Memoirs of the non-objectivist

uVerse's new half-assed multiview system for PIP

2010-08-04T23:59:00.005-05:00

For years now, Uverse subscribers have been asking for PIP, the ability to persistently watch two channels at a time. And they came up with this thing called My multiview. The idea is simple. The user gets to select his favorite channels in a list and then as he is watching a channel, he can watch any three of his sequential favorite channels at the same time.

This is so half-assed, it makes no sense at all. If their system is going to use the bandwidth to fetch low res previews of three channels, at least let the user choose which three. In two pictures, I show how easy it is. While watching, the user is able to select one of the four channels being watched using his arrow buttons on his remote. The red box in the pic below shows the selected watch area. He can press down to select one of the other two areas

Once he has selected one of the three areas, the user can then type any channel number he wants to set that area to that channel. In the pic below, I put some text on the top box to show the user is selecting a channel to assign to that box.

Once a channel number was assigned, the user can then hit the OK button to make that channel show up on the center screen. Whoever works in the user experience department at AT&T / Motorola needs to do a ton of answering for the half assed system they have managed to come up with.

color blind

2010-07-05T23:24:00.003-05:00

As his fingers moved up the back of her neck, he felt a tiny bump, that reminded him of the small bump on the '5' key on calculator and cellphone keypads worldwide. No, this wasn't Braille, and he wasn't blind, unless being color blind counted. But then he didn't need to see colors to be able to see her. She was right there wasn't she? Red and green all at once, not that it mattered one tiny bit.

It had been raining when they first met. He had been driving to the liquor store to get his weekly 12 pack, and couldn't tell the flashing red in front of him apart from the flashing amber he thought it was. Wham! He had T-boned her small SUV. Luckily, he had been going only 30, and they both got out of it without a scratch. She had let the words fly. He could only listen. Being color blind was no excuse. "Then you shouldn't be on the road, moron." had been the usual refrain. He would usually stop at flashing lights, whether they were amber or red, because he had no clue, but today, he had been lost in thought, and to his eyes, the grayish glow from the flashing red didn't quite have the urgency 'normal' people would have seen.

...To be continued.

Google Chrome linux dev relase on opensuse 11.1 with Flash (and possibly other plugins) enabled

2009-08-16T12:57:00.007-05:00

NOTE: I have only tested the below procedure with the 32 bit version. The symlinks may be very different with the 64 bit version. But the basic procedure should be the same. Good Luck.

This post is a compilation of info from different sources. I am tired of how slow Firefox is in Linux, and want to run the dev edition of Chrome and take the risks. Unfortunately, it does not support Flash or any other plugins out of the box which is a dealbreaker for many.

1. Convert .deb to .rpm

Use Yast to install the package alien if it is not already installed.

sudo yast2 --install alien

Download the latest developer channel version of Google Chrome for linux. Beware, it is named unstable for a reason. I am taking a risk, but remember that neither Google nor I is/am responsible for all mishaps you may suffer from this download.

http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel#TOC-Linux

Download the debian file for 32 bit or 64 bit version as befits your system. Now, in the folder you have downloaded this, do:

alien -r google-chrome-unstable_current_xxxxxxxxxxxxx.deb

where xxxxxxxxxxxx represents your OS word length etc (32 bit or 64 bit. This should generate an rpm file with a similar name but here the xxxxxxxxxx contains the version of Chrome as well as your OS Word Length.

google-chrome-unstable_current_xxxxxxxxxxxxx.rpm

in the same folder.

2. Install Google Chrome

Now install this using rpm but specify not to look for dependencies:

sudo rpm -Uhv --nodeps ./google-chrome-unstable-xxxxxxxxxxxx.rpm

This will install Chrome but now you have to give it an environment it can work in by making symlinks to all those deps it will look for.

3. Set up dependencies

ln -s /usr/lib/libnspr4.so /usr/lib/libnspr4.so.0d
ln -s /usr/lib/libplc4.so /usr/lib/libplc4.so.0d
ln -s /usr/lib/libplds4.so /usr/lib/libplds4.so.0d
ln -s /usr/lib/libssl3.so /usr/lib/libssl3.so.1d
ln -s /usr/lib/libsmime3.so /usr/lib/libsmime3.so.1d
ln -s /usr/lib/libnssutil3.so /usr/lib/libnssutil3.so.1d
ln -s /usr/lib/libnss3.so /usr/lib/libnss3.so.1d

4. Enable plugins

First, go to /opt/google/chrome and make a folder called plugins

sudo mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins

Now, make a symlink within this folder to one of the plugins you use in Firefox. In my case, this will be the flash player, and since this is one of the most looked-for ones, I will show where I found it, and how I made a symlink

ln -s /usr/lib/browser-plugins/libflashplayer.so /opt/google/chrome/plugins/

Several guides online show a different location for the flash plugin within /usr/lib like flash-install or something, but this is where I found it on three 32 bit systems.

Now, do Alt-F2 (command window) and enter

google-chrome --enable-plugins

Let me acknowledge my sources here:

1. http://forums.opensuse.org/network-internet/417956-howto-install-google-chrome-developer-edition-opensuse.html

2. http://jeanderuelle.blogspot.com/2009/07/enable-flash-on-google-chrome-linux-dev.html

3. http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/08/google-chrome-for-linux-adds-plug-ins.html

I know I am not adding much to the conversation, but I thought the whole thing ought to be there in a single place. Let me mention that beyond the Chrome dev channel release not being suitable for general use, it also does not support Ctrl-Enter for .com and stuff like that, I think deliberately to disable general consumer use. Another annoying thing about Google Chrome (all versions) is how it refuses to do an 'I'm feeling lucky' search if you just enter obvious direct link search queries into its unibox like 'wikipedia eel'. Try that out in the firefox address bar. (Yeah you guessed it, it is not just an address bar.)

What hurts me most - when innocent people die.

2009-05-31T22:08:00.003-05:00

These incidents from the past few years linger in my memory.

Brazilian plumber gunned down by London police who suspected him of being a terrorist. Of course, with the brown skin, he fit the bill.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4713753.stm
Kelsey Smith, who got abducted, raped and killed, as she was getting out of Target in Overland Park. A search was on for her for couple of days. This was a girl in the prime of her life, whose life was stolen because of one person who went insane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kelsey_Smith
Four Indian Students hit and killed by an off-duty policewoman who might have been going the wrong way and was possibly inebriated. This one just burnt me to no end. One person sticking to the rules could have had four people in the prime of their youth left on this earth to live the life they could have. http://citizensalliance.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/nri-four-indian-students-killed-in-accident/
Failed to yield at a stop signal : This one took two lives, close to home. How can someone fail to stop at a red light? How can someone risk and sacrifice their life, and a stranger's? http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=176284&catid=40
An off duty police officer chasing a criminal who broke into his car was suspected to be a criminal armed with a gun and shot dead by fellow officer. In New York. How many ways could fate have been different to save him? Oh, of course, the dead off-duty officer was black, and the accused officer was white. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/29/content_11454508.htm
Wichita, Kansas provider of late term abortions, and by all accounts, a compassionate and efficient physician, Dr. Tiller, shot dead by someone who took the time to drive down from Merriam, KS, and Kansas City suburb. He was shot dead while he was performing the Church by a "pro-life" activist. http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/05/31/abortion-provider-dr-tiller-shot-dead-at-wichita-church/
Can't find the link for this, but this was in the first few months I was working for Sprint Nextel. Someone driving on I-35 had a cardiac arrest, and his vehicle, now out of control crossed to the opposite direction, resulting in a 3-vehicle bonfire. No survivors. Nobody to blame in this one though. Except the master up there, or probability, whatever suits your religious convictions.

August 1 - The Jackal - Obama

2009-05-19T21:56:00.002-05:00

August 1 is a malayalam movie based on The day of the jackal - by Frederick Forsyth. The parallel drawn from France's President Charles De Gaulle, is Kerala Prime minister, K.G. Ramachandran. The former a real character, while the latter a fictional character.

But with the effective oratory style, his own method of confident governance, and of eliminating waste, he is Barack Obama. An unexpected similarity that I found was the smoking.

But something I hope does not happen is the plot where enemies to him from his own party arrange a contract killer to take him down. As KGR's policies, and efficient moves thwart the ways of several, the contract is born. And even as the contract initiators have been arrested, the contactless killer is still on his path to target. It is only the intelligent security officer who chases the trail and finally saves KGR at the final moment.

The parallels are stunning.

Heroes of USA

2009-04-16T12:09:00.002-05:00

Heroes are celebrated here. The captain who landed his plane in the Hudson and made sure all passengers were saved before he stepped off.

The captain of the ship who gave himself up to save his 19 crewmembers.

The Navy Seals who shot dead the pirates to save the captain.

My salutes go to all. There couldn't be a more appropriate time for uplifting messages for the nation.

Imagine a new OS

2009-01-11T00:44:00.000-06:00

As good looking and smooth as Vista but as fast as XP?

That is Windows 7. Why would a company that is capable of doing this release something like Vista. Windows 7 is going to make vista disappear like a bad dream. And everyone is going to refer to Vista like they refer to Windows ME. With hatred, pity and sympathy.

I LOVE ONLINE BILL-PAY

2008-08-28T17:00:00.002-05:00

So my bank offers online bill pay. Do you know how that works? I go in there and tell them where to send a check. They print a check off my account and send it to this place where I need to make a payment to. They take it to their bank, and they send it back to my bank for collection. It comes back to them.

In essence, these people print a slip of paper and send it halfway across the country and get it back so that they can send money over ACH to the very same place where they sent the check. Amazing, isn't it?

Plane crashes.

2008-08-24T22:51:00.002-05:00

There have been disturbingly too many plane crashes this year. After 2007 being the safest year in aviation since decades, will 2008 prove that was a fluke?

The public's memory is short, but let's just look at the plane crashes last two weeks. Including teo major crashes internationally, there have been at least 7 crashes with fatalities.

Is somebody taking notes?

Politicking predictions

2008-08-19T21:19:00.002-05:00

Democrat VP nominee : Al Gore : Well, that sucked!

Republican VP Nominee : Bobby Jindal

Fortune favors the brave Obama

2008-07-21T22:55:00.002-05:00

What do you know... Obama says 16 months from Jan 08, Al Maliki says end of 2010. White House linguists spend a day searching for an alternate word for timetable that had the farthest meaning from it but still could be used in its place. 'Horizon' was the best they could come up with.

And then Al Maliki goes out and tricks the McCain campaign. He says something, the Germans translate it to, "I agree with Obama's troop withdrawal timetable.", then his guy comes out and says it was taken out of context and mistranslated. The McCain guy holds tight to this piece of straw. But then

New York Times comes out with their original recording of the interview and it turns out Al Maliki had not been mistranslated at all.
The very next day, after Al Maliki meets with Obama, his guy comes out and repeats the story and adds a Jan 2010 "horizon" to it.
The "democratic" government installed by George Bush in Iraq is leveraging all it can out of US Presidential Politics, in turn giving Obama a bloody boost in National Security awareness.

Now, Bush has a time horizon. Obama has a withdrawal plan. And Iraqis want the US forces out. Guess who is left in the dark with his idea of a 100 year occupation? That's right. McCain is sitting at home guying, "What the **** just happened? My birthday cake mate with whom I spent my Birthday with while Katrina was hitting New Orleans now wants a time horizon?"

End result : While the lefties kept saying McCain was 4 more years of Bush, he ends up looking like 4 more years worse than Bush! His Presidential Jinx is going strong.

"Open File - Security Warning"

2008-06-27T03:43:00.003-05:00

So I go restore my Thinkpad to what it used to be when they shipped it to me from HongKong 1.5 years ago, and install sp3 and other updates, and some software, and among this IE8.

For some reason (SP2, SP3 or IE8), my PC now takes it on itself to ask me about execute every freaking exe file I download to my PC. Why? Because it cannot verify the freaking publisher.

Here's a message. I double clink on my file on my PC because I know the freaking publisher. I know who publishes Inkscape-0.46.win32.exe. I know who publishes irfanview setup. I know who publishes jxpinstall.exe. In short, I freaking know what I am doing! There is a reason (listen good here) I am double-clicking the bloody file.

Oh the pain that you are, Windows. Don't act Vista-esque on me, XP. I love XP, but somebody is shoving Vista down my throat and I ain't liking it.

Edit :

I find out that the issue was the handiwork of IE8 which took upon itself to ask me whether I was sure I wanted to open files in Windows that I downloaded using FIREFOX to to my desktop. Quick question : Who the freak made IE8 king of internet-downloaded content on my PC when the whole freaking process had nothing to do with IE8 anyway. And this coming from IE8 beta 1 which is supposed to be for developers who probably have a pretty good idea what "unsafe" files they are opening.

Anyway, I figured out how to fix this in IE8 and if this happens to you with another version of IE, you are free to dig up and find it in a similar place. Check out the screenshot below. By the way, Windows will bitch and moan about me making it unsafe, but guess what, if someone rapes her in the middle of the night, she deserves that for making IE her master.

Obama : Not that there is anything wrong with that (being a Muslim)

2008-06-20T22:15:00.002-05:00

Seinfeld fans will remember the episode 'The Outing' where Jerry is mistaken by a reporter to be gay. The episode is peppered with the words, "not that there is anything wrong with that", whenever Jerry asserts that he is not gay. The words reflect the politically correct attitude of the times where someone making an assertion that you are not gay must ensure that his assertion is not misconstrued as an aversion to or condescension towards gay people in general.

