Cellphones in relationships : A survival guide
So if you're in a relationship and you plan to buy a phone or have just bought one,
and it turns out to be an Android or iPhone, here are a few tips to prevent life from becoming
living hell
1. NEVER install WhatsApp
WhatsApp is probably the worst thing to happen to couples. Sure, you can message all the time for very little cost, but few are aware of the minuscule bomb planted into the app. Your other half can not only know if the message has been delivered like normal texts, but also if you have read it or if you started typing a reply and forgot all about them.
Yes, it can get ugly, can't it ?
2. NEVER share your location
Sharing your location means your other half will know exactly where you are and how much time you should take to pick them up. Yes, they will know much time you SHOULD take, instead of how much time you might take. Goodbye to all those little diversions for snacks or for saying quick hellos to friends.
Not a very pleasant thought.
3. NEVER get an Unlimited Data Plan
Getting an Unlimited Data Plan means you'll be connected pretty much 24x7. The horror of it ! So if you want some time for yourself or if you don't want to do something with your significant other, you'll have to dodge : phone calls, sms, WhatsApp, chat,location and any and all other services that you foolishly signed up for on their suggestion (read pestering)
And you thought you lived in a free country
4. NEVER use Foursquare
So managed to get out from a boring outing by lying ? Foursquare is your worst enemy. Sure, you can check into someplace to become the Mayor of that place, but you are going to get hell back at home. A pretty sad Mayor you would be.
5. NEVER get the same handset
NEVER EVER. They will make sure you have hell. How ?
If they approve of the idea, you will be embarrassed to hell listening to them rant on acting all cute and mushy and making you go "Leave my damned phone out of this".
Or better still if they DON'T like you getting the same handset, they'll make sure you give it to your younger sibling and get a new one within six months. Or face consequences.
Enjoy.
6. NEVER even get the same OS
If your criminal partner (partner-in-crime has gotten too mushy, and this term seems more appropriate) has a phone running Froyo, get one running Eclair, Gingerbread or Honeycomb. Anything other than Froyo.
In fact, get an iPhone. That way, you won't have to deal with their tech problems, share or approve of their enthusiasm for apps or be responsible for teaching them stuff. Or be responsible for sharing your cool new app with them. Because come on, even you like to be the only one to have an awesomely cool app sometimes, isn't it ?
I could probably go on, but I'd rather not for the sake of keeping it amusing and not-boring till the end.
And yeah. You have been warned. Take heed. Serious heed.
and it turns out to be an Android or iPhone, here are a few tips to prevent life from becoming
living hell
1. NEVER install WhatsApp
WhatsApp is probably the worst thing to happen to couples. Sure, you can message all the time for very little cost, but few are aware of the minuscule bomb planted into the app. Your other half can not only know if the message has been delivered like normal texts, but also if you have read it or if you started typing a reply and forgot all about them.
Yes, it can get ugly, can't it ?
2. NEVER share your location
Sharing your location means your other half will know exactly where you are and how much time you should take to pick them up. Yes, they will know much time you SHOULD take, instead of how much time you might take. Goodbye to all those little diversions for snacks or for saying quick hellos to friends.
Not a very pleasant thought.
3. NEVER get an Unlimited Data Plan
Getting an Unlimited Data Plan means you'll be connected pretty much 24x7. The horror of it ! So if you want some time for yourself or if you don't want to do something with your significant other, you'll have to dodge : phone calls, sms, WhatsApp, chat,location and any and all other services that you foolishly signed up for on their suggestion (read pestering)
And you thought you lived in a free country
4. NEVER use Foursquare
So managed to get out from a boring outing by lying ? Foursquare is your worst enemy. Sure, you can check into someplace to become the Mayor of that place, but you are going to get hell back at home. A pretty sad Mayor you would be.
5. NEVER get the same handset
NEVER EVER. They will make sure you have hell. How ?
If they approve of the idea, you will be embarrassed to hell listening to them rant on acting all cute and mushy and making you go "Leave my damned phone out of this".
Or better still if they DON'T like you getting the same handset, they'll make sure you give it to your younger sibling and get a new one within six months. Or face consequences.
Enjoy.
6. NEVER even get the same OS
If your criminal partner (partner-in-crime has gotten too mushy, and this term seems more appropriate) has a phone running Froyo, get one running Eclair, Gingerbread or Honeycomb. Anything other than Froyo.
In fact, get an iPhone. That way, you won't have to deal with their tech problems, share or approve of their enthusiasm for apps or be responsible for teaching them stuff. Or be responsible for sharing your cool new app with them. Because come on, even you like to be the only one to have an awesomely cool app sometimes, isn't it ?
I could probably go on, but I'd rather not for the sake of keeping it amusing and not-boring till the end.
And yeah. You have been warned. Take heed. Serious heed.
GRE.Check.
Declarations and disclaimers :
1. This is not advice. I haven't put in any,so if you opened this looking for advice, you are going to be disappointed.
2. You and you alone are responsible for whatever you may find or learn or lose on reading this. I claim no responsibility or liability for anything. I do not even guarantee the accuracy of what I have written here.
3. I am done with my GRE, so I can write this with a little more detachment than those of you readers who are yet to give it.
