Oops I did it again..

Ye chaar kilo ki book jab kisipe padti hai na, to wo uthta nahi hai, uth jata hai.

-Anonymous

Bought a literal tome worthy of the above quote today :-). I plan to survive it though. It's an illustrated World History volume, which means there are many, many color pictures. Yaay! Actually I was in Crossword for Robots (I've been reading Foundation as you know, which has aroused my interest in Robots and Empire), but not one book from the series was to be seen. Wandered to the Non Fiction shelf as usual, and met the new friend. Now only one question remains, just how am I gonna carry it home? :p

On a related note, it seems that Technology Review has got an India edition now. Haven't gone through yet, but am looking forward to some interesting reading.

Enjoy!!

The old me

"When I look at you, I see something I haven't seen in 20 years. I see me."

-Gary Winston to Milo Hoffman (Antitrust)

Like most kids, television was a big part of my childhood. I can say in all seriousness that I could watch it endlessly. The first TV set we had in our home was a 14'' black and white salora (anyone remember that company?). I was six or seven years old then. The thing I remember most clearly is getting up really early (like 4 AM) with Papa to watch India's tour of Australia. And the disappointment when India lost a match by a single run. Later came a 21'' BPL. Cable was all the rage then. ZeeTV was in its prime, and Sony and its siblings were yet to be born. Disney hour (6:30PM on weekdays on ZeeTV, Alladin and Darkwing duck), Fox Kids (same time, but on Star Plus, esp. Spiderman), Ghostbusters (8:30AM, Sony), these are some of my most cherished memories. And Shaktiman (DD1, Saturday 11:30 AM). I remember Alien encounters on Discovery and Aahat on Sony. Movies from that time have their own distinct flavor. The likes of Waqt hamara hai and Raghuveer. I was heavy on cricket at the time too, remember following the '96 world cup with a fondness hardly matched by anything else since. Aah! those were the times!

This came to an abrupt end when I left home after 10th. My room did not have a TV. Yes, in holidays, I still used to spend as much time as possible with my beloved Idiot box; but my interest dwindled slowly. The exponential growth of the stupidity of the idiot box was a reason. The most prominent part was played by the rise of so called news channels. Most are worthy of the title abuse channel, and I won't say this is my humble opinion. Then came the sans bahu dramas, and then the current crop of ultra stupid reality shows. I found myself unable to stand them. I was happy without a TV.

And one fine day, the old friend returned. There was not much communication in the beginning, but slowly, and this is the now, my interest is returning. I learnt to appreciate the creativity of, most of all, ads. Take zoozoo for example, or the sleepwell matress, or the famous daddoo ad. You can have a 1TB harddisk, but suddenly discovering your favorite movie on TV feels almost as good as bumping into an old friend. And things like Tom n Jerry are not gonna lose their appeal, ever. I am enjoying it. I enjoy the burst of memories it brings, relive the carelessness of the days, feel in my bones the enthusiasm unmarred by harsh realities..

Does saying all this makes me old? See, I am not complaining.

Enjoy!!

Timescale

Fling your arms wide in an expansive gesture to span all of evolution from its origin at your left fingertip to today at your right fingertip. All the way across your midline to well past your right shoulder, life consists of nothing but bacteria. Many celled, invertebrate life flowers somewhere around your right elbow. The dinosaurs originate in the middle of your right palm, and go extinct around your last finger joint. The whole story of Homo sapiens and our predecessor Home erectus is contained in the thickness of one nail clipping. As for recorded history; as for the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Jewish patriarchs, the dynasties of Pharohs, the legions of Rome, the Christian fathers, the laws of the Medes and Persians which never change; as for Troy and the Greeks, Helen and Achilles and Agamemmon dead; as for Napolean and Hitler, the Beatles and Bill Clinton, they and everyone that knew them are blown away in the dust from one light stroke of a nail file.

From Unweaving the Rainbow
by Richard Dawkins

So the point? It's simple.

Aanewala pal..
janewala hai..
ho sake to isame..
zindagi bita do..
pal jo ye aanewala hai..

Enjoy!!

A journey begins..

Finally got my hands upon Prelude to Foundation yesterday (Thanks to Abhishek). I have wanted forever to read the Foundation novels, but strangely, the first book I read was the 6th one (Foundation and Earth) in the 7 part series. Prelude to Foundation completes the collection of first five books and I have already started with it. I am very excited to be reading the series (though I plan to take it slowly). I will keep you posted of how it goes.

Enjoy!!

The most persistent principles..

The most persistent principles of the universe are accident and error.

Dune

Took my first step into the world of Dune. The book repulsed me initially, in part I guess because of the number of new words (it does not help that they are so hard to pronounce) introduced, the likes of Gom Jabbar and Kwisatz Haderach. I used to start it, and after a few pages allow myself to get distracted. And then after a long gap, again start from page 1. This happened three or four times. Finished it yesterday only.