In this context, it is disturbing that over months, as Obama and his campaign have refuted claims and rumors that he is a Muslim, have not bothered to add, "Not that there is anything wrong with being one." Being Muslim would politically disqualify Obama for presidency, but in these times of hate and intolerance, he needed to set an example pointing out that while he is not a Muslim, being a Muslim does not pre-empt someone from being a good person.

This leadership would perhaps ensure he does not win the election, as his statement will more be seen as an appeasement rather than statement of a fact. But the absence of such a statement, together with his campaign going out of its way to ensure muslim women do not appear with him in a photo-op makes me lose part of my faith in this candidate, te proclaimed agent of change.

For someone who talked so passionately of racial divide, he needs to also understand religious divide and gender divide. Frankly, I am disappointed.

The Global Food crisis

2008-06-11T01:00:00.002-05:00

It has been proven time and again that corn for ethanol is perhaps the most inefficient way of generating fuel for automobiles, and that cellulosic ethanol or sugarcane is a much better bet. Sugarcane molasses are already distilled at sugar plants all over the world to make alcohol. Even so, Bush's 2007 January address stating that Corn ethanol was the way forward was taken by at least some as a sign that the administration has started taking into account the energy and environmental crisis in store.

In this context, when Hugo Chavez said in March 2007 (link here) that the American administration's plan to make fuel from foodcrops while the world goes hungry, will be catastrophical, did not make too much sense. After all, the world was self-sufficient in food. The issue was just distribution, right? Wrong.

As 2008 reaches its middle, the world is mired in a food crisis of epic proportions, and an energy crisis to boot. While all of the Corn Ethanol has done nothing to solve the energy issue, it has added to another issue - food. While Chavez does not know enough about economy to know that removing zeros from his currency value does not make it stronger, at least on something, we might have to agree that he was spot on.

Teaching Americans Responsibility - quarter dollar at a time.

2008-05-15T21:12:00.004-05:00

Having been a 3-year supporter of Wal-mart, I recently switched allegiance to ALDI. While the reason I went to ALDI first was the lack of a decent Wal-mart in St. Louis county, now, I have more reason to stick with ALDI, their attitude, and their vision.

ALDI is a responsible store, keeping customers responsible to keep costs low. How's that, you ask. For starters...

1. ALDI makes you pay for your own cart.

Well, not actually. You insert a quarter to get a cart before you go in. When you get out, after loading your groceries in your car, you need to put your cart back where you got it to get your quarter back. It's not as luxurious as going to a store, leaving your cart where you like, and have people employed by the store to bring back the carts. Well, guess where the money to pay them comes from? That's right, now you're catching on why Navel Oranges cost so much. Another way this helps is, before you go to ALDI, you make sure you have a quarter. At the same time, you'll probably also remember to check what stuff you REALLY need, rather than window-shopping through 10 aisles. It is also wonderful to note that a quarter dollar keeps people from leaving carts anywhere in the parking lots, causing tons of damage. Guess how that works psychologically? Coz it's your own quarter!

2. ALDI makes you bring your own bags / pay for bags.

This makes sense on so many levels. Bags, plastic or paper, is a choice of choke a fish or kill a tree. Again, the bags at the other stores are not really free, you already paid for them when they bag your stuff. Environmentally friendly. Economically sound. You can also buy good quality reusable bags at ALDI for 10 / 5 cents as well.

3. ALDI closes at 8

This is harder than the others, but it makes sense to close shop, rather than pay your employees for all those low-traffic hours. Making customers be responsible, and buy their stuff on time. Avoids paying higher ( I am not sure if the other stores pay higher for night hours) wages to employees.

4. ALDI makes you pay with your own money, not someone else's

ALDI accepts only Cash / Debit Cards - period. Your own money. They could have added checks, but the issue of bounced check charges means, it's better to avoid that and keep prices lower. Credit Card clearing charges range from 2 to 3 %. When you go to Walmart, and pay with cash or credit, realize that part of your money is going towards the credit card processing as Walmart budgets it. Same at other stores too. Another angle is that, this prevents overspending, and accumulation of debt. Studies have shown that paying with actual cash reduces the amount you spend because you feel the loss. This is true for debit cards too, to a lesser extent. If only every institution was like this, America would not be in the huge debt it is in today.

5. ALDI does not smother you with brand choice.

ALDI doesn't offer you 20 brands of Vegetable Oil. It offers one quality brand. And not just vegetable oil. Chocolate Chip Cookies. Sour Cream and Onion Chips. White Bread. Thus it streamlines its supply chain management, keeps operations lean, and easy. It also makes shopping a breeze, and not having to stop and compare prices on 45 different varieties of roast beef slices is a blessing in itself.

I am sure there are thousands of people out there who believe ALDI is a low-class shopping place, but the quality of goods is impeccable. Even the packaging is way better than Wal-mart's Great Value brand. Give ALDI a try. I assure you, you'll like it.

By taking responsibility, and forcing customers to take responsibility, and not lavishing meaningless luxuries on them (24 hours open, free bags, play carts, brand choice, and proxy-pay), ALDI keeps prices low. The stores are medium-sized, and well-organized.

Evil from Google maps.

2008-05-13T21:50:00.002-05:00

So Google Maps on my phone thinks a lot different than Google maps on my PC.

Results for Kill near 63031 are:

1. Monsanto
2. Nara military Personnel Records.
3. Barnes-Jewish Hospital
4. Eagle Forum
5. Humane Society of St. Charles
6. United Industries COrporation
7. St. Louis County Library
8. Data Research Associates
9. Veterans for Peace Inc.

I guess they all do a fine job of killing in the crime capital of USA.

Anil

Sitcoms...

2008-05-01T23:05:00.003-05:00

Been through a lot of them. Friends, King of Queens, Scrubs, Raymond, Will and Grace...but then again you come back to a masterpiece like Seinfeld, and picking out any of the episodes from the nine seasons is simply a treat. Like say, the Mango from Season 5, or The Pilot. The whole Soda Can refund inter-state shipping scheme. The emotional mechanic who flees with Jerry's SAAB.

Or Coupling (UK) - come back to an innuendo-filled series where you can have a dialog like 'You are single. You now qualify for my elasticity." can have two meanings. Where concepts like the Giggle loop, melty-man, Nose Avoidance Angle, Visual Access Angle, or Porn-buddies were born.

It's amazing when you get something like this, and wonder whether more of stuff with the same quality will ever be made.

Clinton says

2008-04-25T22:10:00.002-05:00

"At the end of the day, people have to decide who they think would be not only the best president, which is the most important question, but who would be the better candidate against Senator McCain" - Hillary Clinton

Translated....

I may not be a better president than Obama if I am elected, but I am more likely to beat McCain!

The Delegate Game - Worst case

2008-04-24T16:51:00.011-05:00

Well Done India

2008-04-24T10:22:00.002-05:00

We have shown we have balls

"India and Iran are ancient civilizations whose relations span centuries," the Foreign Ministry said in statement Tuesday. "Neither country needs any guidance on the future conduct of bilateral relations."

Check the article here

Why I don't buy Google Stock?

2008-04-17T21:24:00.003-05:00

Because it will be a conflict of interest that's why! I'll explain.

So, Google has this thing on buy.com to provide $10 off to any new customer who uses Google Checkout to buy anything $10 or over. Whenever I really need to buy something, I go here, and make a new google account, and buy it. In effect, I am hurting Google's bottomline without doing them any good.

This means, I can't own Google stock, coz that's going to go down that little bit every time I do this.

If anyone's going to say, "Shame on you for stealing from Google.", Come On, guys. They're like the Reserve Bank!

Gibibytes anyone?

2008-04-16T15:07:00.002-05:00

It was in November 2000. I was listening to the droning old 'What is binary?' lecture once more, in an Engineering class, after learning the ins and outs of binary from sixth grade onwards. But then the lecturer suddenly had the audacity to declare that a Gigabyte was 10^9 bytes. I was incensed. I had to put my arm in the air, and as soon as she made eye contact, I had to jump up and shout 2^30! She had no idea what I was talking about. One GB is 2^30 bytes, I repeated. She could only say, "Relax. Whatever you say."

In April 2008, I now realize all the filthy profit-minded hard drive makers colluded with her to make me an idiot in the pages of history. Apparently now, a GB is indeed 10^9 bytes! So, to name what was previously to my knowledge, a GB, (2^30 bytes), they made up this thing called a gibibyte.

Are you kidding me? Even the Firefox spell checker does not know this one. It thinks it should be legibility, eligibility, or guess what, gigabyte! Here's my apology. I resign from counting bytes. CIAO.

Veendum Chila Veettukaryangal

2008-04-12T13:31:00.003-05:00

I got to see one of my all-time favorite movies, Veendum Chila Veettukaryangal again, thanks to the guys at Rolla. I was reminded how the movie flows smoothly from beginning to end, like a well-oiled machine, like a well-managed project. In short, the only way I can describe the movie is a well-thought movie. The movie possesses an amazing storyline, a great script and screenplay combination, and perfectly fitting performers in every single role.

Jayaram fits the role of the prodigal son so perfectly, I am led to wonder if the role portrays his real character accurately. The father-son bond that resembles a friendship more than a relation is well-portrayed by Thilakan and Jayaram, and the chemistry is amazing. KPAC Lalitha and Siddique have perfected their acting techniques in this film as well. The foul-mouthed bigamous Aravindan portrayed by Nedumudi Venu is again just brilliant. But then, all of them have proven time and again their class in acting. The family around them feels real, not an on-screen made up family.

Bhavana's character (portrayed by Samyukta Varma) as an industrious, intelligent, and thinking-on-the-feet girl is in very stark contrast to Roy's character, but once again, the chemistry is great. Samyukta Varma's acting is commendable, precise, and sharp, and even more so, considering this was her first foray into the big screen.

Placing a turning point into the story by placing Lohithadas who comes back to inspire Jayaram and provide him direction was a brilliant touch. Again, the whole film shows the importance of motivation and purpose in life.

The film provides glimpses into what has made Malayalam film decades ahead of other Indian cinema. How malayalam film stays (at least on occasions) in touch with reality, while the rest of Indian film flies in the face of it.

Sathyan Anthikkad sells simple and pure life lessons with a message attached. His movies have the taste of truth and the smell of earth to them.

Veendum Chila Veettukaaryangal is and will always be a movie I will cherish and love to watch any given day.

Hardees - the inevitable breakfast switchover

2008-04-06T15:17:00.003-05:00

At Rolla, MO - we used to frequent the Hardees often. As UMR (University of Missouri - Rolla) students, we would get a combo for the price of a sandwich. One night, in the throes of hunger driven by deadline-driven research, two of my researchmates (Kainan Cha and Maciej Zawodniok) and I drove to the Hardees drive thru.

Around 3 AM, As Maciej pulled his car into the Drive-Thru menu area, the sweet voice on the intercom said, 'Would you like to try a Thickburger today?'. We discussed and settled on our respective thickburgers, and Maciej was about to order, "We would like..." when the bell rings, and it's like Christmas. The whole drive-thru menu rolls over, and all the thickburgers are gone and it's now all breakfast, Unfazed, Maciej continued ordering thickburgers, when the same intercom voice said, "We're sorry, We don't serve Thickburgers anymore. We are now serving breakfast!"

It took three graduate students over 30 seconds to figure this out, and drive to McDonalds, where they were not into breakfast yet.

How to fix the subprime / foreclosure crisis

2008-04-03T16:05:00.002-05:00

The IRS should make even home mortgage principal payments tax exempt upto a certain limit per year. What will this do? This makes $5000 of after-tax money that you could have paid into principal now equal $7000 that you can pay into your house. This will discourage people who just want to or have to give up their homes because they put zero down and their house values plummeted.

While this is similar in nature to the Stimulus package, this will be effectively targeted at homeowners in the foreclosure crisis.

Things on the internet that make me cringe

2008-03-18T22:29:00.001-05:00

1. People on comments who write :

A. Their is no such thing.

B. Your stupid.

C. That's a fake / photoshopped.

D. Obambi, HillBilly, Billary....

E. mute point / mote point

F. and so on...

2. Webcomic guys who have to write something about their comic. It's a COMIC. If you have to explain what it is, you're not doing it right.

3. Jokes I've already read a thousand times. You don't see old films still running at the movies, do you? When they're old, take them down!

4. "Congratulations. You've just won a brand new Ipod." Ring a bell?

5. and so on...

10 minute course to writing Sitcoms

2008-03-11T21:59:00.004-05:00

So, what is funny.

For starters, people think that weddings and pregnancies are funny. So they pile up on those. Planning those scripts, they are thinking well, leave enough fertile and commitment-minded people in there so we can have a lot of pregnancies and marriages.

So much so that when it comes to really needing a pregnancy, FRIENDS show writers thought that would be too funny, so they went with an adoption instead, and guess what, tried to make that funny as well.

From the locked in spell of FRIENDS, I have now been released. I am now a fan of Seinfeld, the forever ultimate in Shows. And Family Guy, which just does everything writers of Seinfeld would have wanted to do in their show, but couldn't.

It was funny when in an episode of Family Guy, Peter has the tribals re-enact the 'contest' episode of Seinfeld. Cramer and Elaine asking for a square are hilarious. That's a tribute to Seinfeld from 'The' Family Guy.

