Indian Institute of Students

"Point is that if you ain't a celeb or an influential person, no one will be interested in you. But forget me. Ravinder Singh's sort-of-autobiography is complete trash. Sorry for spoilers, but I'm extremely not satisfied. The writing style is also childish, with half the conversations in Punjabi language - you can't figure out if you don't know Punjabi." Like it Happened Yesterday is a novel by Ravinder Singh . If you've read his earlier novels, it's pretty normal for you to expect cheesy love stories. But not this time. Ravinder has twisted his way. Guess what the subject of the novel is? Another love story? Oh no. It's about childhood memories of the author and recollections from his teen years. Unlike what I've read, this is a unique book of it's kind. The book cover, along with a heart clip art, deceived me into thinking that it was another 'lovy-dovy' story. Many of my friends had read his earlier novels and s...

So you used Chrome for a lot of time. And when you tried to close it, it almost froze, became not-responding program, and you felt a mini-heart attack. Fortunately, it closed down before you could react to it. But next, your computer has slowed down terribly. Terribly . A single right-click to refresh the screen can take up to five minutes. Now, this is even bad than the previous case. So what causes this computer to lag? It's RAM who is to be blamed. Especially, if you have a low memory RAM, using the computer would become a nightmare after opening Chrome and using apps such as Google Earth, online Flash games, etc. The basic working of an operating system is through processes. Chrome creates numerous processes, each eating up megabytes of RAM space. A few Chrome processes also take, say, 200 MB space from the RAM. Providing that you have an average build-up, like most of us do, your basic instinct will be to kill the computer right there. But wait. We've got a good fix for...

During the course of last three months I have been researching about Afghanistan, reading memoirs, checking out places described in books via Google Maps (a companion, say a virtual travel guide). Interestingly, as Qais Akbar Omar, the author of "A Fort of Nine Towers" describes, a person not born in Afghanistan, whose feet has not touched Afghan soil, will visualize the nation as a blood-streaked place, with bearded soldiers, wearing turbans and carrying grenades. But no, he says, they are not real Afghans. I've come to know about the Afghans a lot more than an average person does.     Modern-day Afghanistan: The road to Mazar. Copyright: Qais Akbar Omar. I'd provide a very brief timeline of what happened: At first, the Russians had invaded Afghanistan. Afghans didn't like that. Of course, in our country, when the British took us as a colony, we were not happy, too. One night people came out of their homes- unified in a common outcry of "Allah-u-...

Days pass by. Time waits for none. These are so common words. But, have you ever tried to decrypt it's meaning? Days pass by so calmly, so quietly. I just stare back at the days. Days littered with sprinkles of gold, days filled with mists of happiness, and days that shook me from within. I'm just looking at the "Timeline" of my small life, watching the moments of joy. You know what, they come in small numbers. Ask God, and he'll reply back, "Oh dear, happiness and sadness is equally balanced". Balanced. Oh no, the monotonous word, "Balance" that I'm fed up of. When you're in high school, everything around seems to come to a screeching halt, and the only one still efficiently carrying out tasks will be YOU. Yes, you! Look, all these days, in junior section, you have got 85% and above-sort-of marks. Your ribs crack down when you get your terminal sheets in your hand, maybe obtaining a mere 50 outt'a the traditional 80 marks. ...

It has been quite a time that HTML 5 was launched. Most of the active sites on the internet has started to use them. To start with HTML 5 you just need an updated and modern browser. HTML as always is too easy to learn and if you can understand basic English, HTML will be nothing too difficult for you. Here I will post about the tags that I prefer, due to their functionality, and flexibility on different browsers. I will be using the <code> tag to show how to use these codes. 1: <Abbr> tag: The Abbr tag is pretty useful and reduces a lot of work for coders (and for advertisers as well). What it does is it shows the definition of some word when the mouse is hovered over it. Here's it's syntax: <abbr title="Definition here">Abbreviation here</abbr> And here it is, in play: Abbreviation How can be it targeted by advertisers? One can put his url there and maybe, one day, it is possible to link the text in the title attribute to ...

Due to reader curiosities, we got this video out from YouTube that shows what happens if you microwave a iPhone (or any other smartphone, say). Pretty interesting, huh! Enjoy!

IIS India conducted a public survey for teenagers on their feelings, emotions, what they love to do and all sorts of things related with that. The study was completed a week back and statistics was analyzed in that time. Here is the report on the Eating Habits of teenagers. A total of 629 replies were collected. Out of the 629 survey participants, 344 people said they eat healthy food like vegetables and fruits, and try to avoid junk food. That's almost a whopping 55% of the answers. Mind you, in this generation, I thought people eat more junk... But I am proved wrong. 106 people opted for "Everything that comes my way", which denotes that 16% teens like both junk and healthy and prefer one on every alternative day. 16% for this category is good under records. So the remaining 179, as you know, went for junk, constituting 28% of the whole. I feel this is in control and 28% for the modern generation is pretty good compared to standards. If you were a parti...

