanical B, and 'veruthe oru team', which in fact was a team comprising of myself(please don't laugh), payis, niranjan, raju etc with naomboori and ms being the only able bodied ones. But we won the first match. I don't really remember against whom, but it was chaos after we won. nobody expected us to win. Not even ourselves. We were pitted with mechanical B team, which of course we lost.

Vadamvali for girls were also fought with the same vigour, which the LH team won in a closely fought row with the divyans.

The men's finals came down to mechanical A team Vs Mechanical team. Who won among them is not important, but the fact that our spirit won. Before the finals, i could see the A team captain Freddie, coaching the B team on having the perfect hand grip and the leg lock, a really curious sight.

The day came to an end by 8, filling all hearts with hopes for the next Onam. More sarees, more prizes and more fun.

CAD Cup '08

CAD Cup, college cricket tournament, was a cricketing bonanza this year with 32 teams competing for the coveted trophy.
S5 combined team won the CAD Cup '08, beating hot favorites S7 combined team. Playing with big shots like ciril, nafshad, prasanth and the lot who're prominent members of the college cricket team, this team had played in the CAD Cup finals from their first year, but each time lost out in the finals.

That's 3 runners-up in a row. S7 captain sreejithettan with his third runners-up trophy.

A failed batsman, returning home for S7
That was the last over.see the number of fielders in the circle. S7 getting a taste of their own medicineAfter the last ball. A comprehensive victory of 30 runs.

Niaz took 5 wickets wrecking the top and lower of the S7 team, and Akhil single handedly managed our batting in the final.

MOM Niaz. Five wickets in 3 overs

Akhil. Player of the SeriesIhsan. Captain and Best Batsman

Niaz was adjudged MOM in the finals and Akhil was the Player of the Series. Our captain, Ihsan won the Best Batsman trophey.

N we had it. Finally after the final.The Team
That's the S5 contingent. Celebrating

our team also won a cash prize of Rs. 2500. It was a much relished victory, which was won both on the field and off. hats off to S7 for their great track record, but sorry floks, we couldn't help beating you. And to all those seniors who really wanted to see your team win the finals atleast this time, you got the wrong team.

tailpiece: An SMS just after the match

ENTHOKKEYAYIRUNNU..
RAJENDRANTE SIXER..
REJINTE PARAKKAL..
CIRILINTE PARATHAL...
HO
ANGINE PAVANAI SHAVAAI..
S5 ROCKZ... (courtesy: vishak)

Week 1, New World

It's almost a week since i installed ububnt 8.04.1 in my system. And i think it's time to express my first impressions. That of a common user. That is, keeping in mind that most of my readers are hardcore linux developers and debuggers(please note..not de-beggers)... (again i lie pretty.. :P). actually they develope C programmes and somebody did something called 'ZOPE PORTING' which i understand is something of an achievement from the fact that some multinational payed a hefty sum for that(if i missed something tell me, uh?). lolZ..

1. I love the new ubuntu's start up sound. pretty much like African drums( i read somewhere that ubuntu has its origins in the Bantu languages of Southern Africa).

2. Saves me the trouble of installing device drivers for lan, audio, n video(which are the only three i do after each formatting with windows).

3. Also i don't have to install firefox, vlc, im clients and many other common use software(even though windows provides alternatives). Everything you ever need to use are already there in the form of firefox 3, pidgin, open office, gimp etc.

4.The multiple workspace option is a great boon to mask chat windows from parents, which i make use of to it's maximum.

But i'm very unhappy for some problems like

1. During installation, i was stumped with the partitioning part, which is even difficult than that of windows xp.

2. Many a times, i couldn't connect to the internet through ubuntu, but at the same time in windows i am able to connect.

3. My screen resolution is limited to a maximum of 960x800, which is pretty boring. After being accustomed to the small font sizes of windows, which i actually like, it's disappointing. I tried reconfiguring the xserver with dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, but still no avail. display properties lists the above said maximum resolution with a refresh rate of 60 Hz only.

4. Even though audio and video players are pre-installed, i had to download codecs for popular formats like mp3 and avi from the internet, which i must say, beats the purpose of these players in the first place.

5. Ubuntu hanged my system after which i had to switch off my cpu to reboot again twice already. though i first attributed it to the deteriorating condition of my HDD, windows XP SP2 running on the same HDD has not crashed even a single time.

6. And wef yesterday, my 'h' and ''x' keys have ceased to work in linux. Can't comprehend what the problem is. A message says XKB(or something like that) failed to load something else.

I've mentioned my problems in depth because someone will come up with a solution.

All in all, i'm happy. Not only because i don't have to click the i agree umpteen number of times, but also because according to Keir Thomas "it gives complete power over your system".