Dune is a story set in the far future, where humanity has reverted back to Emperors and Dukes instead of Democracy, and to blades and shields instead of projectile weapons. Why and how this change occurred is not said (it might be there in other books of the series). Dune is the name of the desert planet where most of the story takes place. This planet has an unusual ecology, with sandworms hundreds of meters in length and very very little water. The techniques the inhabitants use to conserve and reuse water, every last drop of it, makes for interesting reading. The narrative is lucid, and creates powerful emotions (even extreme repulsion in a few places, with the sheer amount of mumbo-jumbo. But only in a very few places). Especially the workings of human psyche, hidden motives and their apparent perceptions. And the role chance plays. I would have liked more on worms though.

Many thanks go to Vinaya for sharing the book with me. I think you will be able to enjoy it even if you are not a die hard SF fan. And a note for would be readers, the book will make a lot of sense after you have read Appendix 3 (on Bene Gesserit motives), so don't miss it.

Enjoy!!

Now playing..

g++ -c -Iliblua -Ilibdnet-stripped/include -Ilibpcap -Inbase -Insock/include -g -O2 -Wall -fno-strict-aliasing -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DNMAP_NAME=\"Nmap\" -DNMAP_URL=\"http://nmap.org\" -DNMAP_PLATFORM=\"i686-pc-linux-gnu\" -DNMAPDATADIR=\"/usr/local/share/nmap\" -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 nse_pcrelib.cc -o nse_pcrelib.o
nse_pcrelib.cc: In function `void Lpcre_push_substrings(lua_State*, const char*, pcre2*)':
nse_pcrelib.cc:176: `PCRE_INFO_NAMECOUNT' undeclared (first use this function)
nse_pcrelib.cc:176: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in.)
nse_pcrelib.cc:179: `PCRE_INFO_NAMETABLE' undeclared (first use this function)
nse_pcrelib.cc:180: `PCRE_INFO_NAMEENTRYSIZE' undeclared (first use this function)
make[1]: *** [nse_pcrelib.o] Error 1

I don't have to tell you,
What this is all about,
Cause baby half the fun,
Is in us figuring it all out.

-from "Don't turn off the lights"
by Enrique Iglesias.

Enjoy!!

Mavalsrushti

Just returned from a fun filled trip to 'Mavalsrushti', about an hour's drive from Pune. This was a team outing, and I am always a bit sceptical of such corporate sounding terms, team outings involving team building activities. Am I glad my scepticism was unfounded? The trip turned out be immensely fun filled, and a great refresher.

We were to report at office at 7:30AM, from where a bus was arranged to pick us up. I made it on the exact right time, only to find only one soul already there. A bit later one more soul appeared, and that was all for a seemingly long interval of time. There were chats, as usual, and I utilized the time by calling a few friends and informing them that "everybody's here, just waiting for you, so make haste".

The journey began at about 8:15AM, and the bus was quite full as almost everyone I knew from office was coming. The journey was overfull with jokes, on anything and everything (and some even not suitable for public listening ;-). The road is a zig zag, so the bags kept falling down (the word was 'saamaan', and it was probably the most fertile source for jokes). We reached probably by 9:30AM. A nashta of garma-garam upma and pohe was waiting for us. And then gavati chaha. Pure Bliss..

After the khana-peena, we started wandering. There was a waterfall on the map which was to be our first destination. We eventually did find it. Playing in water (any kind) is an activity which will never lose it's appeal to me. Sitting under the powerful current of water, where you barely can keep your eyes open.. Feels awesome. This was accompanied by slips, falls, photos and a lot of jokes. Later we started our upward journey (the path to the waterfall is a descent), where we discovered this swimming pool. The water was not too good, but not too bad either. And the enthusiasm was overflowing. There were races (running and swimming. yes running, the pool was quite shallow), throwing people into the pool (one of my favorite activity. But let me also tell you that I was thrown as well), and later frisbee and volleyball. Reminded me of the cherished Konkan trip.

This continued till the lunch time. I was literally shaking from chill when I came out (discovered this when I noticed the cup of tea in my hand was almost spilling). The two (or probably three) cups of tea saved me. We returned for lunch, but I ate very little, feeling not very hungry. After lunch, there was gapshap, but I, with a few others, soon found ourselves out for a walk. A new round of photographs, bamboo fights and of course jokes followed. We returned for tea and soon began our return journey. I spent the time in a half sleep mode.

'Mavalsrushti' is a good place for a one day trip. I don't think any photos have been uploaded as of now, but they'll appear soon. Also you might spot some mistakes or even gaps in the temporal flow, because to be honest, my brain is not at its optimal at this point in time, but I wanted to write when all the fun and memories were still fresh.