Well, do you know what led to the discovery of Justin Beiber? (Sorry, I know, you may hate him) It was YouTube. A musician found out that Beiber had a lot of talent in him and called him up. He recorded his first song and that was a hit. That is also what is transforming to reality nowadays. Talented young people are hooking up on Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube and other communities where their talent is noticed. I noticed a lot of Indian talent, too. I had taken a interview of a rising star via e-mail (whose name I can't disclose because the person requested me not to publish due to her privacy reasons), who had been selected for Indian Idol round 3. The person said that YouTube helped her to reach fame. So the point is, video-sharing communities can earn you name and fame in a couple of days, or who knows, even minutes, maybe! If you are a professional in some area of work, share it in your channel. If, luckily, you get noticed, sponsors may even run after you! But, as I said...

I am an Airtel subscriber for my mobile phone. While browsing through the tons of junk news I found some interesting piece of news that is noteworthy for Airtel subscribers and users. A partnership between Airtel and Google now allows Airtel users to access Google's services, like Google+, Gmail, Google Search, Image Search, etc, for free and no data cost would be charged. To access the service, according to sources, an Airtel user needs to visit  http://www.airtel.in/free-zone/  in his browser and then start using Google's services. However, the only restriction is that you are limited to 1 GB of browsing data, which is pretty much for searching and activities like checking email. These kind of deals between billion-dollar companies should arise often, otherwise, how would be benefit? 'Am starting to use it from today peeps, what about you?

We all know he got bail from the court due to insufficient evidence of allegations of spot-fixing in cricket against him. According to current news, the BCCI is conducting a inquiry on Sreesanth and then they will decide whether to award Sreesanth a life ban or not. Sreesanth, after getting his bail, said that "he wants to prove his innocence and play cricket once again". However, with the recent controversies, I don't think he can ever make it back to the IPL or the national side. What do you people think? Is he really innocent? Did MCOCA actually make mistake? Reflect your views in the comment section!

Final result: India wins the ICC Champions trophy 2013. After the rain played with the fate of the match and it looked like India and England would be declared joint winners, things changed rapidly. It was declared to be a T20 Final match by the umpires and the game was extended to 8:30 PM local time (1:30 AM IST). All thanks and praises to the groundsmen at Birmingham, for the match would not have been possibly without their hard work. All England needed was 130 runs to win from 20 overs at a minimal run-rate of 6.50 in 20-overs cricket. The game looked as if it slipped away from India's grip but instead it was the acute antonym that happened. With quick wickets falling in succession, England's middle order began to tremble. They were desperate to get both runs and also to build a partnership at the same time, which they couldn't. MS Dhoni's decision to bring in Ishant at the 18th over proved to be a good decision. Ishant took the wickets of Eoin Morgan and...

You are quite furious now, cursing hell upon the rain Gods of England if you are a sincere cricket fan. The final decision was that the game would be a 20-over game , and if rain stops play again, overs will not be reduced, but the teams would be declared co-champions, or joint-champions of the last Champions trophy.  The hashtag #RainGoAway has started trending on Twitter, expressing the concerns of the millions of people who have either reached the stadium at Birmingham to watch the match or those who've tuned in the TV to watch the finale. Currently, the game play has resumed once again. Who knows if India get to lift the final ICC Champions Trophy? All prayers with MS Dhoni and his men in blue. Rain, rain, GO AWAY!

People are frustrated by how people talk to them. They feel they are superior compared to the other person in some ways. Ways, these are just few. Human relations and philosophy is a long topic. Here I'll give you all basic principles to win friends and make people like you. You can buy the printed edition of this book illustrating the various points with real-life example from the banner above. Fundamental Techniques in Handling People 1: Don't criticize, condemn or complain. 2: Give honest, and moreover, sincere appreciation for hard work. 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want.  Six Ways to Make People Like You 1: Become genuinely interested in other people. 2: Smile. 3 Remember that a person's name is the most important and sweetest sound for him in any language.  4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.  5: Talk in terms of the other person's interest.  6: Make the other person feel important- and do i...

Politics has taken a U-turn in the last decade in our country. From Rahul Gandhi to Mamata, we have seen a bunch of politicians promising us a lot of things in exchange of votes. But how many politicians actually did this? None! They ask for votes; win the elections; sit with power, and forget about the promises.The thing with us is that we choose the wrong people to take up the most powerful and responsible places in the government. I'm not criticizing any particular party or such; I am criticizing the system in general. I know this seems a bit absurd. This might (99% chance, will) never happen, but this is a mere ideology of a good governance. I call this "The Best Politics for the Best Country". Currently, we are in a bad state of governance- unchecked crimes to high corruption amongst people. Worse, people have accepted corruption as a part of their daily lives. Take an example. I went to a school fest last year. People were asked to line up to get tickets. We...

Internet Censorship has grown drastically over the past few years with countries like China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran taking the lead over other governments in extending internet censorship to almost all sources of free unbiased information. Some schools and offices also prevent users from accessing certain websites which they believe are of no use in the respective areas. Governments sometimes enforce censorship on all forms of print and digital media like newspapers and television. China is known to have even forced Google to filter its search results. In such times, sometime you may need to access a website that is blocked. This article explains how. Which websites are most commonly Blocked? The most commonly blocked websites include websites about pop culture, health, medicine, women, religion and politics. Social websites that are often blocked include  Blogger  (Blogspot) blogs,  Google  News, Facebook , Orkut, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Hulu, LinkedIn, Y...

