Considering my reputation and my track record regarding updates, I should be one of the most perfect candidates for answering the above question. Sadly, however, I have absolutely no clue. I could, perhaps, write about the current war on whatever-it-is-that-you-call-it-these days going on in the north-west areas of the dear motherland. Or it might just be that I could offer my intellectual insight for every crisis that our nation faces currently — from different brands of religion to numerous ways of helping those unfortunate souls who have had to flee from their homes to cursing our incomptetent, pathetic, and absolutely worthless leaders to debating whether Lay’s is halal or haram. But, as the fact remains, I don’t know jack about religion, I am as clueless as most of us who want to help the immigrants but do not who to trust, my knowledge about politics and politicians is close to nil, and I am definitely not qualified (both in the matters of religion and nutrition) to decide the eatability (if that’s a word) of Lay’s.

And that leaves me to write nothing else but nonsense, which, as you can guess, I am doing. In fact, I have been publishing nonsense here for more than 6 years now. (In all fairness, though, many good bloggers who I know have written more posts on their blogs in a single year than I have done in these 6 years. And their posts are not nonsense as well.)

Anyway, back to the question.

One might suggest that I could tell you what on earth I had been doing during these past two months. To start with, I have been bloghopping. By bloghopping, I largely mean checking my feed reader for updates. I do miss those early days of blogging where I could literally bloghop from one blog to another by clicking on hyperlinks and then marveling the creativity that was spread all over Blogistan. I still marvel, but the literal ritual of clicking and going to another blog has sort of faded. A feed reader does that for you now.

I also have been Facebooking. By Facebooking, I mean watching and “liking” videos, photos, and links posted by my Facebook friends. (I also just realized that that’s one of the lamest things I have said on my blog.)

And I have been procrastinating. By procrastinating, I mean not doing anything. You might include in it not updating this blog as well.

All right. So you might have guessed by now that I have lost my mind. I certainly have. And you might also guess that I have nothing to write about. I certainly have not. This is, as they say, an update for update’s sake. Total and complete nonsense. And I must apologize, so I apologize. For not writing anything here on Ulta Seedha, and for keeping you waiting, and for ending your wait with this piece of trash that I am writing right now.

A real update will follow soon after a short break. I promise.

Yes, I know, I have never been quick at posting updates (except on some miraculous occasions), but I just wanted to say the above. Feels good to vent.

So anyway, even though I said in my most recent comment-reply that an update would come hopefully on the weekend, I am being efficient and posting some links below; they are Ulta Seedha’s current update. Boy, I am clever.

Wheee! I took a quiz!

Most of you might not be that passionate about fonts, but when I saw a quiz titled “What Font Are You?“, I just couldn’t resist.

And just like a true fan, I am *drumroll please* Helvetica!

Classic, reliable, and boring. Yep, that’s me.

Make sure you check out other font results as well. They are good.

Some xkcd brilliance

For some very strange reason, I keep going back to this comic and reading it. For some another very strange reason, I have never bothered to save it to my machine’s harddisk and always read it on its website. But anyway, just click on the link and enjoy it (even if you don’t understand a word/pixel of it).

Warning: Geek or no geek, ignore the comic’s tooltip. I am not going to explain anything about it. It has also nothing to do with the very strange reasons.

The Dark Knight – Joker interrogation scene spoof

Okay, so you either loved it or hated it. The movie, that is. (If you hated it, close your browser. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.)

There’s some guy out there who made a pretty nifty spoof of the Joker interrogation scene from The Dark Knight. It’s not “insanely hilarious”, as some comments on YouTube will tell you, but nonetheless, it’s pretty funny. It’s very possible that you’ve seen it before, but what the heck, see it again. It’s worth it. If you haven’t seen The Dark Knight yet, then… well, see it in that case as well. A little laugh doesn’t hurt anybody.

This is just a heading

… because there’s nothing to write in here. The post ends.

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(What the…?)

This paper evaluates and compares five time wasting algorithms which have become popular among today’s studentkind: idling, sleeping, strolling, movie-watching, and web surfing. In order to assess both the strengths and weaknesses of these algorithms, a set of carefully selected real-life benchmarks is used. The amount of time wasted, alongwith the quality time enjoyed while wasting it simultaneously, are calculated and analyzed, and recommendations for improving the performance of the mentioned algorithms are also offered.

