Ten Revolutionary Computers

Ten Revolutionary Computers

For dev guys..

Did you know that 'Developer' is an anagram for 'Loved Peer', 'Lord Peeve', 'Redevelop' and 'Deep Lover'?
[Courtesy: Internet Anagram Server]
[And as far as I can tell, at least the second and third 'fit' :-p]

Terse descriptions..

Opinion column of SciAm this month has these terse descriptions for movies.
A few gems..
Predator: The future governor of California and the future governor of Minnesota go hiking.
Close encounters of the third kind: Frail aliens visit earth in search of friends, music and possibly gym equipment.

And I thought, Bollywood should not stay behind. So here is my version of terse descriptions for Bollywood (though I realize that only the first one is necessary and sufficient).

Jaane Tu ya Jaane na: Boy loves girl.
Mohabbatein: Three boys love three girls.
Dil Maange More: One boy loves three girls simultaneously.
Aitraaz: Two girls love one boy simultaneously.
Waqt: Father loves son.
Taare zamin par: Father does not love son.
Race: Everybody loves money.
Gunda: I love this movie!!!

Any contributions???

A few cool things about Hancock..

Flying in bermuda..
The most important thing. I mean, flying is cool, but it won't be much fun if you have to do it in Superman/Spiderman tights or worse still, in the tin suite of Ironman. Hancock gets to fly in his bermuda, so it's cool at multiple levels.

No uniform..
Every kid (and many adults) hate uniforms. But Superheroes have to have one. Not so with Hancock, wear whatever you want, but get the job done (it's one of startup fundas too) (Plus it helps with self esteem. I mean, What self esteem would you be left with if you had to wear your undergarments on your pants, Superman estyle?)

No identity crisis..
Another widespread problem among Superheroes. They don't want to reveal who they are, so they (have to) go to great lengths to hide their identity. But everybody knows Hancock (he won't even wear a mask), so he can concentrate on kicking enemy butt.

No girlfriend..
Yes it's a boon. Almost all superhero gf get themselves in trouble and our SH has to 'make a choice'. No problems if you don't have a gf.

Flying in bermuda..
Err, I guess I already covered that :-p.

GMail knows who you really are..

You might already know that GMail ignores dot characters and the case of letters in your email ID. So johnsmith@gmail.com, John.Smith@gmail.com and jOhNS.mith@gmail.com point to the same mailbox.
Try this for a bit of amusement,

Send a mail to your GMail account inserting a few dots in your id (or try changing capitalization).
e.g. if your mail id is abcd@gmail.com, try sending a mail to A.bc.D@gmail.com

Go to your GMail inbox. You will see that you have received the mail you just sent.

Click on 'Show Details' for this mail and observe the 'To' field.

Humor is..

Humor is just another defense against the universe.
-Mel Brooks

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
-Max Eastman

Humor is reason gone mad.
-Groucho Marx

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
-Christopher Morley

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
-Leo Rosten

Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
-Mark Twain

Love Story 2050: A survivor's tale

Yes, I am a survivor. Now I always knew I was tough, I have survived movies like 'Welcome' (can you believe that?), but only after watching 'Love Story 2050' I realized in boodhi haddiyo me kitni jaan hai...

So this was supposed to be 'A star is born' movie. But the opening sequence makes it clear, wohi purana item, busy baap who loves his car more than his son. Now the director knew that janata does not like such scenes anymore, so he tries to finish it quickly and ends up with totally inconsistent dialogs and stuff.

So here is our hero who is also the leader of his group (of course), so he goes on a vacation (isn't that inconsistent? these are a survivors bruises buddy). And he meets the heroine and makes her fall in less time than it takes to make a sandwich. But kismat strikes and before he could do iqarar, the heroine returns home. And our hero does not know where she went. So he goes to the railway station. Now a titali (butterfly), who minds her own business also happens to visit the station. And minding her own business she sits on a board, but guess what, the board has the name of the gaon where our heroine went. Now if you don't like this explanation, here is the bollywood version, the titali was a sandes from god. Choose one (or both..).

So our hero goes and does iqarar, but where does he stay? Of course there is this scientist uncle modeled after Einstein and who believes in astrology (I mean, what do you have against Science?). So he retired from NASA and built a space machine, I mean Time machine. But one little piece is missing (but thanks to our heroine who accidentally rubs out part of an equation and scribbles some garbage in the place which turns out to be missing link) HAHAHAHAHA...

But kismat strikes again and our heroine gets run over by a bus. So you might guess that the hero goes in the past and saves her. No sir! Thanks to complex space time warps, superstrings chaos and strange quarks, our heroine ends up in 2050 (how? the poor audience are too dumb to understand). So our hero goes to the future. And the future is full of Ads, I tell ya. Robots display Sun Microsystems logo and LUX has big neon sign on top of a skyscraper. And our hero is such a stud that even robots fall for him (real AI, hmm).