"Warning"

2008-03-11T13:38:00.004-05:00

I just got an email from a service provider that, instead of the usual "Please do not reply to this message" warning had a "***Please note, you will not be able to reply to this email."

Just for the heck of it, I went ahead and replied. And I sure as hell was able to reply. I mean, they may not have gotten the reply but I rock, and nobody says "You will not be able to" to me!

Edit : http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624091 gives a good way for those companies which send stuff out of unmonitored mailboxes to tell the recipient what to do.

Superdelegates - not really super after all

2008-02-14T21:50:00.004-06:00

In the 2008 Democratic American nomination process, who are the weakest people in the world. Guess what? The Superdelegates are not super after all.

Why? For the normal ordinary delegates, they don't have to pull their hair out thinking about who to vote for. Their constituency did the job for them. But all those superdelegates are now in a quandary. What if their constituency wants Obama and they pledged or want to pledge for Clinton?

That's when they be come Chavez or Saddam Hussein. Because this is a democracy. And nobody is super except the President who is sure he will never have to come back to ask the people for a vote, and who can veto bills like there is no tomorrow. The representatives and senators are close to the people who voted for them. However super they are, the people who made them super will not suffer betrayal silently. They will respond in November, and afterward, and for ever to come.

So, whatever their personal connection or gratitude to Obama or Clinton, they will be stuck between their hearts and their people.

Representative John Lewis did that already. He has announced he will now vote for Obama. This is not a strategic shift... this is a force of events that the media should have seen coming for days, months even.

I've been pondering for days over how the superdelegate stuff doesn't make any sense anyway. And finally, the power of the people is pulling them all back.

The superdelegate counts will finally have to end up more or less proportional to the normal delegate count eventually. Because, after all, this is a democracy!

That's so cruel....

2008-01-14T19:30:00.001-06:00

My friend Bethel rescued him from some lab.

That is so cruel! Why? Why would a parent name their child Bethel?

If you get this one.. you've watched too much of something too many times

Hindsight's always 20:20. S&P 500 versus BSE Sensex

2007-12-29T17:36:00.001-06:00

They say hindsight is always 20:20 but who could have imagined that investing in the BSE Sensex in 2004 would have netted a trifold multiplication in your assets while the S&P 500, indicative of the US economy went 33% higher? And that's not even picking out stocks, just investing in the index vehicle.

This is just an eye-opener. Now, the Indian economy is still growing at the same pace, believe it or not! If you have any cash, you might as well cash in on it.

Some good investment options are IFN IIF INP etc. Don't forget to diversify your investment by adding Brazil investment and some share of fast-growing CEE.

Google Scholar <> Digg

2007-12-26T10:20:00.001-06:00

My thesis and paper links are buried deep in Google scholar results. Even if you search by the specific words, it's hard to make them show up. That's mostly because of lack of citations, since my work is pretty new. If and when it gets cited by researchers in the field, it might move up in the rankings.

Until then, here's a link that'll show you all three!

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=allintitle%3A+diversity+location+determination+signal+strength

Kayak fanboys beware

2007-12-05T01:54:00.000-06:00

All you people who believe Kayak.com / airninja.com works in your benefit in all conditions beware. They have a small trick up their sleeve. True, Kayak.com will find you the cheapest flight available, just not the cheapest fare on that flight.

This is the result of a search on kayak. The first result is what I'm interested in. Clicking on the $128 or the cheaptickets.com link will take you to cheaptickets. Your total will be $128.28 and you're all happy about it being 72 cents less than what you thought it would be. Amazing Kayak again.

But what if you're one of those who believe that $6 cappuccino is daylight robbery and that environment isn't something you buy? Then you go to AA.com and try to find why a link to AA.com to book this and several other (peak / evening hour / weekend) flights do not link to AA.com. You think, maybe these aren't listed there. The doubter in you (also the jobless wonder) takes 5 mins to go over to AA.com to check. And what happens?

Behold, beyond kayak, here's a $124.30 fare. Is this sacrilege or what!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS : I don't know who planned this or who decided it must be so. It might be Kayak, or cheaptickets, or AA.com or someone else, or maybe no one at all. The author does not claim anything to the contrary.

iTunes weds Quicktime..

2007-12-04T00:40:00.000-06:00

I am not an Apple fanboy, but still admire them for the image the company maintains.

Somewhere around a year to two ago, Apple got iTunes married to Quicktime. And they are an inseparable couple too. Every single time I want to get Quicktime (irritatingly TSR program that it is), the install program tries to push the irritating iTunes into my system. Beleive it or not, I do not own an iPod and iTunes would be my last choice for a music player or organizer.

On the other hand, on a friend's system, I tried to get iTunes installed and Quicktime tags along. I think a Divorce is necessary and it is about time they considered it, just to keep users of either program safe.

Wild Ride today

2007-11-26T06:53:00.000-06:00

Starting with the thought of Kalki that entered my mind, I was taken for a wild ride today on my home BSNL DataOne connection. Disappointed that the wikipedia article mentions Kalki is still 420000 years in the offing, I latched onto the statement regarding the mention of the Antichrist-killer in the Book of Revelations in the Bible. Struck by the similarity, I googled a compound phrase linking both and landed here. This page takes you through the world through several religions, with striking mentions of a winged horse everywhere.

And on from there I landed later on this page which takes a tolerant view of Jesus and tries to see beyond the foggy New Testament distortions to the truth of Jesus. My path to this page was through the following collection of analytical and historically validated writings on Jesus.

In the midst of these revelations, I was reminded of a page I visited recently, that puts Jesus in the context of Islam.

In an effort at the total picture, all these places bring me to what Prithu Das Adhikari said, and gives me the answers :

narayana-parah sarve
na kutascana bibhyati
svargapavarga-narakesv
api tulyartha-darsinah

"Devotees solely engaged in the devotional service of the Supreme Lord never fear any condition of life. For them the heavenly planets, liberation and the hellish planets are all the same, for such devotees are interested only in the service of the Lord" (Srimad Bhagavatam 6.17.28).

Even when facing tribulations, when being led to crucifixion, a perfect being on the highest level of intimacy with God, absorbed in God, is not afraid under any circumstances: "Daughters of Jerusalem, don't cry for me. Cry for yourselves and for your children" (Luke 23:28).

Jesus here becomes a perfect devotee who never by himself claimed to be divine. One who was impervious to material pains, in true devotion and surrender to god. In the message of "Jesus who died for our sins", the message of true devotion is lost. The theology of Paul, for 2000 years followed as Christianity might be far from the true message of Christ.

The concept from Islam that matches with when Jesus says, "In my Father's house are many mansions (dwelling places); if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a mansion (a dwelling place) for you." puts the above in perspective, where Jesus becomes a Prophet, a perfect devotee, a perfect human being.

Suffering - pay by credit card

2007-11-15T03:15:00.001-06:00

Sri Lankan Airport now ventures into new business territory. Selling suffering at 200 Lankan Rupees per hour. I proudly announce that I bought an hour of above mentioned suffering and used it to call home from Yahoo on my thinkpad..

The psychopath test

2007-10-17T21:24:00.000-05:00

I got the below question from http://www.brandweeknrx.com/2007/08/the-psychopath-.html

It's amazing so I'm putting a copy here. (Save you from clicking a link).

The psychopath test.

If you pass this test, you may need to see a doctor.

To find out, please read the question below, and try to come up with the right answer.

This is NOT a trick question.

The question is exactly what it is; there are no games. No one I know so far has got it right . . .

A woman went to the funeral of her own mother. There, she met a guy whom she did not know. She thought the man was amazing. Really amazing. She fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him again. A week later she killed her sister.

Question:

What is her motive for killing her sister?

Give this some thought before you look at the answer.

Answer (highlight text below to read):

She was hoping the guy would appear at the funeral again.

If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test by a famous American psychologist used to test if one has the same mentality as a killer. Several arrested serial killers were given test and answered the question correctly.

If you didn’t answer the question correctly, good for you. If you did, admit it, and look for a good doctor.

My thesis

2007-10-17T19:55:00.001-05:00

I'm just posting my thesis link up here so it'll show up on google. A little shameless self-promotion, if you will!

My thesis

The above thesis is on use of spatial diversity and frequency diversity to improve accuracy in Signal Strength (RSSI) based location determination. The basic technology is used by Microsoft, Cisco, Aeroscout and a lot of other companies in the domain.

Anil

Claude Lelouch's path on his crazy trip

2007-10-12T00:37:00.001-05:00

For the uninitiated, check this link first..

http://bhendrix.com/wall/Gmaps_GVideo_Mashup_Rendezvous.html

I managed to map his path, well..., almost. Google maps won't let me take a one-way road the other way. It's 10 km.. Close enough.

Check out the path here

New Sprint Nextel CEO

2007-10-10T14:11:00.000-05:00

I have no idea who will be the new Sprint Nextel CEO.

Democracy

2007-10-02T11:56:00.001-05:00

Democracy is where you take civilian personnel, label them security contractors, take them to another country and give them a free permit to shoot as many people as they want!

historyu of nuclear

2007-09-26T17:25:00.001-05:00

So why can't Iran? Why the whole NPT bullshit? What separates Iran from the rest?

Malayalam and Hindi/Sanskrit star / nakshatra names translated

2007-09-16T23:45:00.000-05:00

Except for a tiresome star finder thing, there isn't a suitable easy translation resource for these star names. Here are the 27 star names. Rock on!

Ella nakshatrangaludeyum to and from translation can be checked using the list below.

#		Name
1	Ashwathi	Ashvinī (अश्विनि)
2	Bharani	Bharanī (भरणी)
3	Karthika	Krittikā (क्रृत्तिका)
4	Rohini	Rohini (रोहिणी)
5	Makayiram	Mrigashīrsha (म्रृगशीर्षा)
6	Thiruvathira	Ārdrā (आर्द्रा)
7	Punartham	Punarvasu (पुनर्वसु)
8	Pooyam	Pushya (पुष्य)
9	Ayilyam	Āshleshā (आश्लेषा)
10	Makam	Maghā (मघा)
11	Pooram	Pūrva or Pūrva Phalgunī (पूर्व फाल्गुनी)
12	Uthram	Uttara or Uttara Phalgunī (उत्तर फाल्गुनी)
13	Atham	Hasta (हस्त)
14	Chithira	Chitrā (चित्रा)
15	Chothi	Svātī (स्वाति)
16	Vishakham	Vishākhā (विशाखा)
17	Anizham	Anurādhā (अनुराधा)
18	Thrikketta	Jyeshtha (ज्येष्ठा)
19	Moolam	Mūla (मूल)
20	Pooradam	Pūrva Ashādhā (पूर्वाषाढ़ा)
21	Uthradam	Uttara Ashādhā (उत्तराषाढ़ा)
22	Thiruvonam	Shravana (श्रवण)
23	Avittam	Shravishthā (श्रविष्ठा) or Dhanistā
24	Chathayam	Shatabhishā (शतभिषा)or Shatataraka
25	Pururuttathy	Pūrva Bhādrapadā (पूर्वभाद्रपदा)
26	Uthrattathy	Uttara Bhādrapadā (उत्तरभाद्रपदा)
27	Revathi	Revatī (रेवती)

A N Ghosh

2007-08-28T12:15:00.000-05:00

Been reading about the extradition of A.N. Ghosh to India.

I am looking to learn everything about what he has done over his life, think it'll be worth a good movie. Just from the description of what he did at that Vantau island or something, it's simply amazing.. Millions for disaster relief, Rubble faked as Ruby..

I want to make the story of this conman a book or a movie..

A brand new way to unlock your iphone!!

2007-08-28T10:56:00.000-05:00

This is different from the methods that have been out there. But it's so easy, I am not going to include pictures / videos.

Step 1 : Clean your right hand index fingertip with a KleeneX / Paper Towel.

Step 2 : Place the iphone on your left hand, leaving your right hand free.

Step 3 : Find the slider located at the bottom of the screen.

Step 4 : While touching the slider, move your right hand index finger across the screen to the right.

Step 5 : Lo and behold! The iphone is unlocked!!

Thought for the day

2007-08-21T00:41:00.001-05:00

Total Number of people who died as direct result of 9/11 attacks : 2974

Total Number of US Military Casualities in Iraq : 3707

Who's the bigger KilleR

Wikipedia - killer? Font Color!

2007-08-17T15:09:00.000-05:00

What's gonna kill Wikipedia? Blue font.

All those articles growing means that almost every word in every article will then link to another wikipedia article. Which will make an article mostly blue.

And then wikipedia will die, because people will hate the blue..

There are three words in the English Language

2007-08-15T22:44:00.000-05:00

Here's my answer to all of you who perpetrate the 'There are three words in the English Language that end in 'gry'' joke.

Mindgames by orkut and google talk..

2007-07-19T20:40:00.000-05:00

There's s omething fishy going own. Now that I know what databases do, I can understand what is happening out there.. somewhat..

Suspicions arose in my mind when google talk met orkut long, long ago. Friends on orkut, if you chose, would now show up on your google talk. As long as they enabled the same. So the databases were talking.. hmm.. Was this their first date? Had they signed a pre-nup? I don't know..

Oh well, the relationship is now going somewhere. All the friends who got to my google talk still hold the same names they had on orkut at the time. And fishy things have been happening between the two. I don't think Google would acknowledge this but strange coincidences seem to happen between the two. People you haven't mailed on gtalk in ages show up on top of your gtalk list. Orkut manages to play mindgames with your friends lists. People go missing.