1     Introduction

Time wasting has been one of the most time consuming activities of mankind ever since time itself started. Over the centuries, different algorithms for efficient wasting of time have been devised and implemented, and have been passed down to junior generations by time-wasting experts of their eras. Studentkind, in particular, have been extremely creative in inventing novel approaches to solve the problem of time wasting, and thus have achieved a cult status among time wasters from all walks of life

Recent studies have shown that a majority of studentkind favors five certain algorithms over the rest: idling, sleeping, strolling, movie-watching, and web surfing. In this paper, we evaluate each of these five algorithms and present their pros and cons. It should also be noted that some of these algorithms may qualify for being meaningful activities in themselves; however, we chose not to extend this study into that domain, because the definition of a time wasting algorithm (see next section) rules such studies out. (The reader may observe that the creativity of studentkind shines outstandingly as they convert legitimate activities into time wasters.)

The outline of this paper is as follows. First, in Section 2, fundamental definitions are provided, and various benchmark parameters are laid down that are used for evaluation of the five algorithms. In Section 3, a brief review of each of the algorithms is presented. Section 4 describes the experiments and their results, and is followed by Section 5, which presents some recommendations. Section 6 concludes the paper.

2     Definitions and Benchmarks

We begin by defining a time wasting algorithm, A.

Def. 1. A = { N | N ≠ required N at time t }

Informally, a time wasting algorithm is an algorithm which is run when it is not required to run. In the rest of the paper, we shall use the words algorithm and activity interchangeably.

We also define another quantity, critical time (t_c).

Def. 2. Critical time is the point in time when the algorithm finishes.

Since all time wasting algorithms are recursive (that is, they never end), their stopping criteria is almost always the critical time.

A number of different benchmarks for evaluation of each of the algorithms were selected, and they are described below.

2.1     Amount of time wasted (t_w)

The most important parameter for any time wasting algorithm is the amount of time, t_w , that it lets the user waste. However, t_w also depends on the diligence of the users themselves, and is, therefore, a rather subjective parameter. We have thus kept t_w fixed during the experiments, using it as a common ground for evaluation of other parameters.

2.2     Amount of generated entertainment (e)

A time wasting algorithm is practically useless if it does not provide its user with a way of having fun. Formally,

e = A (t_w) (1)

where t_w is the amount of time wasted using a time wasting algorithm A, and e is the generated amount of entertainment.

It might be argued that one is not wasting any time if one is having fun, but studies have shown that time wasting for its own sake should not be void of joy. Also, by Definition 1, any activity that should not be engaged in at a given time is a time wasting activity, regardless of the amount of joy it holds for its participants.

2.3     Amount of guilt induced (g)

A time wasting algorithm which induces the least amount of guilt for its user is highly favorable, since the amount of guilt can greatly reduce the entertainment achieved. Thus,

e′ = e − g (2)

where e′ is the actual amount of entertainment. Time wasting algorithms keep evolving to reduce g, though most users rely on their own stubbornness to ignore any amount of g induced while wasting time.

2.4     Reasonable Excuse Factor (REF)

REF is the ability of a time wasting activity to be presented as an excuse for not engaging in the required activity. Theoretically,

REF ∝ 1/g

i.e., lesser the amount of guilt induced, higher the REF. However, our experiments (Section 4) show that this theoretical concept does not always hold true.

3     The Algorithms

In this section, we describe the five algorithms that are compared in the next section. It should be noted that all of these algorithms are very self explanatory and we do not feel a need to explicitly define and state them.

3.1     Idling

Perhaps the most fundamental algorithm for time wasting is doing nothing, or idling. Over the years, a significant decrease in the practical application of idling has been observed, which is not surprising, considering the lack of creativity and less t_w (as we show in the next section).

3.2     Sleeping

Sleeping has always come naturally to the sloths among us, and they are rightfully credited for the widespread use of this activity as a time wasting algorithm. It is, like idling, one of the fundamental time wasters.

3.3     Strolling

Strolling is the alternative algorithm to sleeping for those who find it hard to lock themselves in their bedrooms. It is often accompanied with eating icecreams or french fries, but can be performed without them. Most students like to run this algorithm in teams.

3.4     Movie-watching

This algorithm has evolved from sneaking out of one’s home for attending the late night show in the local theater to the convenience of one’s bedroom, thanks to the advancements in technology. Moreover, the choice of watching movie clips on handheld devices such as mobile phones has immensely increased the usage of this algorithm.

3.5     Web Surfing

Web surfing is the most recent in the mentioned algorithms, but studies show an exponential growth in its application. Just like movie-watching, web surfing has also benefited from the increase in handheld device usage, and some researchers even predict that this algorithm will join the most fundamental ones in near future.