Enjoy!!

A life in Science

Darwin needs no introduction. His theory of evolution by natural selection is taught to all schoolchildren (yep, it was in my course too, Grade VIII, IIRC; what I learned is a moot point though). Coming back, recently I read a biography of Darwin by John Gribbin and Michael White. It was a good, informative, albeit a bit dry in places, read. Darwin, born into a wealthy family, was an undirected youth. The attempts of his father to push him in medicine, and later theology, failed. It was the trip abroad HMS Beagle that really gave him direction (His official title was as Ship's naturalist, but the real reason he was taken was that the earlier Captain of the ship had committed suicide while on a similar voyage, and the current Captain wanted some intelligent company to preserve his sanity). He first made his reputation in Geology (which was the hot science of his day), and it was his findings that really established Lyell's theories in Britain. He developed the theory evolution relatively early, but sat over it for nearly 20 years, before finally publishing 'The origin of species' (The full name was 'An abstract of an essay on the origin of species and variation through natural selection'. Yes it's quite mouthful) in 1859. Alfred Russell Wallace came up with similar conclusions at about the same time, but in a rare delightful incident, Lyell was successful in having both agree to a joint announcement. Science is full of disputes over priority, the most famous being between Leibnitz and Newton, the independent inventors of Calculus, so this came as a real surprise. Darwin was not an eloquent speaker, so the task of defending his theory fell to his supporters (T.H.Huxley, also known as 'Darwin's Bulldog', being the most famous. It was him who coined the term 'agnostic' btw. And a magazine launched to spread word of the new science by Huxley with others became 'Nature' in 1869. Check this to see how it stands among the competition :). But Darwin was far from being a secluded soul, toiling alone, as is seen from his successful investments, and the way he planned for supporters. Born a believer, his faith slowly eroded, and it was the death of his daughter Annie which turned him into an ardent atheist. He was wrong about quite a few things, like the nature of heredity (he believed in something called pangensis), and the origin of human races, but most of his work stands as tall as ever today.

The book has a few downsides, the flow of narrative jumps to and fro in time, and I was able to spot a few unnecessary repetitions. Also there is very little on the theory of evolution itself, I had expected a more thorough discussion. Still, worth a read!

It's funny !!

It's funny when you amuse yourself. I dare say my ability to procrastinate is quite well known in my friend circle, but sometimes I stretch it too far, almost to the breaking point. I am talking about the dent. Now I am sure nobody remembers what it was, so here is a refresher. I could not help but smile while rereading that post. I had said it'll take at least two days, it took ~ 125 (means I was right ;-). I kept inventing new reasons, one after another (few of them quite entertaining, going by the amount of laughter they engendered) before finally taking the plunge last week. For one full week (when the bike was with the dent-ist), I had to walk to and from the office (this was used as another reason-to-procrastinate in the past). I enjoy walks, but there were moments in the last week when I hated it. At last today, after much ado, I got my bike back. And the dent is gone. Not that I am gonna miss it that much.

Enjoy!!

Strange Beauty

Our knowledge of fundamental particle physics contains not one fruitful idea that does not carry the name of Murray Gell-Mann.

-Richard Feynman

The boy in the photo is Murray, of course. They say a picture speaks a thousand word, so I suggest you spare a moment to take a good look. The intensity leaps out of the picture..

Recently I finished reading 'Strange Beauty', the biography of Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann by George Johnson. Now you would expect the guy to be smart, being a Nobel Laureate, but read the book; you probably couldn't have imagined someone could be this smart. Even Sheldon might seem like an understatement ;-). He earned his PhD at 21 from MIT, and did some phenomenal work on cosmic rays, introducing the notion of strangeness, then went on to discover what he called the Eightfold way, a classification scheme for hadrons, and the quark model (he also introduced the notion of quark colors). Some of these things were independently discovered by others (like quarks by George Zweig) at about the same time, but he enjoyed a "two-decade reign as emperor of elementary particles" as Sheldon Glashow (Nobel Laureate, Physics, 1979) once put it. And here's a little demystification. He did not actually borrow the word 'quark' from James Joyce. He made the sound ('kwork') himself, just borrowed the spelling.

The book is balanced in its treatment of his life and his work. Many of the basics of particle physics are explained in an approachable way. Also well explored is the personal side of the man, like his perfectionist nature, which made him correct pronounciations of people's own names. Or his insurmountable writing block, because of which he failed to deliver his official Nobel lecture for printing. Or the seemingly cruel way in which he seemed to treat those around him sometimes. But all this makes him more human, not less.

Good biographies teach you something about their subject, but the best ones are those which also teach you something about life or yourself. This one fits the bill. Highly recommended!!