Highlights: How I won a bunch of cookies..

I had never won a bunch of cookies before (except from a webserver). That happened yesterday, and consequently, I believe my excitement hubris over it would be quite understandable.

The occasion was Diwali party at office, and a new game was proposed, Dumb C++. Contrary to what I thought, there were no technical questions. A homegrown (or rather officegrown) variation on 'guess the movie' theme, and a lot fun too.. Teams as usual, but here the whole team enacts the movie and one guy guesses it. Should have been called Dumb 3 (if why 3 is your question, ~ is the answer).. So here is Sandip enacting a movie for yours truly..

Your's truly doesn't get it, so Rahul jumps in.. Look at the two photos carefully and you can guess the movie name (or cheat and take a look at Zarin's blog).
Tick....
Tick....
Tick....
[Actually there was no real ticking, and if there was, nobody heard it amidst all the shouting].
But I finally got it. Yippeee!!!


Winning is sweet, especially when the prize is cookies :p. As usual 'loser' teams wanted their share (which in a fair world is zero (I would say that now, wouldn't I? :p)). Here with the teammates and the trophy.

And finally Rasna.. The drink of the Winners

There was much besides cookie-winning at the party, superb food being one prominent item. For a less narcissistic (and more complete) account, see Zarin's blog.

Enjoy!!


[This post is tagged under GhumnaFirna, cuz the party definitely brought everybody out of their respective shells].

टॉलस्टॉय: एक माणूस

Just finished reading a biograpgy of Leo Tolstoy (टॉलस्टॉय: एक माणूस, सुमति देवस्थळे). My knowledge of Tolstoy so far ended with the name 'War and Peace'. But here is a story of great drama, of the highest in human values and also the lowest in human nature. The name of Tolstoy is more famous for his literary work, what is less well known (it seems to me) is that the philosphy of non violent, truth based opposition that was so successful in giving us our freedom first originated with Tolstoy (Gandhiji also considered himself his follower). While rote learning and strict discipline were the norm of the educational system, his come-and-go-when-you-like school, with the responsibility of keeping the attention of students being that of the teachers proved a successful reform, and many of its principles were later adopted by modern educational systems. He did not feel that the textbooks were good enough, so he wrote his own, which are still read. He was a promoter of education of the elderly, but when we noticed that the literate among those still hardly had anything good to read, he wrote his own books for them too. In later life he became a champion of reform of and for the poor. He accepted God but rejected all the superstitions and rituals. His compassion made him a shining ray of hope for the whole world.

But Tolstoy's life was also one of paradox. He was often disappointed in his experiments, because the same people he wanted to help were not sufficiently patient, or focused on short term gains. He preached restraint, but was not very successful in his own life with this (as his very frank diary entries show). He preached love for all humanity, but his focus on high ideals led to ignorance of his children (the story of Gandhiji and his son Harilal has some parallels here). He rejected all compromises about his principles, so he was unable to see their practical limits and chose to ignore very valid objections. Towards the end of his life he was torn between the demands of his publicity hungry, materialistic and (later) hysterical wife, and those of his followers who wanted Tolstoy to live all his principles to satisfy their idealogical needs, but forgetting he was human too. And this son of rich landowners who voluntarily rejected all comforts, died a tragic death beacuse of it. But in the end all this, the strengths and the shortcomings, the triumphs and the defeats together make us human. And the book does a commendable of job of portraying the human side of Tolstoy. As for me, I am glad to have read and learned from this book. Maybe I'll pick War and Peace in my next trip to landmark!

Re: Documentation missing

Writing documents is considered by many all to be a boring activity. But they are useful, and I learned this the hard way. A certain amount of documentation always helps, no matter how great your code is. (If you disagree, you are probably thinking about documents as those written using MS Word and seven different fonts. Not necessarily. Remember, a manpage is also a document. And if you can code without RTFMing, congratulations, You are God, so see if you can do something about World Peace). Anyway, as I was saying, good documentation is very important for any project. But as can be seen by worthy souls still lurking around here (I am hoping there are still some left), this aspect of the all important project called life (also known by the alias Journey) is being increasingly ignored (The last patch was released more than three weeks ago) by its lead developer (that is yours truly) (and despite claims to the contrary, see here). Of course he is not the only developer, lots of contributors being vital to the development, but bearing the ultimate responsibility for how the project turns out, it is also his responsibility to provide relevant documentation. So here is he announcing that even though the powerful bugs of boredom, laziness and nihilism (present in module cerebral_cortex) have not been entirely eradicated, they have been tamed enough to allow for at least a few releases of the missing documentation. The team (that is your's truly again, with all his alter egos) sincerely hopes that those interested in the project will find the documentation useful (in at least some sense of the word).

Enjoy!!