4     Experiments and Results

We conducted test experiments for each of the five algorithms in five consecutive days. Test activities used as required Ns to be neglected (see Defintion 1) included writing a report that a professor demanded, revising lecture notes, installing productive software, updating a blog called Ulta Seedha, and doing the laundry.

As explained in Section 2, the amount of time wasted (t_w) was kept fixed, and was assigned the value of 120 minutes. e, g, e′, and REF were measured on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

Table 1 summarizes the results.

Table 1: Results obtained after testing the five algorithms

Please note that the amount of guilt induced was measured during t_w, and not afterwards.

It can be observed that both movie-watching and web surfing showed similar behavior, with web surfing ranking higher as a reasonable excuse. Indeed, a student can always tell others that she tried to search the worldwide web for hours before finding something useful. Sleeping also performed in a satisfactory manner with the least amount of guilt due to the sub-conscious nature of the
algorithm. Movie-watching also showed a closer amount of g to sleeping, since there is very little room for guilt when enjoying an on-screen action sequence or romance. Unsurprisingly, idling shows the highest g, and consequently, the least e′. This was inevitable because the mind is set free to think of the consequences while running the idling algorithm. Strolling may perform well for some users, and improvements maybe suggested for reducing its g.

All of these algorithms performed poorly for REF, with the slight exception of web surfing. We recommend that the interested reader explore the algorithm of baby-sitting if a higher REF is desired. However, baby-sitting is widely avoided due to its very low e′ — even lower than idling.

5     Recommendations

We now present some recommendations based on our observations during the experiments.

1. Movie-watching and web surfing may be combined together to enhance the time wasting experience. Wesbites such as YouTube may prove to be highly useful in this regard.
2. To reduce the g for strolling, listening to music while running the algorithm is highly encouraged. The interested reader may consult the user manual of Apple’s iPod or similar portable music players.
3. Web surfing may also be enhanced by contributing to meaningless message boards. This may reduce the g.
4. A significant increase in the REF for sleeping may be made by catching a virus, but a certified physician should be consulted beforehand.

6     Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper, we presented a comparative analysis for five popular time wasting activities. We showed that fundamental activities such as idling are now being replaced by more recent developments in the area of time wasting algorithms. We also provided some recommendations for improving the current
performance of these algorithms.

Readers may observe that we have not included a recently emerged and heavily implemented time wasting algorithm of gaming. We believe that this algorithm deserves a separate paper of its own, and we intend to work on it in the near future. Also, TV-watching was not included in favor of movie-watching, and research may be carried out to assess its merits and demerits.

References

This paper does not cite any references because, ironically, we think that they are a waste of time.

9. Why does the song, which took almost 45 minutes to download on your dial-up internet connection, turn out to have a quality inferior than your 15 years old tape recorder?

8. Why does the ice-cream/juice/salan/fit-any-sort-of-food-here has to fall on your white shirt?

7. Why is it so difficult to realize that the professor is talking about cache performance when he says, “If I have 5 misses, what is the penalty of each miss?”

6. Should I be worried that googling “nadia khan birthday special” directs people to this blog?

5. Should I be flattered that “top ten handsome of the world” is doing the same?

4. Why does an Apple MacBook Pro cost a hefty USD$1,999?

3. Am I the only one who thinks that telephone lines/mobile phone networks should provide the facility of electrocuting those callers who after hearing a “hello” respond with a “Who are you?”?

2. Why is the Earth round and not flat (so that we could push so many people off its edge)?

1. Does any of our so-called leaders give a damn?

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A long time ago (that is to say, about two years ago) I had written Top 10 Ideas for Blogging, (which, frankly speaking, were nothing but nonsense). One of the “ideas” present there is to rewrite those essays that you used to write in school, such as ‘A Rainy Day’ or ‘How to Polish a Pair of Shoes’. As you can guess, I have decided to act upon that idea and the first line of this post is so creatively telling you that it’s raining outside. But, since the title of this post also includes the words ‘Sunday Market’, so it is actually going to be a mixture of ‘A Rainy Day’ and ‘A Visit to the Sunday Market’. (Again, as you can guess, latter is a version of that yet another classic essay titled ‘A Visit to a Museum/Hill Station/Village/Funfair/any other goddamn place that your teacher thought you should have visited’.)