I dedicate this post to Sir Rodrix; one of the most influential people I've met in my life, on his request. Here you go, sir:  It all started one day. It was the 9th of September, 2012. I had nothing to do. I sat and stared at the blank screen. Facebook, luckily, didn't attract me too much. So Facebook wasn't an option to spend time. I wanted an healthy hobby. I thought hard, scratching my head and biting my lips. Before I even started Blogging, I was associated with the Wikimedia Foundation for about 1.5 years. I had been a Wikimedia Board member for 3 months, and held some positions of trust under the Wikimedia administration. Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia organizations were a fun place to work in; indulge in community work and help make the world's largest encyclopedia even more perfect. Things went correctly until the last few months of my Wiki career. Something was wrong. We (Wikipedians; those who edit Wikipedia) witnessed a period of decline o...

Eden shouldn't have been, after all. Not that because I'm not much of a supporter of the home franchise, but because of other clear, important and vital factors that affect the game. Affects, in a huge way. There are tons of reasons for those. Let's peek in. The first one, being one of the most important reasons is the Nor'wester rains. They are expected at this season of the year in Kolkata. I'm not a Geographic expert or anything sort-of that; but it's my common sense that tells me that it'll precipitate in the late evening. And when it precipitates, that's when things go wrong. Pitches behave abnormally, the wicket isn't quite good for batting, the dampness in the ground, and of course the risks of getting a fielder injured due to slipperiness in the field.  Another problem with the Eden is that it is a slow, sluggish wicket, and the ball doesn't come on to the bat quite nicely. We all want a fiery showdown by the finale teams, ri...

       Sreesanth took a long time to set the field. It was the indication for the bookies to start betting. We all know the recent controversy- S Sreesanth, Chandila and Chavan, playing for Rajasthan Royals this IPL Season, arrested due to spot-fixing. They've admitted their wrong doings. IPL has went serious. I mean, way serious. The bookies paid Sreesanth 60 lakh rupees (now that's almost $11,000!) for bowling a loose over. They had stated him the task to concede a specific amount of runs during one of his overs, and he did that pretty loyally. My personal view is that without even being paid a single paisa, Sreesanth would have conceded a minimum of 35 runs of his 4 overs (and we expect that from him, knowing he's quite out-of-form)- without getting into so much of trouble! I don't understand why Indians are so greedy. Yes, and I did want to emphasize on the two words "so greedy". Previously, a normal Indian guy thought Pakistani cricketers are th...

I was shocked to find that the Chief Minister of my state, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, encouraging people to smoke. And all this smoking for a reason: Refund money of poor people who lost their fortunes in the Saradha Chit Fund scam. This, according to me, has crossed the limit. I don't write on political circumstances much, but I had to. I had to express my voice against this. I will discuss how smoking will gather revenue for the state, too. Truly, politics has gone wild. For those who are not aware of what the Saradha Chit Fund is, it is a chit fund company that has gone bust and locked down. Hundreds of thousands of angry depositors have already ransacked Saradha Group offices. Agents who couldn't pay back their clients committed suicide, too. The state has a 10% tax for smoking. The revenue gathered from the taxes will be used to "repay" poor people. Instead of actually repaying, it'll be used to bail out Sudipta Sen, the owner of the Saradha group. Is this w...

Dear Gandhiji, You left us 62 years ago. If you were still around, you would have been 140 years old. However, we have not forgotten you. You are on every banknote and most stamps. There are many statues of you. Prestigious roads in almost every city are named after you. Our politicians try to model themselves on you. They wear the fabric you promoted, they quote you at every instance, they've got a photograph of you in their office and some even eat and live like you. There are books, TV programmes and movies about you. Seriously, you'd be impressed at how much we still adore you. However, there are things that won't make you feel proud. The India you spent all your life making free, is far from free. True, the white guys are gone. But there are still millions of poor people. In 60 years, we are still among the poorest nations on earth. This lack of money leads to a lot of problems in healthcare, infrastructure and education. In education, for instance, m...

Photo credit is given at the end of each photo.* The article is a digital reproduction of a Yahoo! News photo. Varun Dhawan:  David Dhawan's younger son Varun was no good looker. Several years and some serious styling later, the Student of the Year star makes for good eye candy! Isn't there a noticeable big style change?  Photo credit: Yogen Shah. 2: Salman Khan: The "Mashallah" and "Tiger" superstar Salman. The  Quite a journey from the solemn and sweet young man of then to the bad boy of today. The previous pictures does bring back a lot of memories.  3: Aamir Khan: This man needs no introduction. An actor and director and also associated with the filming industry for over a decade. Age has treated him well, buddy! 4: Kajol: I'll be frank, I actually didn't watch lots of Kajol films. But I did watch a few and they, according to me, are one of the best cine's I have ever seen. "Fanha", her film with Aamir Khan,...