I am thinking, between gtalk, orkut and all the other great google stuff, the googlebots now know all about me. They know I go on google from a sprint line working hours on weekdays. They know I have another computer since I usually access google from a different computer evenings and weekends. They know every unknown route I drive. They know every bar I go to.

Google, It is getting spooky. You better do something about it before people start calling you 'Big Brother'!!

Doctorate - Honorary?

2007-07-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

Once in a while, a news item comes along that rubs me the wrong way totally. Today was the day and the tidbit was that Shilpa Shetty has been conferred a Doctorate. Oh my god! Do people even know what a Doctorate is? I've seen people eking out endless hours of hard work on analysis, research, and pretty much pulling your hair out by the roots doing research. You end up losing a good 5-9 years of your life on an effort to make the human life better. And then this girl comes along, with a few years of stardom, couple of cheap publicity stunts, and this idiotic university feels sorry for the "racism" showered on this girl, who, to me , doesn't represent me or any Indian I know, and gives her a Doctorate.

Give her an ice cream, for god's sake. Not a doctorate. Esp Hon. Doctorates are reserved for people who have spent their life serving others. In politics, art, science, history and literature. Not for a flashy girl with mediocre acting skills and a tongue for publicity.

Drenched on I-day

2007-07-05T13:28:00.000-05:00

It's about time they did a new Independence Day movie. Without that, all people get to do is sit around on lawn chairs, SUVs and MiniVans watching the fireworks. Note that minivans and SUVs are used here in the same sense as lawn chairs. People were putting them on the lawns and sitting on top of them..

Not that that is bad. It's a lot of fun as long as it doesn't rain. Bunch of us went out on a picnic on I-day and got drenched, full and proper. Once that got done, we went indoors, watched Murder @ 1600 and decided to call it a day. Luckily, I happened to go out to get a pizza past 9 and caught sight of the awesome fireworks at Switzer and College. Reminds you of one of the temple festivals back in India. People were gathered around like the queen was gonna pass by. I drove as close as I could to the spot and the vibrations and the strength of it all was enough to kill your eyes and ears.

Puns I love

2007-06-16T00:27:00.001-05:00

Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam!".

Two boll weevils grew up in Cornwall. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind, drove a tractor and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.

Jesus and his disciples were walking around one day, when Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9." The disciples looked very puzzled, and finally asked Peter, "What on earth does Jesus mean - the Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9? Peter said, "Don't worry. It's just another one of his parabolas."

My mother is a mathematician, so she knows how to induce good behavior. "If I've told you n times, I've told you n+1 times...."

Asked how his pet parrot died, the mathematician answered "Polynomial. Polygon."

Statement: pi * r^2
Reaction: Pie are not square. Pie are round. Cornbread are square.

What keeps a square from moving ? why, square roots of course.
How many square roots does it have ? why, 2 obviously.

Dalai Lama walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything.”

"I was sitting in the park the other day, wondering why the frisbee was getting bigger, and then it hit me."

"On the other hand, you have different fingers."

A prisoner's favorite punctuation mark is the period. It marks the end of his sentence.

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

A cardboard belt would be a waist of paper.

Ancient orators tended to Babylon.

Tired of constantly being broke, and stuck in an unhappy marriage, a young husband decided to solve both problems by taking out a large insurance policy on his wife (with himself as the beneficiary), and arranging to have her killed. A "friend of a friend" put him in touch with a nefarious underworld figure, who went by the name of "Artie." Artie explained to the husband that his going price for snuffing out a spouse was $5,000. The husband said he was willing to pay that amount, but that he wouldn't have any cash on hand until he could collect his wife's insurance money. Artie insisted on being paid SOMETHING up front. The man opened up his
wallet, displaying the single dollar bill that rested inside. Artie sighed, rolled his eyes, and reluctantly agreed to accept the dollar as down payment for the dirty deed.

A few days later, Artie followed the man's wife to the local Safeway grocery store. There, he surprised her in the produce department, and proceeded to strangle her with his gloved hands. As the poor unsuspecting woman drew her last breath, and slumped to the floor, the manager of the produce department stumbled unexpectedly onto the scene. Unwilling to leave any witnesses behind, Artie had no choice but to strangle the produce manager as well. Unknown to Artie, the entire proceedings were captured by hidden cameras and observed by the store's security guard, who immediately called the police. Artie was caught and arrested before he could leave the store. Under intense questioning at the police station, Artie revealed the sordid
plan, including his financial arrangements with the hapless husband.

And that is why, the next day in the newspaper, the headline declared,

"ARTIE CHOKES TWO FOR A DOLLAR AT SAFEWAY."

Please decode this joke for me...

2007-06-11T20:16:00.001-05:00

This joke I read somewhere

A traveller in the Himalayas came upon a great gathering of holymen,philosophers, and aspiring Buddhas.They represented all aspects of belief and seeking, including one aged guru who was reputed to have achieved nirvana by subsisting entirely on a diet of asparagus. Our traveller was astonished, when, in a sudden mountain shower, all of the participants in this conclave were drenched, except the asparagus-eater. The rain simply avoided falling on him, as if he were roofed."That's incredible", said the traveller."Not at all",said his native guide,"for is it not sung of in America, even on Broadway ??" You know....

"Bliss is the awning of the Sage of Asparagus."

It's surely some pop cultural reference probably why I don't get it.. But I'm dying to!

Pork recipe...

2007-06-01T00:28:00.000-05:00

Here goes.. that Indian pork recipe you've been waiting for so long...

Coz you'll never find pork at those indian restaurants nor at those pakistani restaurants. So what do you do when you want to eat pork, cooked the indian way. Find a mallu, that's what you do.. Or you could use the recipe below.

Ingredients :

Onions : A pound
Potatoes : One
Green chillies : 7
Lemon Juice : 2 caps
Yogurt : arbitrary quantity
Tava Masala : arbitrary quantity
Red chilli powder : arbitrary quantity
Coriander powder : arbitrary quantity
Cumin powder : small quantity
Meat Masala Powder : arbitrary quantity
Ginger Garlic paste : arbitrary quantity
Salt : to taste
Pork : 2 pounds

Procedure :

Slice half the onions, pork, potato, chillies. Put them all in a pressure cooker. Add the red chilli powder, the masala powder, coriander powder, Yogurt, Salt and ginger garlic paste. Mix them up, cook in the cooker for 15 whistles.

Meanwhile, slice the rest of the onions, saute the onions in oil, with a little salt. Wait till they are golden brown, add in the tava fry masala and cumin powder and fry a little more. Add the cooked pork meat with everything else into the pan and heat.

Now, you can either fry it to a thick gravy or fry it to a roast or fry it to a fry.. Trust me, once you figure out what the right arbitrary quantities of everything is.

Links : Pressure Cooker, Tava fry masala

So, good luck everyone. Let me know how it turns out!!

(Two blogs in a day? I told you, it's the keyboard!)

Asymmetric Cable...

2007-05-31T22:25:00.001-05:00

Am I the only person who gets how counterintuitive Asymmetric bandwidth is to the whole philosophy of Web 2.0?

Well, that would be a very very short blog if I posted it that way, wouldn't it? But especially after I replaced the keyboard on my thinkpad (under warranty of course), I just love typing more and more. I just love how tactile the Thinkpad keyboard is, if you don't pour sweet liquids with a significant milk content. Apparently, water doesn't reverse the damage..

But back to the point, on average, every ISP including Cable and ADSL (Guess what the A stands for.. you got it ASYMMETRIC) provides between 6 to 8 times the upload bandwidth on the downlink. Three cases in point :

1. Fidelity Communications, Sullivan, MO provides 256 Kbps on the uplink with 1.5 Mbps on the downlink (Cable).

2. Sancharnet, the broadband offering by BSNL, the Indian Telecom giant has a base offering of upto 2 Mbps downlink with a 256 Kbps uplink (ADSL).

3. Roadrunner, the Broadband division of Time Warner Cable gives you 7 Mbps down, 512 kbps up (Cable again).

In an age of uplink traffic dedicated to HTTP posts and gets, (For the technologically uninitiated, these are when the browser is asking a website for data) the uplink bandwidth requirement would be negligible. There was even a satellite based service called VSAT, in which the downlink was direct from satellite, high speed (relative to speeds then) while the uplink was a normal dial-up line.

But with flickr, youtube and a lot more Web 2.0 sites out there, where the user is the content generator, the need for a thick uplink line is growing exponentially. Are the ISPs seeing this? Are they incorporating these into their forecasts?

I am not saying they need 1 Mbps upload with a 1 Mbps download but real-world upload speeds of 70 KBps when the download bandwidths reach 700 KBps, (Before you pick up the phone to call me about the typo, please read the big B in both numbers), both recorded on BitTorrent software at my home in 66210 (You figure out the city - I guess this is the only place with 7 cities all sharing their zip codes, but more on that later), doesn't seem enough. If anything, they need to grow it to at least a quarter of the download bandwidth.

Just the humble mumblings of an early net adopter (by Indian timelines of internet adoption) who got overtaken by the orkutters and the youtubers of generation Z..

Memorial day weekend : a weekend to remember...

2007-05-28T21:37:00.000-05:00

Unplanned and unexpected, I had an awesome weekend at Chicago, IL and Racine, WI with Nandan and Madhu etta, my cousins, Deepali, Yash and Rishi, Gangamama and Raji ammayi.. Began with a drenched tour of Chicago, and finished off with a few card games in the classic '28' Kerala tradition and a relaxed memorial day. In between, also got to meet a lot of madhu etta's friends and go picnicking, volleyballing and got to listen to music from some REALLY talented people in a musical chillout evening at a mansion where you can't 'hit your head on the ceiling'. In all, a really good and needed break from the Sprint - Overland Park - Kansas City - Rolla routine.

Nandan then gave work to his camera (a Nikon coolpix S10 - an awesome camera in both color reproduction and focus by the way) and came up with 200-odd pics. I'm inserting a slideshow below. Click the slideshow to check out the pics in better detail..

All my friends .......

2007-05-23T14:02:00.000-05:00

Here's a deal... to all my friends, you get a discounted plan from Sprint Nextel courtesy of me..

Just go to http://www.sprint.com/sero and enter my email address anil.ramachandran (at) sprint (dot) com as the referral. You can get discounted phone plans.

And I can refer unlimited people to sprint, so don't worry about overloading my count!

Everything else is the same (credit check, 2 year contract). Just a lower rate per month!

SPRINT SERO Employee referral

My own itsy bitsy contribution t o the world...

2007-05-15T22:22:00.000-05:00

Finally, salvation to all the people of the world who have been nagged to death by Windows every five minutes to restart their computer by the 'Automatic Updates' crap. I wrote a small AutoIt script to kill the nag screen automatically..

The script is at http://web.umr.edu/~arkvf/test.zip

A video of the script follows :

The script checks every two seconds to see if the window is there, then it clicks the 'Restart later' button. Give it a try for freedom!!

PS : Author accepts no responsibility for actions resulting from this post. The script is provided AS IS and with no warranties, implied or otherwise..

Disabled...

2007-04-03T08:20:00.000-05:00

In the american society, in daily life, I see lots of disabled people. Not just handicapped people; disabled.

There's the people who have been handicapped and disabled in what they do but I respect the support the American society gives them. I also respect the spirit with which they live, go about doing everything despite their disabilities, unlike people back home who choose to stop moving about and brood over it.

Then there are the people who have chosen to handicap themselves. There are the people who have chosen obesity as a way of life and find refuge under the new definition of it as a disease. Those who have chosen to curb their own freedom of movement because they could not control their own lifestyles.

And then some of them have chosen to handicap themselves financially. going around in the consumerist society buying to the limits on their credit cards and falling nose down into debt. To be debt free in this country, is for several, just a dream. Again, these are people who have chosen to be how they are.

In the end, I see americans who have chosen to mentally handicap themselves. This is the kind I see most. The ones that have chosen to close off their minds and think and have left the demagogues of the nation to take control and plunge it into chaos. A public that just watches as the leader threatens to veto bills as they come to him. Bills passed by the legislature. Great America who fights dictators all over the world, does 'veto' fall under democracy??

Improve battery life on motorola q

2007-03-20T17:17:00.000-05:00

Okay here's a blog that has nothing about my life. This is just something I want to be out there on the internet but can't bother enough to find another place to put it.

So, if you don't own a motorola Q, or don't even plan on owning one, don't bother.

The motorola Q is a cool thin Windows Mobile phone, which as of now, ships for $99 after rebates. Currently, the Q is offered by Sprint and Verizon only. Soon, they'll release a GSM version that will be picked up by all the GSM carriers.

The problem with the Q, as owners (or, should I say, returners) is the battery issue. It runs out in a day and half at most. If you do any browsing, or activesync / goodlink email, it'll be worse. I've tweaked my Q quite a bit the last week and got it to last me more than two days on a full charge, with Activesync working and emails being pushed to my phone all through 9 to 5 both days.

Now, the basic things most people do are :

1. Disable bluetooth and IR
2. Reduce the lights and screen timeout periods
3. Set the sync schedule
4. Well, there isn't much else..

But these, you must be able to find on this page.

Here's my way of getting more.

