1283: my Socratic mom

Prelude

Euthyphro by Plato is a short dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro which takes place near? the court where  Socrates has been summoned to face charges . The dialogue constantly reminds me of Borat at various occasions. You could read it at Perseus. It is a good idea to read the tetralogy ( Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo) as one . Though considerably more though provoking than apology, I find many of the arguments really flimsy, and especially hate the habit of leaving certain questions unanswered after raising them (some how reminds me of the fairer sex)

Reflection

I dislike going shopping with women which can be considered to be a true phenotypical expression of the inheritance of the Y chromosome. In any case considering it is easier to comply and accompany and thereby expend lesser time than arguing and accompanying. This time things were better.

Following is an excerpt of conversation which takes place in a tiny restaurant in our tiny town.

Mom: I think the milk shake at home is much better than this one.
Moi: Honestly, I believe this is better and besides it is very difficult to evaluate the relative "good"ness of things which are ones own creation. Don't you think people who make things inherently would feel that it is good , considering of course that they put in a sincere effort according to their own standards.
Mom: It would feel good only if it is good.
Moi (stunned since I just read Euthyphro around 9 hours earlier) : hmmm.. Or is it that "good IS because it feels good" ?
Mom: hmm.. that is an interesting thought.

Then I go on about Euthyphro and Socrates and how it is fascinating that certain ideas that people keep thinking about remain constant over so many thousands of years. (blah blah)

( later.. )Mom: I still think the milk shake at home is better.

Epilogue

To be honest, the actual discussion in Euthyphro which is more concerned about beloved being beloved because it is loved or more pertinently holy being holy because it is beloved by gods or gods loving it because it is holy. As usual i find ethical discussions exceeding boring, eventhough, to some extent I guess that even if Euthyphro is filled with discussion about piety, injustice, and holiness, i find the questions raised concerning the state of being or becoming much much more pertinent and relevant (albeit pointless). To quote Socrates-bhai himself (in Plato-bhaisahab's words)

..Then one does not see it because its a seen thing, but, on the contrary, it is a seen thing because one sees it; and one does not lead it because it is a led thing, but it is a led thing because one leads it; and one does not carry it because it is a carried thing, but it is a carried thing because one carries it. Is it clear, Euthyphro, what I am trying to say? I am trying to say this, that if anything becomes or undergoes, it does not become because it is in a state of becoming, but it is in a state of becoming because it becomes, and it does not undergo because it is a thing which undergoes, but because it undergoes it is a thing which undergoes; or do you not agree to this?

1283: Climbing

Introduction
This has been my first 'free' end-of-the-year in a long long time. Eventhough it is just another completely arbitrary point of time in the 'larger' scale of things I am enjoying it quite a bit. The most interesting aspect of the past few (unblogged) weeks and months is a bit of retrospection .. well, maybe not that much.

One of the facts which did come up without even much effort was my limits. By limits I mean both physical and cognitive. I made some reference to it in here and here. Due to spending quite sometime in a very sedentary lifestyle, I guess,  I have been particularly lacking in the physical department, and was/am sure it needed immediate attention. 10 more years and no point trying to start doing a planche. As far as cognitive skills go, considering the fact that I am often lame, occassionally idiotic, and always hopelessly irrelevant, I can't see any future except for continuing my wandering a little bit more structurally.

I have already forgotten what it was that I wanted to explain, but nevertheless, my health has radically improved over the past few weeks/months. I am hopeful of making consistent progress over the next decade.

Content?

In particular I have always been impressed with climbing. Of late, quite possibly due to the retrospection, I started admiring it even more, in particular the feats of Bachar, John Gill , Dan Osman, Chris Sharma and so on. (Bachar is my favourite of course) After watching considerable amount of Dosage dvds and religiously studying Royal Robbins Rockcraft I am currently self-brainwashed enough to go to a rock climbing camp organized by Girivihar at Navi mumbai.
I am particularly impressed by John Gill. His personal website is definitely an awesome resource for braindead guys like myself. For a math professor by profession and gymnast by chance? being the greatest boulderer by choice sounds like not so bad an achievement. Maybe I would only understand the stuff he keeps rambling about ( "the inner poetry of climbing" etc.) after a long long time / never. But nevertheless. I am quite convinced about free soloing a 5.12a (god save my soul)
The picture to the right is of Dan Osman ( and yes the photo is in the right orientation)

Afterthought

Considering the fact that i am pursuing one goal, I figured why not make a bucketlist. I have never been good with TODOs . But this is the one list which I definitely want to do. around 4000 days left for many of the ones mentioned(Physical). And the best part is I have already started. The Bucketlist at a very rudimentary stage can be found here. That is one page I inted to keep updated just as meticulously(sic) as my ReadingList.