4. Lastly, this is more of a debriefing than a narrative. Just saying.
<----->
A few things I have to say :
1. A big thank you to all my friends. For constantly wishing me luck. For not betting in front of me. For not pressurizing me. All of it made me work harder than I might otherwise have.
2. Thank you Bhumil Haria for giving the exam a week before me and providing a frame of reference.
3. Thank you everyone for the betting round on twitter. I have never ever opened Twitter to see 28 mentions in a span of 4 hours. Thank you for believing in me.
4. Thank you Tanvi Nabar for the chat outside Marwah house :)
Tanooj, not you. You don't ask someone what they are thinking right outside the exam center WHEN they are outside the exam center. You have to save it for later :P
<----->
A few things I saw at Marwah house :
1. Marwah house is a desolate place. Don't reach too early.
2. They make you check your pockets twice yourself before letting you in. Maybe they are afraid more of bio terrorism and anthrax powder more than people copying.
3. They have people to keep on staring at you via CCTV throughout the exam. "Uncle Sam is watching" is totally right. I don't know how much of perverts they are, but there's lots of scope there. Also, if we were to stare at a CCTV feed, we would be called jobless. They call it their job.
4. They provide ear muffs of the kind you find in shooting ranges. Pretty slick
5. They ask you to keep your food out in the open in the waiting area if you mean to have it in the break. I don't know if they have a bite from it,but its very possible. There should be an physical kind of MD5 checksum to check for tampering.
<------->
A few thoughts :
I did not prepare much. 3 weeks, and not even a dedicated three weeks. I don't know if classes helped, and I don't mean to find out. The one thing I am sure of is, I wouldn't have been able to perform better at any other time. Because it takes calm nerves to succeed where I think I screwed up.
I won't be so presumptuous as to generalise, but I find that the GRE confirmed one belief :
"You can only be prepared upto a certain extent. After that, you've got to be ready."
Disclosure :
My score is 1440. V 640. Q 800.
I had decent vocabulary and composition skills even without the GRE, so that might have helped. They just might have. Now you cannot blame me for incomplete disclosure.
1. This is not advice. I haven't put in any,so if you opened this looking for advice, you are going to be disappointed.
2. You and you alone are responsible for whatever you may find or learn or lose on reading this. I claim no responsibility or liability for anything. I do not even guarantee the accuracy of what I have written here.
3. I am done with my GRE, so I can write this with a little more detachment than those of you readers who are yet to give it.
4. Lastly, this is more of a debriefing than a narrative. Just saying.
<----->
A few things I have to say :
1. A big thank you to all my friends. For constantly wishing me luck. For not betting in front of me. For not pressurizing me. All of it made me work harder than I might otherwise have.
2. Thank you Bhumil Haria for giving the exam a week before me and providing a frame of reference.
3. Thank you everyone for the betting round on twitter. I have never ever opened Twitter to see 28 mentions in a span of 4 hours. Thank you for believing in me.
4. Thank you Tanvi Nabar for the chat outside Marwah house :)
Tanooj, not you. You don't ask someone what they are thinking right outside the exam center WHEN they are outside the exam center. You have to save it for later :P
<----->
A few things I saw at Marwah house :
1. Marwah house is a desolate place. Don't reach too early.
2. They make you check your pockets twice yourself before letting you in. Maybe they are afraid more of bio terrorism and anthrax powder more than people copying.
3. They have people to keep on staring at you via CCTV throughout the exam. "Uncle Sam is watching" is totally right. I don't know how much of perverts they are, but there's lots of scope there. Also, if we were to stare at a CCTV feed, we would be called jobless. They call it their job.
4. They provide ear muffs of the kind you find in shooting ranges. Pretty slick
5. They ask you to keep your food out in the open in the waiting area if you mean to have it in the break. I don't know if they have a bite from it,but its very possible. There should be an physical kind of MD5 checksum to check for tampering.
<------->
A few thoughts :
I did not prepare much. 3 weeks, and not even a dedicated three weeks. I don't know if classes helped, and I don't mean to find out. The one thing I am sure of is, I wouldn't have been able to perform better at any other time. Because it takes calm nerves to succeed where I think I screwed up.
I won't be so presumptuous as to generalise, but I find that the GRE confirmed one belief :
"You can only be prepared upto a certain extent. After that, you've got to be ready."
Disclosure :
My score is 1440. V 640. Q 800.
I had decent vocabulary and composition skills even without the GRE, so that might have helped. They just might have. Now you cannot blame me for incomplete disclosure.
Phototime
Code is alright, but I have always been looking for opportunities to write small scripts, little things to automate life. Now, when I have the opportunity, I was only too glad to indulge myself.
I have been maintaining a photo-log since a few days, and that means a lot of photos everyday. The least I hope to gain out of this exercise is to know how my life progressed over a year.
So I figured I would have to name them consistently with their date and time as the file names.
What would let me do this ? Either have the camera's processor run the code (very far-fetched, true, but it might be a possibility) or have a script on my computer to do the same.
So I chose this opportunity to write a small Python script to rename all photos in a folder in such a fashion.
What it exactly does is :
Supply the path to a photo folder as a command line argument, something like :
python phototime.py /path/to/your/photos
and the rest is taken care of.
I've uploaded the project to a Github repository. You can download it from here.
Please leave back feedback if its useful or if it sucked. Remarks and suggestions for modifications are most welcome.
This work by Ankit Daftery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 India License.
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