But a Bollywood flick is never complete without a stupid heroine's mother and an even stupider villain. So for completeness the movie has both. They have nothing to do in particular, so they spend their time with their all-too-well-known hobbies, beti ki shaadi and world domination respectively. And our hero both impresses the would be saasu-ma and gives the villain kutte ki maut and also returns to 2008 with the heroine. Happys endings.

Hey, but the audience did not end up happy. (Or did they? the movie ends is reason enough)..

Mohsin in Wonderland..

A photo from our recent Malshej trip (Better than any and all SFX).

It's about living..

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
-Randy Pausch
If you can dream it, you can do it.
-Walt Disney
I do not believe in a no win scenario.
-Captain Kirk, Star Wars

I recently finished reading 'The last lecture' by Randy Pausch. And I am moved, I must say. Randy, a CMU professor, was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2006. The book is about his last lecture. Randy talks about how he realized his childhood dreams (like flying in 0g and becoming a Disney Imagineer) and helped others realize their dreams. Through simple stories he offers invaluable lessons, with his courage and integrity shining throughout. It's an amazing inspiration to see this guy embracing life with all his might (and introspecting on what I am doing). As Randy puts it, it's not really about dying, it's about living. His scientific approach towards the disease, his conscious efforts to leave a personal and professional legacy, his courageous embrace of the inevitable..

I can go on and on, but I really don't think I can tell you just how good the book is. Grab it at first chance. Whatever it is we do, whatever our interests, we can never stop learning from it.

Journey was the reward..

No, I am not thinking of changing the name of my blog. The 'journey' I am referring to is my Malshej trip on Sunday. Now, Malshej is just a ghat, a road, there was no specific destination we were headed towards, but the trip turned out to be so much fun. Hence, journey was the reward.

Our actual plan was to start the journey at 6:30 am on Sunday. But one guy cribbed about getting up so early (no surprise!). The guy turned out to be our driver (surprise, surprise!). So we rescheduled for 8:00 am. And we pretty much made it on time (surprisingly I must say!).

Now, I don't believe for a moment that my nonexistent writing skills can do justice to the beauty of the place. But I may as well try. Beautiful valleys, waterfalls, vast landscapes, you name it. Plus it was raining, not the heavy rains, just enough sprinkling to cheer even the most despondent. MTDC has a beautiful resort on the way (but the food was overpriced).

The travel was also a lot of fun (The only downside being that the other members of the group had to listen to an almost unending stream of my jokes). Discussions ensued on everything from software to our really weird dreams. I also a learned a new game, it is called '20 questions'. So one guy thinks of a famous personality and other guys try to deduce his/her name by asking questions (20 at max). The first guy can only give Yes/No answers. It's pretty interesting to form questions that reduce the possible alternatives as much as possible. I would have liked to put up a few photos here, but we managed to break the only camera we had, poor us!

We ended the journey with ice-creams at Naturals. A sweet end indeed! Let me end by saying this one more time,

Journey is the Reward.

Update: Photos courtesy Ashwin.

Blabber time..

This is hardly news but surely fun. Here is a link to Computer Languages Benchmark Game, the idea is to compare performance of different programming languages relative to each other. What follows are some of my casual, biased, ill-informed, overgeneralized observations (that's enough warning I guess)..

The Intel C++ compiler outperforms GNU C/C++ and even Intel C compiler. Is it just an experimental glitch or is C++ more amenable to optimization?

Comparing just the execution speed, Python Psyco (score 9.22) leaves standard Python biting dust (score 26.66). So JIT seems to be a big win. The results are impressive but not so much if you factor in the memory usage (scores 8.56 and 13.79 respectively). Similar pattern emerges for other JIT languages like Lua, but the differences are less pronounced.

Pascal comes very near to C/C++ in terms of performance, but nobody seems to use it these days (not even in teaching). Similar is the case with D (and this considering that some very smart people seem to be pushing it).

JVM languages except Java (Spidermonkey Javascript, JRuby) tend to cluster towards the bottom of the scorecard. Maybe their ultimate aim is not speed. Again, the differences become more pronounced if you neglect memory usage and just concentrate on speed. But maybe it has more to do with Static vs Dynamic languages than with JVM as such.

For nearly half of the languages mentioned, I can confidently claim that not a single line of their code has ever materialized before me. Reminds me of the frog in the pond.

So what is the lesson here? I don't know (But the game is fun).

Memory issues..

When it comes to remembering birthdays, I might easily be The Single Most Hopeless Guy around. No, really. And that includes my own birthday. I clearly remember not remembering my own birthday at least on one occasion, but it has happened more than once with birthdays other than mine. It's embarrassing and I don't like being labeled someone who doesn't care (who likes?). But it seems to give that kinda impression. I did some soul searching on this, but apart from my bad memory (which looks like a lame excuse, I know) nothing came out. It needs some more effort on my part, I guess. So wish me luck. And wish you a very happy birthday (in case (a) It's your birthday today and (b) I forgot).