--
I should also mention that I had quite an amazing time at Kakinada with my dear good friend gurra a.k.a Gurpreet Singh Sawhney and his wonderful colleagues of Schlums Kakinada base and I would like to certify gurra's statement that "Kakinada IS a CITY" to be true.
If anybody is interested in Climbing please do come to the camp at Mumbai. It would be so much fun.

blah-010

...And you know the kind of man Chaerephon was, how impetuous in whatever he undertook. Well, once he went to Delphi and made so bold as to ask the oracle this question; and, gentlemen, don't make a disturbance at what I say; for he asked if there were anyone wiser than I. Now the Pythia replied that there was no one wiser. And about these things his brother here will bear you witness, since Chaerephon is dead. But see why I say these things; for I am going to tell you whence the prejudice against me has arisen. For when I heard this, I thought to myself: “What in the world does the god mean, and what riddle is he propounding? For I am conscious that I am not wise either much or little. What then does he mean by declaring that I am the wisest? He certainly cannot be lying, for that is not possible for him.” And for a long time I was at a loss as to what he meant; then with great reluctance I proceeded to investigate him somewhat as follows.

I went to one of those who had a reputation for wisdom, thinking that there, if anywhere, I should prove the utterance wrong and should show the oracle “This man is wiser than I, but you said I was wisest.” So examining this man—for I need not call him by name, but it was one of the public men with regard to whom I had this kind of experience, men of Athens—and conversing with him, this man seemed to me to seem to be wise to many other people and especially to himself, but not to be so; and then I tried to show him that he thought he was wise, but was not. As a result, I became hateful to him and to many of those present; and so, as I went away, I thought to myself, “I am wiser than this man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either. I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.” From him I went to another of those who were reputed to be wiser than he, and these same things seemed to me to be true; and there I became hateful both to him and to many others.

...

Now from this investigation, men of Athens, many enmities have arisen against me, and such as are most harsh and grievous, so that many prejudices have resulted from them and I am called a wise man. For on each occasion those who are present think I am wise in the matters in which I confute someone else; but the fact is, gentlemen, it is likely that the god is really wise and by his oracle means this: “Human wisdom is of little or no value.” And it appears that he does not really say this of Socrates, but merely uses my name, and makes me an example, as if he were to say: “This one of you, O human beings, is wisest, who, like Socrates, recognizes that he is in truth of no account in respect to wisdom.”

Plato, Apology

--

One of the few things I truly believe in.

[ Recently revived my GBWW effort which i had started at KGP. I personally find the clarity of Aristotle much more impressive than the rambling dialogues of Socrates/Plato ]

blah-009

If a man hasn't found something worth dying for, he isn't fit to live.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

1275: Arduino IDE on amd64

The compiled packages available at arduino.cc works out of the box only for 32-bit architecture. For 64 bit you have two options

1. Download the normal package and do a small tweaking
       Instructions for the same are available here. The explanation is for Gutsy, Hardy etc. (So they obviously work for the true-blooded Debian systems) Effectively just a simple modification to use system library version of librxtx rather than the packaged one. I am not repeating the steps in the hope that the site would be up for a long time to come (technology has a short shelf life anyway)

2. Check out the trunk from svn and build
      I prefer this solution, not only due to my great love for svn trunks, but also due to the fact that you are more upto date in terms of developments, and it somehow feels like a purer way of doing things. The building instructions are here.

sudo aptitude install sun-java5-jre sun-java5-jdk sun-java5-bin unzip zip gcc-avr avr-libc (install the necessary packages)

svn co svn://svn.berlios.de/arduino/trunk (check out the trunk.. not a small download ..really)

and then simply build.

Once you have the ide up and running things are relatively simple.  Read about the already intuitive ide elements if you want,  Blink a few times ( Arduino Hello World) and go on to further adventures (ok. guided tours).

blah-008

But all who are not fishes are soon tired of water;
And they who lack their daily bread find the day very long;
So the "Raw" comprehend not the state of the "Ripe"¹;
Therefore it behoves me to shorten my discourse.

Maulana Jalalu'ddin Muhammad I Rumi, Masnavi i Ma'navi

Drink wine This is life eternal
This is all that youth will give you
It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends
Be happy for this moment This moment is your life.

Khayyam,?

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. ²

Khayyam, Rubaiyat

--
1. Raw and ripe are terms for Men of externals and Men of heart for the Mystics.
2. Pretty much why I am so apprehensive about writing a paper :P

blah-007 Limits

We are.. in search of our limits. We start with a single step, but, none of us stops there. With determination, a step becomes a stride, and a stride becomes a leap. With discipline and desire, we push ourselves to new heights. When we rise to the challenge we discover new strengths, our muscles grow stronger, our minds more agile. The body responds performing its marvelous inner dance of life.  We share a design so magnificient, we can delight in movement itself. To find joy in the struggle to be our best - this is the adventure that defines the human spirit that drives us to the limit.