1. Go to Motorola's website here to download the new firmware for the Q for Sprint. For verizon, you have to go to the support page, select software updates and find them. Download this firmware and follow the instructions to flash the new firmware on your phone.

2. Now, install task manager from here . The reason is the inbuilt app manager on moto Q doesn't show a lot of things that are running. Now, use this tool to kill of processes. Don't kill the following. everything else needs to go :

nk.exe
filesys.exe
device.exe
telshell.exe
gwes.exe
connmgr.exe : network death if u kill
srvtrust.exe
services.exe
home.exe
cdial.exe
cprog.exe
appman.exe (if it is there)

Now, based on your needs, you might need to kill more or less programs ( something you kill will disable something. But the ones that help to be killed must be the BTTray.exe and VCallAlarm.exe programs (my guess)

3. Never turn your phone off. Shutting down and coming back on consumes a lot of power. Also, all the killed programs start up again.

Please note that the above stated are the author's personal opinion and not those of sprint - nextel, verizon or motorola. The author is not responsible for any damage resulting from following the above or any other tweaks on your phone.

Butterflies of the spraying rain..

2007-02-28T22:28:00.000-06:00

As aficionados of this movie will recognize, that's the translation of 'Thoovaanathumbikal', the forever classic from Padmarajan. I have already downloaded this movie thrice, losing my copy to scratches, carelessness and in general, life! And now, I've blogged about this movie twice already. And I still can't explain why I just love this one so much.

And a character off of it still haunts me. Granted, Jayakrishnan (Mohanlal) is an interesting character with his little whims and fancies , his little wishes and dreams. Also worth meeting in real life is Radha (Parvati) with her inexhaustible reservoir of undying faith in love. But so intriguing, so marvellously crafted and so precisely portrayed is Clara (Sumalatha). Every time I watch this movie, I know her further, I know her better. And a few dialogues from the movie, some of them lost even on the protagonist, still come back to me, every time I think about this movie.

Like, when she says, 'Enthaayaalum Nashikkum, Ennaal Anthassaayittu Nashichu Koode, Aasha Theerthu Marichu koode?',

or when, on the beach, she reveals the depth of her character and her perceptiveness, when she says, 'Monae, thadi contractore, Nee Aaraa, Ullathu Para, ..'

or, when she tells him, 'Njangade koottathil cheranam, kadalil ponam, Poyaa pora, thirichu varumbo valayil enthenkilum undaakanam', or one of those thousand other moments in the movie.

I know Clara better now. I know she loved Jayakrishnan. But she probably knew better than him that he did not love her. I can now see the pain she must have had right upto the end. In the whole story, there is but one moment she loses her composure, when for one moment, she is tempted to give in, when Jayakrishnan asks her 'Njaan Claraye marry cheythotte..?', it is the deepest desire for her to live with him for ever, but she knows that he isn't proposing out of love, so she goes away, hiding her pain, taking it with her...

To Padmarajan...

-----

P.S. : This time, I got a version with proper digital subtitles so I can share it with someone else, but beyond the language, I doubt if they'll know... whether they'll understand, whether they'll identify with the characters..

Org - Reorg

2007-02-26T19:29:00.000-06:00

Without reference to anything, in general, how does a company know how best to organize its functions. Whether to cut it into really thin vertical pieces that tasks flow horizontally across, delayed by the interval it suffers at each vertical organization slice? Or does it just split up regions and divide up into teams that kind of go do everything. Traditionally, I think, small companies tended to be organized the latter way mainly because there would only be one team and experts on different areas within that team. And bigger companies would choose to go the vertical way coz with that, every team has to focus only on the small part they do, and at worst, the next and previous steps.

But does that work? Because over time, it's very very possible that they lose that very thing, focus. Focus on what happens, the idea of the big picture. The basic notion of 'Why are we doing this?'.

To Computer Architecture enthusiasts, this is similar to the Intel P4 vs. AMD Athlon architecture debate that started around 2000. Does it make sense to have a huge pipeline with lots of small stages, or a small pipeline with bigger stages. Or maybe, just one whole block that does everything, just that you have a lot of those blocks working all over the place.

Maybe, I'll find out the answer. One thing is for sure, there's no 'mathematical / analytical way' to get to the bottom of this.

Missouri vs. Kansas

2007-02-24T17:08:00.000-06:00

So, having shifted from Missouri to Kansas, what are the first few pluses / minuses that come to mind? off the top of my head,

The Pluses

1. The highways don't tell me to hit a worker anymore, like they used to in Missouri :

This is one of those boards on which, if you're one of those persons who reads Headlines only, you might just be tempted to go target one of those flourescent jackets!! Also on offer is another sign (not pictured anywhere online) which is a display screen that switches between two screens. The first one that says 'Hit a worker' and the second screen that says '$10000 fine'. If you are driving fast enough and catch just the first screen, it just might seem like a job assigned by MoDoT.

2. When you buy stuff online, and you have to enter the state, with Missouri, I had to, like, press 'M' 7 times and wade through all the irritating states like Mississippi. But with Kansas, I have to press 'K' once!!

Now, for the minuses :

1. Amazon charges tax for Kansas deliveries. That's outrageous. Even more disturbing is the fact that I'm so close to Missouri that if I fell off my bed accidentally, I'd probably land on the State Line.

2. Also disturbing is the fact that Kansas doesn't have any rivers to go floating or rafting and stuff. And I'd probably need to go as far as Osage Beach, MO to do any of this.

This list is going to get a lot more stuff in there, as I learn.

What month..?

2007-02-22T19:23:00.000-06:00

The nice ladies on Customer Service are all great, courteous and fun to talk and all but there just seems to be a little bit missing.

For example, consider what I heard today. They asked me for the secret password on my account which happens to be someone's birthday, the month and the date, and I replied ' Zero Four Twenty nine' (The actual date varied to prevent Security breach) and the lady replies ' Is that April 29?' I pause a moment and say.. 'No, it's the Fourth day of the Twentyninth month in my very own homemade calendar'..

No, of course I didn't say that. How I managed to hold off, God only knows!!

Finally, I shifted...

2007-02-19T22:23:00.000-06:00

Three days past the scheduled date, I shifted to Overland Park on Thursday morning and managed to boil some milk at my new place within the auspicious time. I also managed to make it spill eastward, which makes it even better. After four days of mostly sleeping, cooking, eating, browsing for furniture and pouring various fluids on my new laptop, it was Monday, my joining date at Sprint Nextel. Eight hours there, and I am now back home, overwhelmed, wide-eyed, and bracing myself for the next four or so weeks in which I expect to know something about what I am doing.

In other news, after getting bored with dancing, politics and North - South Indian comments, Hema Malini mailed me today with a placement offer in DB / IBM. Oh Well.. I guess she was a beauty in her time and used to having people come at her beckoning, but no, lady!! I am staying put!

Call Waiting

2007-02-14T10:30:00.001-06:00

I beg some researcher to come forward and find out, on average, how long each American spends on phone with some kind of customer service, or listening to the deeply mystical music tones that keep playing while they put you on perennial hold.

I combated the customer service wait syndrome all of last year through Skype and putting the call on a speaker and picking up only after the cust-rep came on line. But Skype having resorted to revenue generating methods, I must now suffer on my phone. Over the last couple of weeks I have been on phone with Sprint's verification people, Sprint's people, the apartment people, the utility people, and finally more than an hour listening to time warner cable's phone music.

They should probably also research soothing tones to reduce impatience among calling customers so they will be happy and elevated by the time a cust-rep gets to talk with them.

No wonder India is booming with the Call Centers, where else would you get enough people to keep all of America on hold!!

Back after a long time...

2007-02-11T06:17:00.000-06:00

After a really long extended hiatus, I am back to blogging. The good news this time is that I think I am going to blog regularly. Why? Coz I'm encouraged by the number of people landing on some of my pages from search engines and more importantly the stuff they have been searching for. These are mainly the 'Thoovanathumbikal blog' and the 'Cow eating' blog, followed by a lot of the smaller and less popular ones.

Now, as to my life, I've made an India trip in Jan, come back to Rolla on the 7th of Feb and as most of you who know me already know, I've accepted a position at Sprint Nextel at Overland Park, so I'll be shifting home on a 230 mile drive in 2 - 3 days. No, I will not be workblogging especially considering the number of people who have lost their job thanks to letting out company secrets and the fact that the Sprint offer letter states that 'We or you can terminate your employment at any time with or without notice.' (Oh! Have I already let a little cat out of the bag??) Anyway, so shrouded in being alone, my major entertainment is probably going to be Youtubing, blogging and making phone calls contingent on Sprint giving me free phone service. I will henceforth also be recommending Sprint rather that Cingular or T-mobile to friends because of the 'thinna chorinu nandi' policy!!

That's all for now. Count on me blogging at least once a week from now!!

Signing off...,

A month to go...

2006-11-07T13:20:00.000-06:00

I have a month to go before I defend / get attacked. I'm sure the word defense doesn't do justice to the graduate student. It should probably be something like, 'Hey, when are you counterattacking your committee?'. I'm going to be missing Rolla, missing the crowd and missing the awesome fun we had here. I will miss the keg parties, miss the leg-pulling and miss the small fights that we have had. Above all, I will miss the town that I walked into two years ago on a cold December morning and saw the dawn of a new year in. The eerie town with ghost-trees in winter that gave way to leaves and flowers and bloomed all the way in Spring. The town, which, with its total of seven fast food places has thrown me into utter despair about eating out. The town which has shown me two beautiful Springs, two warm summers and is taking me into the third barren winter.

Meanwhile, Rolla got very very beautiful in fall until the winds and rain blew the yellow and red leaves away. Luckily, I managed to snap a few shots before that happened. These are at my web page. Check out the snaps and let me know if you like them.

Signing off, in preparation for my ''defense'' ...

Finding similar music...

2006-10-25T14:25:00.000-05:00

This post is about some awesome software I just found. What if some program were able to look beyond limits of language, class of music and other traditional boundaries to classify music. And then I searched for it and found the 'Music IP Mixer'. This program actually listens to your music to classify it based on acoustic properties of your songs, impressive, ain't it? I've been able to notice several songs that have similarities that I've never noticed before.

For example, the song 'Nahin Saamne' from Taal is amazingly similar in mood to a song called 'Sone De Maa Ab Naa Jeena' by Euphoria, which is also similar to 'The World is full of people who want to hurt you' which is similar not just in music but in the theme as well.. I'm not saying this program is as good as someone sitting out there and listening and classifying music, but it's pretty darn good..

Like I didn't know that!!

2006-10-20T20:15:00.000-05:00

You Are 23 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.

13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.

20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!

40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

The biggest compliment I've had (Mallus will understand)

2006-10-20T19:45:00.000-05:00

You Are Rain

You can be warm and sexy. Or cold and unwelcoming.
Either way, you slowly bring out the beauty around you.

You are best known for: your touch

Your dominant state: changing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Blame it on the season..

2006-10-20T19:25:00.000-05:00

To all my friends out there who have been sleeping a lot more...

Blame it on the winter. The cold season's upon us. So now, to stay awake and maintain that high body temperature, our body needs a lot more energy. So, as part of a solution to the energy crisis, it's okay to sleep more. It's even okay to sleep more and not do any work coz as long as you're saving energy, that's all that matters..

And while we're at it, you might as well switch to drinking water at all those fastfood places instead of soda. As I found out, it cuts a lot of your eating out money, except if you're eating at Hardees in Rolla where they give you fries and a drink for free, if you're a student.

Anyway, at the end of an experiment on putting two totally unrelated facts together on a blog, I can sleep more now and conserve energy. Except, my sis wouldn't agree they are unrelated coz according to her, all I say is I'm hungry or I'm sleepy.

signing off..

Eat cow..will talk.. maybe will die..

2006-10-05T02:50:00.000-05:00

I've already ended up spending 7 hours of my life debating the eatability of the cow for hindus. And the only thing I have learned is that eating cow and being proud of it does nothing but steal hours from your life debating the ethical issues to other people..

But then I also landed on this page justifying my point of view, stating what I'd known all along..

On the way there though, I also found a chatroom with morally angered Hindus challenging to beat any hindu who ate a cow to death. Now, that's a very violent point of view from someone who wouldn'e kill, - i forget - ha, cows! For all the people who mistook the mention of light in old sanskrit texts for cows, I have but pity for your missing out on the taste! And the protector of light hence became the protector of cows. For cows not to be eaten was nothing more than an economical decision demanded by the situation at a particular point in time..

For those who can't bother enough to click :

Question:

Why is the cow "sacred"?

by Jane (USA)

Answer:

In the chatrooms and messages boards of the Internet, there are often found bitter disputes between Indians and Pakistanis. This usually deteriorates into vulgar abuse and I have noticed that one of the commonest terms of hitting out at Hindus is that they worship the cow.

This might as well be cleared up now. The Hindu does not worship the cow, has never worshipped the cow, and is not likely to ever worship the cow. To continue to propagate this delusion is only indicative of ignorance and laziness, but the Hindu has nothing to do with it. The cow is not even sacred, in the way it has been misunderstood by Europeans. The cow is literally taboo, a very different animal indeed from the sacred cow of popular delusion. Taboos in sociological terms are both positive and negative; as in taboos that must be respected and deferred to, as well as taboos that deal with what is abhorrent.