Normally, ‘A Rainy Day’ is something like describing the scorching heat of summer first, and then the arrival of clouds with winds starting to blow and the rain pouring down for mankind, after which everybody would first prostrate before God in thanks of the much needed relief, and then go out and play kabaddi in the rain water. (Yes, I actually read this kabaddi playing sentence in one of those essay-writing books.) On the other hand, I remember just a single instance of a rainy day occurring in winter, and that too was not a full essay, but just a paragraph. It might be that rainy days in winter don’t have much to be written about, which I am suspecting really is the case, since I myself am blending A Visit to the Sunday Market with A Rainy Day. On the contrary, it might be that all of us, who have tried to write about rainy days, lack the creativity to describe the real feel of experiencing them in winter (which, I also strongly suspect, is the case).

Anyway, before I start suspecting my sanity too, I think I must move on.

So, it’s raining outside. Almost four hours ago, I was driving our car in this rain, with Abbu ji sitting in the passenger seat, and we were on our way to the Sunday Market. The Sunday Market, as expected, was not as crowded as it usually turns out to be — no stalls for clothes, cutlery, bakery items, or chicken. But normally, we only visit the Sunday Market for vegetables and fruits, and they were there, albeit fewer than usual. The rain was light, but continuous, resulting in all sorts of umbrellas held by their owners to protect them. Abbu ji had an umbrella too, and I had put on the hood of my sweatshirt.

I have never really given any thought to the colour of umbrellas until today. Almost all umbrellas have the same shape, with the difference lying in the way they can be collapsed (and there, again, are not much differences). So, then that I saw so many of them, I started to think about it. Black seems to be the most general colour. Then comes blue (Abbu ji had a dark blue one). Then the ones with rainbow-ish patterns. And then the floral ones. And yes, the checkered ones too. For me, more amusing than their colours was the fact that whether the umbrellas “suited” their owners. For example, there was this brawny man who was holding a little umbrella with a floral pattern. Amusing. Another lady’s rather large black umbrella was proving to be quite difficult to handle for her, specially when the wind blew ferociously. A cheerful middle aged man who stood beside us in front of one of the many fruit stalls, had an umbrella whose frame was so flexible that the wind inverted it, making it resemble a large bowl balanced on a stick. The thought made me chuckle, since balancing a bowl on a stick in such a windy condition would be quite a feat.

The stall owners were having their troubles with the wind too. Some had suspended a piece of plastic sheet to protect their goodies, and those sheets were making their feeble attempts to face the roaring wind, ultimately giving in, and then fluttering with a loud noise, probably protesting why their one corner was still attached to the bamboo used for suspending them. And, obviously, their protest wasn’t turning out to be very good for other people (like me, for instance) who, despite being bathed in the rain, were forced to face another splatter of rain water accumulated by those plastic sheets.

Driving around in the rain is something very eventful too, specially if other drivers suddenly realize that they are getting late and then start splashing water on other cars’ windscreens. And imagine the joy of such a thing if the defogger of your car is defunct as well. Definitely makes your day.

And now that I am writing these lines, it has suddenly dawned on me that the above nonsense is anything but an essay. Well, it might be an essay, but the one which doesn’t talk much about its title. And anyway, all my essays in school used to talk about their titles, so maybe this is a good change. Furthermore, I am getting sleepy, so maybe I should head towards my bed…

Nothing is more peaceful than a nap on a rainy day after a visit to the Sunday Market, eh?

“Aren’t you going to change?” I asked him.

“Nope,” he shook his head.

“Good,” I nodded, “I used to do the same.”

When I was in Matric, there was this teacher whose tuition academy I used to go to. The timings were such that I just got an hour or so after school to reach his place. Fortunately, my school was just a 10 minutes walk away from my home, so I used to dash towards home after the chhutti, stuff my mouth with whatever meal Ammi ji had cooked, throw the school tie and sweater away (well, not really away, but on my bed), put on a black leather jacket, and then dash my way to that tuition academy. After my return from there, I would just hang around in the same school shirt and trousers, giving everybody the impression that this kid (that is to say, me) is such a hardworking student that he doesn’t even have time to change into different clothes. And tell you what, most people really used to think like that.

Except for that one time when a cheerful fellow in my street asked if I was being lazy.

In my FSc days, things were almost the same. In summer, though, I used to change my shirt. (Those gray school trousers were such beautiful pieces of clothes that they got along with most of my other shirts smoothly.) In winters, there was again the throwing away of the college sweater (no tie, then) and the wearing of leather jacket. And considering that I used to have enough time after college to change into ‘civilian’ clothes, most people then started to suspect that I was being a lazy giraffe. (I only agreed with the giraffe part.)

