A year passes

It is like an early morning journey in winter. Dew is everywhere. In the rear view mirror, you can just see a vague reflection. You know it is you, but that is all. A little effort yields all kinds of funny effects. And with each passing kilometer, features begin to emerge. They are your own and you know it, but a patient exmination might still surprise you. And so it is with a passing year. With  triumphs and defeats, hysteria and depression, and everything in betwern, and the ragbag of bittersweet experiences, the reflection in the mirror of mind is a bit clearer. And the journey continues.

Wish you the best in eveything in the new year.

Surprisingly common errors

From the Glibc manual (v2.16, chapter 2: Error codes)

EGREGIOUS: You did what?
EIEIO: Go home and have a glass of warm,dairy-fresh milk.

Do check your errno.

The sliding window

The window starts at zero. With the first steps in this world, as one learns to talk, to read, (for some) to think, the window starts filling. Experiences,  memories, knowledge, all crowd up. Awareness grows, the window expands, sometimes seemingly exponentially. But like in all protocols, there is a limit to how much it can grow. Once that point is reached, the window starts sliding. The dear people and loved books of earlier times just disappear, because they are no longer in the window. But the window is advancing. New is constantly taking place of the old, so one rarely notices. But then there is a limit to this as well. The window reaches a point at which it can neither grow, nor advance. It can go nowhere but shrink. Things seemingly disappear, but nothing is taking their place; the simple reason is there is no space in the window now. The window gets smaller and smaller, faster and faster, and there is comes a point when, suddenly, it snaps shut.

The transfer is complete. Another window starts at zero.

12.12.12

A naive curiosity, but it got me wondering. The last time it occurred general relativity was still in the future, quantum mechanics had barely begun, people would have laughed at the prospect of one, let alone two, world wars, my great grandfather was a hardworking farmer in Mysore province of British India, calculating machines could barely challenge abacus, and the word computer still meant a person.
So what will it be like the next time? Will we have a unified theory, quantum computers or maybe flying cars? Will we have solved Riemann Hypothesis or P=NP or both? Will we have fixed global warming and the energy crisis? Will the free internet exist, or is it its destiny to remain an accident between naive curiosities? Will we have a bit more social justice? And will there be someone wondering of the same things? I think at least the last one has an affirmative answer. It will be interesting as it has always been, and though I won't be there, I am sure glad to be here.