The cow is Aghanya - that which may not be slaughtered. It is true that later sects began to call the cow the mother and even wrote some dubious scripture to support this, but it was a rather childish transference of reverence from the mother to the cow because both provide milk! The "milk-debt" was culturally a very strong more, and it was felt that it would not be fair to leave the cow out of its share of respect for contributing to your health. Nevertheless the cow was originally only Aghanya.

This set of circumstances arose for many reasons. Strange as it may seem, the Vedic age was a beef-eating one and animals were constantly being slaughtered. The reaction against flesh foods set in with the advent of Jainism and Buddhism and a remarkable cultural revolution took place - in that a predominantly flesh eating country became a predominantly vegetarian one. The many pastoral tribes that inhabited India could not afford to sacrifice their cow wealth for meat. In fact that is the real reason it became Aghanya. The norms of the time dictated that you sacrifice your best animal, usually the stud bull, for the feast when a distinguished visitor came by. As these worthies multiplied in numbers, the quality of the herds began to decline. You could not escape this obligation, as substitution of another animal would be regarded as a deadly insult. To save animals thus marked out, as well as in deference to the new trends, the inviolability of the cow came into being. Those who are distressed by this revelation of beef eating ancestors ought to be more distressed at their ignorance about it. Swami Vivekananda loved to puncture ostentatious piety by declaring that his favorite section of the Vedas was the bit where five brahmanas used to sit down to feast and polish off a cow at one sitting! The literature about this is extensive, and there is no need to be squeamish about it.

The scriptural reason for this obsession with cows and their protection is even stranger. Vedic Sanskrit is not the classical Sanskrit that exists today. It is an older, more difficult form of the language and one of the words for light that is used there is Go. Now Go primarily meant "light" but it also meant "cows". In classical Sanskrit the word means only the bovine friend. Thus, on the basis of a forgotten meaning of a word has Indian culture wrapped itself round the protection of the cow and rendered it a sacred taboo. "Protector of the Go", in the Vedas meant the keeper of the light not a cowherd! And all the admonitions about protecting the Go means something else altogether, and makes a great deal more sense too. However it was too late, and the word came to mean with all its nuances, cow protection and cow- reverence! A change in language renders a single word archaic, but the impact on a society is amazing.

A more environmentally friendly reason has in recent times been proposed for this cow respect. The cow represents the entire animal kingdom and is man’s link to the dumb animals of Creation. In respecting the cow we are showing respect for all living things, a notion that ties in deftly with ahinsa and vegetarianism. This point of view was propagated by Gandhi.

Whatever be the reasons that appeal to you at least it should be clear that there is no such thing as cow worship in the Hindu Faith.

- Rohit Arya

more about me

2006-10-05T02:43:00.000-05:00

You May Be a Bit Schizotypal...

A bit odd and socially isolated.
You couldn't care less of what others think.
And some of your beliefs are a little weird.
Like that time you thought you were Jesus.

What Personality Disorder Are You?

about me

2006-10-05T02:39:00.000-05:00

Your Personality Is

Rational (NT)

You are both logical and creative. You are full of ideas.
You are so rational that you analyze everything. This drives people a little crazy!

Intelligence is important to you. You always like to be around smart people.
In fact, you're often a little short with people who don't impress you mentally.

You seem distant to some - but it's usually because you're deep in thought.
Those who understand you best are fellow Rationals.

In love, you tend to approach things with logic. You seek a compatible mate - who is also very intelligent.

At work, you tend to gravitate toward idea building careers - like programming, medicine, or academia.

With others, you are very honest and direct. People often can't take your criticism well.

As far as your looks go, you're coasting on what you were born with. You think fashion is silly.

On weekends, you spend most of your time thinking, experimenting with new ideas, or learning new things.

The Three Question Personality Test

A new joke..

2006-10-05T02:31:00.000-05:00

Here's a new joke I've been thinking about :

http://mirror.nocloning.org

That's the mirror website of the Anti-cloning group!!

I'm getting back to blogging so expect more blogs soon!

Take two...

2006-09-13T19:16:00.000-05:00

Imagine an instance of time... You live in the present, you know there isn't any future, but then, you love where the present is...

If you could go back in time, perhaps you could change the present, to better the future, but then if you did that, you wouldn't love the present as much when you got to it.

So, given a chance, would you change it? evan a little bit?

If you get any of the above, beep me...

Emptiness..

2006-08-01T03:55:00.000-05:00

Touch wood, but my research has been going good, and basically, the reason is, i beleive I haven't been letting my thoughts wander aimlessly. I have kept to making sure I finished my work when it had to be done and enjoyed enough to keep me out of stress the rest of the time.

The India Association Soccer Tournament came up last week and our team ( I am the earthquake-and-volcano-happen-together-worst-case substitute :) beat the rest hands down. The games were a pleasure to watch and Oleg's (our only guest player - a Russian) playmaking was a treat to watch.

And then, I shifted to a floor-based indoor decor wherein my room life now happens at not more than 4 inches from the ground. Cardboard boxes have helped me set up a Laptop station, a speaker system and a sleeping bag, a comforter and a blanket make a manageable bed. A 7" table fan (very powerful though) from Amazon makes the necessary background noise I need to sleep peacefully. The only thing that hasn't been happening is sleep!

Things keep going fine, and I get no extra time from research and life to think up the crazy thoughts that I pen down on this blog. Sorry, folks, but soon, I should be back, the mentally wandering objectivist. Until then , chowmein!

Apparently...

2006-07-17T06:28:00.000-05:00

Been some time since I scribbled here. Things have been moving fast, research has been progressing and in general looking up. Have been having parties, an amazing trip to Six Flags and even more partying. Six months have gone by very quickly since I got back to Rolla. And it is now almost the end of summer.

Get back here in a week coz I am feeling so lazy and blankminded that I can't write another paragraph. Probably midweek, I should replace this post with a way better one. Meanwhile, Auf Wieder Sehen..

Crichton, the versatile writer...

2006-06-19T04:43:00.000-05:00

Back to another post about books...

Not that I haven't read any Crichton, Sphere was one of the awesome books I'd ever read. But when you read four Crichtons in a row, it's a lot different, and a lot better.

Having gone through Disclosure, Rising Sun, Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery and halfway through Terminal Man in two weeks, I'm awed by the range of this author, by his versatility, by the totally different areas these books deal with and how he comes up totally on top and in touch with it, keeping the reader on the edge, bringing the book to a great conclusion every single time! I talk about my impressions of the first four right here and am going to go ahead and read every single one from him.

'Disclosure' : All about a case of sexual harrassment in a Tech firm. And how it is all a plot hatched to cover up a technical mistake while leading up to a merger, to hide a case of bad judgement, and about how someone is framed. The way Crichton deals with technology in the book is very impressive for a novel written in 1993. As a Computer Engineer having worked in PC assembling, I loved the book, its language and the realistic conclusion reached. The work is so totally in touch with the hard truths of the business world and how it works out. And it's based on a true story..

'Rising Sun' : The author walks us through the ways of Japanese businesses in LA, how? Through a murder mystery, involving a Caucasian girl who ends up dead in a Japanese business building. The world that opens up from it is wonderful. The book also reminded me of a Malayalam movie which copied something from the 'video' thing where the killer is replaced by someone else by editing. (For reference, the movie was 'indraprastham')

'Andromeda Strain' : Of a satellite that falls on Earth with an a killer organism from space. Of a project that had the vision to start early enough to prepare for the evantuality, and how the experts struggle through work in a high-end cleanroom to ensure humanity was protected. The novel ends kind of bland, which makes it even more real.

And finally to the one I love the most of the four, 'The Great Train Robbery' : A real event brought to life in all the splendour of the Victorian era. The reconstruction of the crime from court reports and witness accounts is totally wonderful. If only history textbooks were written this way, I'd have been a historian. Except for an irritating mention of butchers in India killing Britishmen at Kanpur (Cawnpore) in the mutiny (Butchers? people who refused to bite the shells before firing because they might have contained pig's or cow's fat - butchers? I say no.) But on every other count, The Great Train Robbery was the best history textbook I ever read!

The way Crichton brings in background information and a description of it all without for an instance boring the reader is wonderful. Unlike Robert Ludlum or Ken Follett who fills five pages with flashback on a character just to kill him off in half a page. (which incidentally prompts me to intelligently skip paragraphs while reading Ludlum or Follett). All through the four books, I must mention I did not skip a single line.

To Crichton, the master of all Genres!

End of FRIENDS

2006-06-09T02:40:00.000-05:00

Alright, now I've seen them all. I watched season 9 and season 10 through this week, in the middle of a lot of work, by taking the trouble to set up a whole second display for the same.

So once you reach the end, how does that feel. For one, you feel it should never have ended. Then, you kind of feel empty and hollow. In Friends terms, I'll put it as follows :

In episode 3, Joey and Rachel read each other's favorite books, The Shining and Little Women. In the short clip that follows the credits at the end, Joey approaches Rachel, dejected and she asks 'Joey, do you want to put the book in the freezer?'. That's how I feel. I want to put it in a freezer somewhere and forget it existed. To forget the people in there who became so real I couldn't imagine those actors playing anybody else.

One thing that made me feel so close to each person in Friends was the consistency of character, where each of them had a general consistent character which matured gracefully through the series. The playboy Joey maturing into a love affair for Rachel, Spoilt Rachel maturing into a Mom, Dr. Ross maturing into caring person, weird Phoebe into a birthmother and a relationship, Crazy Monica becoming a revelation in a great relationship and above all, funny and almost gay Chandler becoming what he became.

I was caught off guard, I fell in love with FRIENDS and also with friends of FRIENDS. Every person they fell in love with, every one they had a crush on, everyone they picked a fight with, like those bullies in the coffeehouse or the unruly staff at Monica's restaurant, the gym and the bank where Chandler and Ross could not get out of and so on and on.

I'll have to end this saying.. I wish to forget all of FRIENDS around when I am 70 and watch them through and stop around the end of ninth season, with Rachel and Joey kissing and before Ross walks in, beleiving everything was alright, they'd all be together and FRIENDS for ever!

My vacation...

2006-05-31T04:25:00.000-05:00

We took an awesome week-long vacation at Portland with trips to beaches, walks on trails and a lot of great homemade food. Photos will soon be posted on my website. Anyway, getting back to work, I had a handful which included preparing for demos on Tuesday and for a presentation on wednesday (today).

Portland's an awesome city with excellent public transportation. (Trains, Buses and Streetcars). There are a lot of good places downtown to visit, what with it all being so close to water. Off town, the place is scenic (We got to take a whole round on the Washington County Scenic loop). 70 miles to the west, the Pacific ocean is really calm and enticing. A few surfers down there seemed to be enjoying it a lot. A visit to Atlantic and I'm done with the oceans I plan to visit ever. :)

So, summer starts here and a lot of work for me to do. To finish off research gracefully and end it all with some good research work and a thesis with valuable contribution. Blogging and Orkutting are (hopefully) going to take a hit. And I'm probably not going to check my mail as often (For the love of god!) I've been going real hard at 'Friends' to finish off watching all the episodes before June 5th which is when classes start. And considering I'm at season 9, I should reach that target fairly easily.

It's time to take stock and take control and work hard to finish things off...

For now, signing off..

Sone de Maa Ab Na Jeenaaaa

2006-05-09T02:14:00.000-05:00

Euphoria's new album is out. I don't think from listening once that it stands up to the reputation of the earlier three, though I have yet to confirm. But this post is about something else..

Wonder how when you feel really really really down, you just want to sleep and forget all the worries and desperation of the world, and put your head in your mother's lap...? (For all wellwishers out there, I'm not in that state.. just theorizing)... And this feeling thus came to give anything that gives us respite the name "Mother". As in 'Mother Nature', 'Mother Earth', etc..

Euphoria's song from Gully goes like this.... (Translation follows)... Teri Kahani mein Sachaayi jeeti sadaaa... Tu Hi Bataa Maa Kya jhoota woh biswas thaa... lamha lamha dhoka naya...tanha tanha mein dhak gaya... Sone De Maa Ab Na Jeenaa...

(Son To Mother): In your stories, truth used to win always... Now you tell me how wrong that beleif was... Every moment, a new betrayal...Alone, lonely, I am tired... Let me sleep, mother I do not wish to live any more...

This is one of the songs I listen to all the time.. And it puts me in a vague, pleasant mood. Though I am in no way tired of fighting the world alone and losing, (as follows in the next stanza) I am always grateful to Mother Nature who takes me in her fold and rejuvenates me.. To mother Earth who replenishes me.. And last, but not least, to my very own mother...

I dedicate this post to my cousin sid who just gave birth to her second kid...

Happy Mothers' Day all of you!

How Opal Mehta wrote her thesis!

2006-05-03T13:46:00.000-05:00

My name is Kaavya Viswanathan.. (of How Opal Mehta fame....). I'm going to join UMR and do graduate studies in Electrical Engineering. I'm gonna be working on Location Estimation. And my prof now tells me I must write a paper...

Of course, my paper will use 'data fusion' coz that's what I did with my book that got to #32 on NYT bestseller's list before I got busted. Let me see. How do I get started...

Okay first I print 'Initial efforts at time-based location estimation' and 'A second review of time-based location estimation' by Dr. McCafferty.

Then I get 'Location Estimation diaries' by Dr. Meg Cabbot and 'The sea of indoor wireless Communication and I' by post doc student Dr. Salman Rushdie printed.

I also get Emeritus Professor Dr. Sophie Kinsella's 'Can you find where I am now - aka - efforts at real-time location sensing'.