The one person who was most irritated by this dress code of mine was my Ammi ji. You see, she is quite a perfectionist. Whenever she steps into my room, she takes a look around, gasps with horror, and then in a whispered tone says to me, “Saadat! What have you done to your room?” Needless to say, I almost always reply with no verbal answer but with an angelic, innocent look on my face, trying to convince Ammi ji that this room is highly organized if Saadat’s Laws of Organization could be considered. Needless to say again, Saadat’s Laws of Organization are always promptly rejected.

I don’t know if I miss wearing a school uniform. According to an ex-class fellow of mine, a uniform keeps your honour (izzat) because if you have to wear specific clothes everyday, and everyone else around is dressed in the same clothes, then this saves you the shame of wearing the same pair of jeans for the whole week. (Yes, he was that self-conscious.) To some extent, I agree with him. But if you consider Saadat’s Laws of Garments, then they state somewhere in their clauses that if you are wearing the same pair of jeans for the whole week, they become your personal uniform. Thus, you are then going to have all the benefits of wearing a school/college uniform by wearing that very favourite pair of jeans.

Now, where’s my favourite pair of jeans…?

They should be on my bed, according to Saadat’s Laws of Organization, but apparently these laws do have some flaws in themselves.

Hmm.

I admit, I am a fan of Junaid Jamshed. I also admit that I would love to have his cellphone number. Some years earlier, I would have used his cellphone number to tell him how great, or disappointing, one of his songs had turned out for me, but now that he sports a beard and spends his time reading religious books, I might want to have his personal opinion on some matter. Or maybe, I could suggest my own ulta seedha concept for his kurta designs. But seriously, does anyone really believe that I would be advertising his, or for that matter, any celebrity’s cellphone number here on my blog?

Search engines are such an interesting kind of computer programs. And as with all computer programs that exist, they have their limitations. I don’t remember where, but I was reading somewhere that if one searches for “car”, and then performs another search for “automobile”, should it make any difference? If you are a human, there is no, or very little, difference. If, however, you are a search engine, it makes all the difference in the world.

Anyway, my intention right now was not to write about search engines and how they work. Instead, I would like to share some of the keywords which are directing traffic to this ulta seedha corner.

Topping the list is “Maulana Tariq Jamil”. And before you jump to any conclusion, I have never ever met the Maulana. People might have been looking for any of his lectures online or something like that, but the thing I wonder about is that why someone looking for lectures of Maulana Tariq Jamil would click on a search result which is titled “Ulta Seedha”. And I just can’t imagine their disappointment (or fury) when after clicking on that result they read the description of my encounter with a speed driving, traffic cutting taxi driver.

Another recurring keyword is “Imran Series“. People have been trying to read it online (“on line read imran series novels”) and by some stroke of very unfortunate luck, they are being ushered to this blog. I actually am a HUGE fan of Imran Series (if, of course, written by Ibne Safi, and not by any of his copiers, though I’ll admit that I was introduced to this series by Mazhar Kaleem. Fortunately, after reading the original, I vowed never again to touch the Imran Series’ novels by Mazhar Kaleem or any other author). To my disappointment, though, one of the searches was “imran series mazhar kaleem”.

An expectable keyword is, of course, “ulta seedha” (with or without the space). They might have been searching for the show which goes on air (on Geo TV, I guess) with the same name (“download ulta seedha”), but let me now clear this: That show did not inspire the name of this blog. Heck, I don’t even watch TV and came to know about the show by a friend. But anyway, as a proof, this blog was started before the show started. There!

The winner among the keywords (or I should say keyphrases), though, is a result of the greatest disease on this planet: boredom. Somewhere on earth, a person sat in front of a computer, connected it to the Internet, and then googled this: “feeling bored want something interesting”. Tragedy, I tell you. Even more tragic is that person’s fate of clicking on the 4th search result, and then torturing himself/herself to read my ramblings about the first day of the 5th Semester, when actually all s/he asked for was “something interesting”. Whoever that person is, I really feel sorry for him/her. I really do.

Some other worth mentioning keywords are:

• tariq bin ziad spain
• guess papers of 10th class (I don’t know how that student would find them here)
• rent a car in pakistan
• funny sms
• dhuwan
• mortein mats (Bhaijan, you were right: Include a macchar in anything, and it clicks!)

And now that I have included so many search keywords in this post, I wonder how many hits it is going to get.