Now, what do I do, I just lift paragraphs from this paper or that, mix them up real good. And now, I get a professor to endorse me, and send it to a real big journal. They publish it, I get a Nobel prize, and then when Salman meets Sophie at a cocktail party, they put their heads together and figure me out.

Anyway, I won't have trouble getting my thesis done. I'd just switch to Humanities and write my thesis on 'Reaction of the general public to plagiarism'.
.....

If you don't get any of this, check out this . If you are Ms. Viswanathan checking out my blog (fat chance.. nothing to copy here).. have some sense girl. I have done my share of plagiarism but when I do it, the original author him/her self won't figure it out, trust me!

cooking pork!!

2006-04-30T03:57:00.000-05:00

Last week, for AJ's birthday, I cooked PORK. The question is, how do you cook pork? Either you cook it the math-physics-chemistry way, in which, you basically have math for how much of the chemistry of each thing you drop in (physics) to make it taste good, or else you have the MRU ( maximum resource utilization) method. In this, you basically get pork, onions and potatoes in pressure cookers and then are given 5 minutes 46 seconds in which you can drop in as much of whatever you find within 5 feet of you. And in this frenzied dropping game, I have no idea what I put in. I have a vague idea I poured a lot of vinegar, and coz some kind of masala ran out, I also dropped in some other kind of masala, the quantities of either I have no clue of.

In the end, after an hour of cooking, when the pork turns out to be actually good, and you start smelling like your sweat got mixed up with the exhaust gases from a 'masala' plant, you actually wonder how. Also part of the musings is the question whether, given another chance, would you be able to re-produce the taste? Probably not, coz a chaotic frenzy of 5 minutes 46 seconds is never the same as another. But I can say this, it'd probably be different but it'd be just as good.

On the research end, in the middle of preparing for a demo, making a trip to Boeing, and sleeping through friday afternoon to saturday midnight, I haven't worked much on my own side of the research. Thanks to a crazy climate change at Rolla, (which I slept through as well), power outages at the university (slept through again) and crazy winds that bent the trees and knocked down whole piles of milk baskets at Mobil, I have been having a bad cold and my whole face feels like stuffed turkey.

So now, I'm back to work, making an academic report on the stuff I've been doing. Once I read through it probably, I will get some kind of an idea of what I'm trying to do and which way I should go..

So, meanwhile, ciao!

Guys next door..

2006-04-17T03:31:00.001-05:00

The guys next door have a month left.. And then God knows what happens to the legend of Apt.21 at 101 , W 15th St, Rolla, MO. The house and the premises have seen lots of merriment and parties. It has been witness to Jose's cooking, Anoop's dancing with the glass tumbler on his head, Anish's sleeping through movies, Shirish's suave Kannur malayalam and a lot more, though I'm only a recent visitor, only getting the feel of the vibrant past from the echoes it left behind.

I wonder too, about Annalisa Tharakan, with a couple of bucks still left at Phelps County bank. About Akuthota and Ashwin Shashindranath who must go to that auto dealers so as not to miss their latest offer. About a lot many other people who we know only through mail directed to Apt. 20.

And perhaps soon, there will be people who wonder about credit card offers, Restaurant invites, catalogs , Boating World and a lot more addressed to Vineeth Pillai, Vineeth Bernier, Sadodjara Panicker and at times Vineeth Panicker, Ajay Pad (and guest), Panackal Padathu, Anil Ramachandran, Harish Jose and so on that will keep coming to Apt. 20.

They will never know of the countless times happiness visited Apt. 20, neither the fun parties, the awesome "goals" and "self-goals" that have hit people, nor the small, in fact tiny, conflicts that happened here. They won't learn of the "planned chaos" look applied to the living room with a strategically placed Beer keg, keg tub and bananas. But for the memoirs left behind with photographs, stains on the carpet (which hopefully Investment Realty will choose to erase) and the stuff left behind.

But, in the end, I beleive all that happened will stay in the air as a kind of energy or feel inspiring those who come after.....

Signing off in a nostalgic mood...

Different...

2006-04-12T19:03:00.000-05:00

How different is USA..? In terms of sustainability, poverty, what makes money and all... How different is this place from home sweet home.

Just yesterday I got this mail insert about a Canadian Pharmacy Firm that sells common drugs at prices below the US prices. I don't know how they do it, but they bring on average 40% by bringing in the medicine from Canada, substituting generics for brands etc. Being familiar with the field of medicines, I checked the US prices. A cetrizine tablet (medicine for common cold... they told you it hasn't been invented yet, right?) cost $2 and a tablet of Omeprazole (indigestion and diarrhoea) cost $3.33. In general, these cost on average 10-50 times less back home.

Another thing that strikes me is the exorbitant cost of Dentistry. Billboards on the highway advertizing Dentures...would you find them in India? Are you kidding?

And back to the core. Lawyers. On I-44 every time I drive back from St. Louis I find this billboard that says "Cheap Divorce" and "Cheap Bankruptcy" . A billboard near Meramec Springs says "Accident on the river? " Again, an ad for a lawyer who promises to get you what you deserve. Workplace Compensation and Insurance Litigation lawyer ads are a dime a dozen.

Of course, all of the above are that way coz the system supports it. Health Insurance, the Judicial attitude, all ensure that it all stays this way. Like the guy who sued a company after he put his RV on Cruise Control and went to the back to sleep. His explanation was that the company did not mention that you were not supposed to leave the steering wheel when it is on cruise control. And if you wonder, yes, he was awarded compensation...

Spring breaking...

2006-04-12T05:09:00.000-05:00

The first time I landed in Rolla, the place kind of alienated me. Why? Okay you land in this place with crazy cold climate with trees that look like dead bodies, all dried up with no leaves on, snow covering the place through the better part of three months... you'd hate it too...

But then, as spring came, Rolla bloomed into a flowerbed. Lush green grass all around.. Flowers everywhere. It was in the break of this bloom that I posted my first set of snaps from Rolla here . And then the crazy summer came and the Fall with its yellow-red-orange leaves making Rolla this heavenly place. The winter this time was much weaker with rains and very little snow. In the end, when Spring bloomed, it was even more magnificent than the last time around. I post my first phase of Rolla Spring 2006 snaps here.

The Spring brings a freshness in the air and the kind of climate you wish you had all year round at every place you went to. I am thankful my home (Kerala) never experiences the eerie winter as in Rolla. I love the monsoon back home that brings in the rains to quench the earth thirsty from the scorching heat of the summer. At the same time, I wish we also had a winter and a spring just to bring the freshness into the air. The feeling of being at one with nature...

On a technical note, the language (API - Malayalam) supports Spring with a word for it (Vasantham) so it's okay if the hardware goes into that mode once in a while, right?

Kegged out...

2006-03-31T04:29:00.000-06:00

We had a keg party and then I had a birthday. The keg party was kind of the coolest thing that happened in that it was a get together with all the mallu guys , downing like 15 beers each in a night and debating on a lot of things. Photos are on at http://web.umr.edu/~arkvf/excellent .

The birthday was great too coz we had a gr8 party, I got kicked so hard that the pain reminded me for the four following days that I had had a birthday. I also got to talk with all 3 cecmates who share my birthday and anju and simi too. Photos coming up.

And now, it seems the afterparty comes two days after! On 28th Jose (pronounced Hosay) next door made Pasta, I got some Vodka and we all got drunk, particularly me, having downed 7 vodkas and a tequila. Next day, it felt like my body was the Kalahari desert but totally worth it. In the middle of the night it seems my phone made a call to Nishant on its own and conveyed dialogs from the movie that was running to his bedroom a building away while I was more or less peacefully asleep.

Have been playing some volleyball too, watching lots of movies and having a real relaxed spring break by staying in lovely Rolla. I'm due for another keg party tomorrow ( like I told you, this keg thing's catching on..).

On the reading side, having killed Ken Follett, moving onto the last work I Can find by Forsyth, called ICON. So expect a reading blog online in a week...

Signing off...

PS : I am adding an explanatory edit to the Kadhavasheshan post (March 12) so that ppl who aren't familiar can get the gist of it.

An attempt at context-less bloggging

2006-03-22T23:49:00.000-06:00

I attempt as follows to blog without a specific topic. Take your time and read through and compare the places I started and where I ended...

I'm pushing a cart around. Part of my research. I place an IBM notebook on a cart and push it around ERL and place it at six spots marked with tape X's. Then I measure signal strength of the wireless LAN for 2 minutes at each spot. Somehow, the pushing of the cart reminds me of the movie 'Radio', an inspirational movie where a halfwit boy pushes a cart around town and is in love with his radio. A football coach takes him on and.... that's it.. the CD from Netflix had scratches so I never got to see past the first half hour..

Now, that makes it something like Schroedinger's cat. For the uninitiated, this is the story of a sadistic scientist who would put a cat in a box and close the box and open it later. Till he opens it, the cat is dead / alive but the moment he opens it, it's one of the above. Crazy, right? That wouldn't be my idea of a suspense thriller but now, since I have seen only 30 minutes of 'Radio', it is like the cat to me, but I know for sure it is not dead coz the preview from Netflix tells me it is inspirational. If the "cat" were dead, what would it inspire me to do, die..?

Speaking of Netflix, how lazy can people get? All you need to do is sit at home and order a movie online and it gets sent to you by mail. Laziness is so bad in US, 60 % of people you meet are obese. Except, in Rolla, it's a lot less coz most of us are starving sleep-deprived graduate students. So how much sleep does one need, huh? 6 hours? 8? 10? 13? I'm banking on 10-11 and I'm getting a little under that. It must have been a year back that I read of a research study where people in cities living in apartments with windows couldn't sleep well because of ambient light in the city from neon signs and billboards and what not..?

That makes me think of Pradeep's basement apartment which has no windows so much so that, once you're in there and without a clock/wristwatch, you'll be lost in time. So, someone was telling me cellphones do not work in basements. Why don't they. But then, why do you expect them to. Why does everyone take the conveniences of modern life for granted? why does everyone expect phones, electric power, internet and all the rest to be there weherever you are.. Wireless internet has a big role to play in spreading this conception..

Speaking of wireless internet, I am pushing a cart.... :D

(I am good, right?)

Ze healthiest meal and Kadhavasheshan...

2006-03-12T03:16:00.000-06:00

At home, we all had the healthiest meal we have had for quite some time today evening. Grilled Fish Fillets and French Fries. Someone had this crazy urge to eat fries and someone had the urge to have fish fillets and it made a meal.

But the point of this post is not the irregular eating patterns of graduate students (for that you'd rather refer http://www.phdcomics.com) but one good movie I saw. Watched Kadhavasheshan today and yes, it is a different movie, and it's actually better than I expected. What Dileep has that makes him perfect for this role is his ordinary man - man next door appearance and acting. He could have been any one of us all. T.V. Chandran brings out things that happen in the Indian society and at the end, drowns the viewer in pain with the climax - the eternal burning wound in the heart of every Indian, Gujarat. After umpteen statements on Godhra incident, mob psychology, Ayodhya, revenge etc., there's no fucking justification for murdering our brothers and raping our sisters, is there?

But I digress. I compare Kazhcha to Kadhavasheshan in that both movies portray something seemingly without any ramifications on the life of an ordinary Malayali (both coincidentally Gujarat-based) affect the life / lives of one / many. While Kazhcha pursues the Earthquake and portrays it in a frighteningly clear way, Kadhavasheshan fills your mind with shame and loathing, more to yourself than to the perpetrators.

'To the shame of being alive'

ADDENDUM :

Warning : Plot / Spoiler follows

Kaazhcha : literally means 'vision'. First movie by debutante director Blessy. Traces the story of a Gujarati boy found with beggars in Kerala. The Kuttanaadan family of a 70mm movie operator takes the boy on and loves him as one of their own. But later the law and order system forces them to surrender the kid to the authorities. In an effort to trace the boy's family, the audience is taken to the harsh reality and terror of the Gujarat earthquake. The kid's parents and his younger sister are not to be found nor are any records of them. The movie ends on a touching note when to an officer in charge of the rehabilitation center, the operator (Mammooty) hands a paper with his address so that they can hand the kid to him if the family is known to be dead, and the moment he leaves, the officer mutters something and throws the sheet into a dustbin. The uncertainty and the helplessness lingers in the viewer long after the movie ends.

Kadhavasheshan : means 'Remnant of the story'. The movie starts off with the protagonist committing suicide. His fiancee goes on a trip into his past to figure out why. The character of the protagonist is revealed in words of others. He is shown as a man who cares for others and suffers the pain of others. This is brought out in several instances. In the end, it turns out that in the riots of Gujarat, a girl he knew, the daughter of the caretaker of the place he stayed when he was there was gangraped and murdered in the riots. In the shame of having been alive and helpless when this happened, he commits suicide. A good, plain song from the movie at : http://as01.cooltoad.com/music/song.php?id=212633

Reading up..

2006-03-07T00:25:00.000-06:00

I'm doing too much reading, and not papers! I've finished three of Ken Follett's books in a week and half. 'Code to Zero', 'Modigliani Scandal' and 'JackDaws'. I can't beleive how one person can write books on such different times, themes and things, and still all books end up the same style.

Code to Zero is about a Rocket Scientist who uncovers a plot and is induced amnesia to prevent him screwing up stuff. Well, this must be Follett's answer to whoever said 'Writing Fiction is not rocket science or something'. The way this book moves into flashbacks is interesting. At the end of a present chapter, someone would say something and then the next chapter would be flashback. And the amnesia helps this, coz the guy needs reminding, you see!

Modigliani scandal touches up a grand scheme where a lost modigliani is forged, twice. This book is cool in that, the guy who draws the strings is right there in the novel from the beginning but as a somewhat passive character. But then right at the end, it just turns around and he is revealed as this manipulator in a cool way. No espionage, no rocket science and no 'the war depends on you' bullshit.

JackDaws is about an all-woman team going to Worldwar II France right before the invasion to destroy the Germans' telephone exchange so as to break the vital comm link and thus win the war. The all woman team is refreshing with a couple of twists. Number one being that one of them is no woman. Greta / Gerhard is a homosexual transvestitenwho must avenge the capture of his lover. Number two is that there is a passive background shadow of a man in the team leader's (Flick / Felicity) life. This shadow is well-managed and does not kill the all-woman effect.

I'm out of Ken Follett (actually my roommate is) books except for Hornet Flight and Hammer of Eden which I hope to pick up sometime this week and finish off.. And then I go back to the master 'Robert Ludlum' after a long 5 years!

How much Payne can you take..?

2006-03-01T03:42:00.000-06:00

I am going back to Max Payne. If you need reminding, this is the same guy who lost his wife in a New York Minute, in a deep DEA - narcotics conspiracy a few years ago. What was new about Max Payne was he could do things fast, or putting it another way, he could make others look slow. Max Payne came back a couple of years later, this time able to do and speak a lot more. Filled with the same gloomy depressing and sometimes totally psycho mood as the first iteration, Max Payne 2 boasted of deep thought-out dialogue and at times monologue. The objects around you responded a lot better and even better, there is a continuous TV series called 'Lords and Ladies' running through the game and if that's what you bought the game for, you could probably sit somewhere and watch/listen.

Quotes from Max Payne at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Payne

My website starts off with Max Payne at http://www.aliveindia.com

I was scratching what is left of my brain all Tuesday in an attempt to get the DSP II homework done. Finally having exhausted it and leaving it on the Nokia charger (you can't blame me.. i had no brain left) I turned on the machine and dove into Max Payne. Ironically, the gloomy atmosphere actually made me happy as I started playing somewhere in the middle of Chapter I and improved as I met Mona and killed around 250 enemies. May their pixellated souls rest in peace. The night ended happily at 4.20 AM when having finished this blog and most of the homework, I walked home to peaceful, quiet sleep...

Wait a minute, the above statement has a causal impulse response! (Damn.. too much DSP) Anyway, signing off, I quote from Max,

"The trouble with wanting something is the fear of losing it, or never getting it. The thought makes you weak."

Edit : Now, I know why noncausal stuff is not implementable. Coz after I went home last night, I made a glass of ice cream pop, had a nasty headache, took a big shot of vodka, had a bit of hypoglycemia come on, ate two teaspoons of sugar and rang up a friend before I went to sleep. Now, SHOW ME that in the impulse response..

Adrenaline

2006-02-24T23:30:00.000-06:00

I have led a relatively low-adventure low-risk life till now (except for the time I crossed that railway track in Mumbai and heard a train whoosh by right after I climbed up). Especially because of that, it is interesting how your body reacts when you are in a conflict situation.

There I was, driving back to Rolla with Deepak from Feyetteville, Arkansas after a weekend with a friend. I haven't been caught speeding yet and putting it on the line, I was driving at 80 - 90 on a 70 speedlimit Interstate. Around 150 miles into the drive, with 120 to go, this SUV comes in onto the road from an exit and lands in front of me, going 76-83 miles an hour. I kept going real fast and kept right behind it which I beleive irritated the college kids in it and the front passenger opened his glass and brought out his hand and a finger went up. It was dark and I couldn't figure out the finger but past experience leads me to beleive it was the middle one. The reason must have been that a 1997 Ford Taurus was giving a challenge to a relatively brand new SUV.

Now, what would you do..? I could have done with the finger but sadly, they wouldn't see me. Being the highly resourceful guy that I am, I put my headlights into hi-beam, inteding to irritate the crap out of the opponents. Okay, I was going into conflict mode and could feel my heartbeat rising, my feet beginning to shiver a bit. Oh my god! Okay now, the kids tried some things for 10 minutes during which I stayed right behind them with hi-beam lights. The girls in the back tried to block the beam, they tried putting pillows against the rear windshield.. Finally, the driver relented and shifted to a side and let me through. I had guessed where this was going and shited my rear view mirror to anti-glare mode in time for them to shift back behind me and turn on hi-beam. I now raced all the way up to 92 mph, my feet shaking like hell and my heart working on overtime pay. And then someone with an iota of sense or maybe the engine told the driver to slow down and back off, as I sped away gracefully. I wonder how much longer my adrenaline and male ego would have lasted if they had not given up, and when exactly my sense of caution and safety would have taken over. But in the end, I had won and that did boost the ego thing, you see..

The night was not to end that smooth. I had adrenaline strike me twice more. Once 20 miles later, when I caught something coming racing real fast on the mirror and thought it would be the kids but it was just an 'Audi' firing away. And then, at St. James, I found a cop car on the mirror with the siren and lights. Having drained all my adrenaline supply of the last 18 months, I pulled over to the right lane and then to the shoulder, resigning to accept my fate, when the cop car raced away on the fast track. Apparently, I wasn't his priority. Alright, now, someone give me the name of the releif hormone that washes over you right after an adrenaline phase ends. That stuff is really cool...

100 years of solitude : Pillars of the earth

2006-02-20T15:22:00.000-06:00

Alright, I am going to die soon. Either Ken Follett fans will kill me or Gabriel Garcia Marquez fans will. Because I am going to compare 100 years of solitude to Pillars of the earth. The former traces the story of a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and the story of his descendants through time. A story of love and loss, of mystical realism, of magical happenings, of one whole family being the protagonist.

I read 100 years of solitude back when I was in the seventh grade. (Yes. I admit. I was lonely). The thing that most struck me was down the genealogy, in a different time, there would be a character the same as one that lived, say, 30 years ago, and he/she would be named the same. Bue the time being different, he/she would end up doing different things, with the old personality showing through..

Pillars of the earth covers only seventy years of life and not completely. Life of a war-ravaged orphan becoming a prior, life of a Master Builder Mason, life of an innocent victim who was hanged, life of the girl who loved him, who later became 'witch' Pillars of the earth is set in Medeival England, during and after the rule of King Henry I. Ten years of civil war that ravaged England after his death is evident.

The thing that strikes me about Pillars of the Earth is how the narrative progresses. There's something like 'smooth handover' that ought to inspire cellular phone companies. Ken Follett traces the narration with a character or a group, who then meet(s) up with another character/group in some kind of scene and the narration now traces the next character/group.

So, where is the similarity. Both books trace stories, with no suspense or thriller element. Just plain old narration. And then, at times, both get so irritatingly slow, you tend to put them down, only to pick them up again, dragged back into the web woven by the master storyteller.

To Marquez and Follett..

Productivity...

2006-02-15T00:45:00.000-06:00

I am confused as to what productivity means..? If you sit in your office 9 hours a day doing simulations and reading papers and in general, working, and you get the same kind of results as someone else does by sitting 2 hours orkutting and sleeping and drinking and enjoying time with friends, and then work for half an hour, which one is productive...?

I mean, if the latter guy worked a lot more and consistently, would he get any results at all.. My premise is that the brainstorms and the quickness of work is basically born from the freshness with which he goes into working, while for the former, it is something you do regular. I also beleive that staying off your work for longer durations allow you to build a different perspective of the problems as well...

Okay guys, this is not my latest excuse for not visiting my lab 3 days in a row and then working a couple of hours the fourth day.. but then maybe it does justify it...

Harlequinade

2006-02-14T12:42:00.000-06:00

No, it's not the latest fruit-juice-drink from Sam's Choice.

Harlequinade was a popular play in mid-18th century England. The story of Harlequin, the comical servant who fell in love with Columbine, his lord's daughter. Harlequin used to wear a dress of patches and rags which evolved into a colorful Motley. In some versions, Harlequin could do magical tricks. (Picture : Harlequin and Columbine)

But then, why am I speaking of Harlequin? Coz he inspired Agatha Christie to create her character Mr. Harley Quin, who mysteriously seemed to appear out of nowhere. Mr. Satterthwaite who was a connoisseur of life meets Mr. Quin accidentally on occasions, several times. The very first time, as Satterthwaite is with friends ona rainy night discussing the possible reasons for the suicide of a friend, when Mr. Quin walks in. He prompts each one expertly to bring out, in bits and pieces, a complete and sensible explanation, and a true one at that. The mysterious character whjo always brought with him shades of VIBGYOR, works wonders with psychology, leading you to wonder whether he is for real as stories go on. The final short Story in the collectionis especially brilliant, with Mr. Quin acting as the Harlequin and dancing perfectly with Columbine, and leading to a wonderful conclusion of the series.

Agatha Christie states in the preface that she loved Mr. Quin and I guess she did, a lot more than Mr. Poirot...

I spy by... Ken Follett, Robert ludlum, Frederick Forsyth and Leonardo Da Vinci

2006-02-13T20:22:00.000-06:00

Alright, on a sidenote I go into espionage, as in fiction. Well, when does an espionage story or for that matter any fiction get followers. It's when it gets inch-inch close to the real life. The author puts in a lot of stuff that is real and then adds a little bit of fiction. ( Again, on a parallel, I must mention The Da vinci code had so much of fact and fiction mixed up that organizations brought out books and websites just to defy some of the stuff in the book).. But coming back, what else would make a spy novel tick..

Smooth storytelling keeping the reader aware of the timeline works. The book in picture here is The Fourth Protocol. Forsyth often goes.. 'While xxx was discussing this with his boss yyy in Moscow, a man in a blue suit was walking out of the Liberty Intl Airport ....' which gives you a real good idea of time at which stuff happens. Speaking of time, the worst representation of time I have ever found was in 'Death comes as the end' by Agatha Christie where she goes '17th day of inundation..'. Alright, if AC is listening, it's good to be historically correct, but then we have another calendar!

A reader also loves a perfect spy. One who leaves no traces. who's not afraid to kill at the slightest doubt. There's the spy who makes only one mistake - 'The Needle' by Ken Follett in which Die Nadel hesitates to kill the woman at the end coz of emotional reasons (spies are human too) which seals his fate..

A successful infiltrator is loved at times too, especially when his cause seems just. In 'The man from St. Petersburg', the man kills his target at the end, thus succeeding but failing to achieve his mission.

Quick-moving and smooth action is good, too.. as Robert Ludlum shows. The Bourne series apart, The Chancellor Manuscript and The Apocalypse Watch make good reading.

Being an Agatha Christie fan, I must mention 'The Big Four' and 'The Passenger to Frankfurt'. I call these Agatha's orphans, for there are no takers for these in the Agatha Christie mystery fan world, nor the espionage fiction followers club. The reason is obvious in that Agatha Christie's cardboard characters did not quite capture the imagination of the readers..

That reminds me of Harley Quin, a character of Agatha I love a lot. More on Mr. quin in my next post.

~~cloud9ine

Yo - Yo..

2006-02-10T01:29:00.001-06:00

The last two days have been totally unproductive. And then today evening, I got started with a homework that was due yesterday. And then, having figured out everything, my eyes got hooked onto a Yo-Yo. For the uninitiated, a yo-yo is a circular disc of something that hangs from a partly elastic string. You throw that down and it comes right back up, just like Bungee jumping.

Back to the point, the yo-yo got me seriously euphoric and elated, literally on cloud nine. And to top it off, this yoyo had a red LED that lit up when you threw it. The yoyo took me back to my childhood and to things I had.

A tricycle, a stand-up scooter, something you pulled around on a string, a gun that fired six balls. Guess what, childhood was fun. At least, you didn't have to do research, you did not have deadlines and you didn't have an advisor. And then you could play with all sorts of toys and no one would tell you you weren't acting your age..

Maybe, I'll just tell everyone I am 9....

vegetable marrows and neural networks..

2006-02-05T02:25:00.000-06:00

Alright, here I have x on one hand and I'm hoping to find y from it and I don't know what they have to do with each other. Oh I forgot, I am doing research. So now, in research, when you've already spent the best part of your last 4 months to see what, if anything, these two have to do with each other and trying to figure out how I can get y from x.

So finally, what do you do...? Like James says, you throw a Neural Network at it and see if it sticks... What if even that doesn't stick..? Hard luck.. You're out man.. Go home, eat, drink, sleep, but don't ever do research again. And yes, this will go on my Resume.. Wasted 4 months on Blah Blah Blah.. on the side, I have been told that it's people who do this crazy neural network throwing without a proper algorithm at every stupid problem they come across that give neural networks a bad name. Frankly, I don't care if I add to the list by my bowling job as long as the network solves my problem, which it doesn't.. Doom!

So, why the title..? Coz the throwing a neural network image courtesy James reminds me of Poirot in a fury ripping vegetable marrows out of the ground and throwing them around in Agatha Christie's masterpiece 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'.

That gives me an idea. Since my work seems to have come to Zilch, I might as well go grow vegetable marrows in, say, India...But then, I'll first need to find out what a vegetable marrow is.. Naa too much work... :)