Jon Boorstin, To The Limit¹

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1. A truly amazing documentary, which I guess I found all the more interesting , since it probably gives me some reason( or excuse?) for all the crap I try to do.

1273: Dedication

Dedication (2007) by  Justin Theroux.

I watched it around February probably, and keep going back to a few lines.. like "Life is a single skip for joy" or the interminable wale of grief which I used in Not. It i just a jumbled up story of a children's story book writer and an illustrator. I don't think the movie is that great at all.. except maybe a few moments.

Any ways.. these somehow struck a chord.

From

...
Lucy: I'll have a Caesar salad and a side of mashed potatoes.
Henry: Bulimia?
Lucy: No, hungry.
Henry: You're sure? That stuff comes back up pretty fast.
Lucy: Now that I'm in you're really gonna have to try harder to knock me off my game
Henry: You see our waitress over there. She wants to be an actress. She's got that air of entitlement mixed with desperation. She doesn't have the looks though. She doesn't even have the talent, but, like an old donkey she has been at it so long, she's not fit to try to do anything else. She lies to her mom. She's embarassed to tell her about losing the job for the big Palmolive commercial, but, fingers crossed, she's got an audition for Blockbuster Videos. She had an abortion once. She still cries about it sometimes eventhough she saved that thing from an agonizing life of eating leftover mashed potatoes and watching its mom lose jobs like Palmolive commercials. She's got about three ovarian eggs left.

In addition to being less interesting and much less attractive, you are also so much more pathetic.

You are not in.

and

to

Henry: I've spent my whole life... wanting something... and doing my very best not to find it. Never even going near the places it might be... And suddenly, I've got the goddamn thing practically chained around my neck.
Lucy: What are you talking about?
Henry: You. You. You're the, you're the... You're, you're- you're the goddamn thing. Ahhh, uh. I mean... You're, you're. I can't describe you... uhh, I don't, I don't write that kind of shit, I write... You know, the people who write, who write the real books, the love books, and the poems, and even those stupid little fucking novels with the hunky assholes on the cover...
Lucy: Stop...
Henry: You know it? You know what I'm talking about? You know - you're like Princess shit! You know? Fairytales. You know what I'm saying? The million guys are after and you're blinded by your beauty kind of shit. Real big stuff. You know, that just - even, we got the dick that kidnaps you and sticks you in a cave and you're guarded by a five-headed dragon, you know and the tales of your plight are spread throughout the land and all the guys go and put on their shoes so they can see what's up and none of them have the balls to save her except for me. I would go through anything... for you. And still, there I was looking for a way not to see it. Anything. Money...
Lucy: You stupid idiot.
Henry: Yeah.
Lucy: Yes.
Henry: Yeah... big fat stupid idiot.
Lucy: I hope you're better to the next one.
Henry: No - wait...
[he digs in his bag and decides not to give her the dedication to Simone, but grabs the pebble he had given her and then thrown back onto the beach and went back for later]
Henry: It was easy to find... it's the only one like it.
Lucy: You broke my heart, Henry. I don't think you can trust people. You always have to find something wrong. I'm just... I'm sorry. I'll miss you.

and later :)

Lucy: You'll never throw it away again?

1272: Diecimila

Finally, arduino is here after 15 days from the order( around 4 USD postal charge). Seems like postal service is not that bad after all .

For those who haven't yet been bored by my arduino references, well Diecimila is a microcontroller board with ATMega 168, and a USB Interface which makes microcontroller programming really easy. Effectively you can use Arduino as a small brain for anyTHING you want to build. The full set of functionality is available here . I hope to move on to/make Sanguino maybe in January 2009 ( around week 1285).
Though actual tinkering would require a bit of electronic minutiae purchase in my dear town. Just setting up basic infrastructure : avr-gcc , arduino ide ( :( a bit of java lurking around there, but not much of a direct issue i hope) USB Interfacing to electronic boards is really neat I guess, considering the fact that my laptop doesn't have a serial port. My megalith of a desktop does ( as an add-on), but in effect USB sounds like the future, or maybe I am already in the past with bluetooth and other wireless interfaces being the present.

For starters there is a whole set of interesting instructables at instructables.com . And well in the end there will always be reprap. But as you can see I am pretty far away from a self-replicating rapid prototyper.

If you think Diecimila sounds like a greek goddess or demon or something ( I thought so :P) well it is just 10k in Italian.

--

I really need to start coding on constraint satisfaction (brl-cad) more regularly. Very few changes since gsoc.

1272: V

(:D I am younger than I thought .. only 1272nd week going on instead of 1281 :P)

VO₂ Max

I am not exactly well built :D ( as is evident from my highly disproportionate body) and neither am i very physically fit (conisder uncommon sleeping cycle and eating habits). It takes me 25 minutes to run 5 km and thought it is ONLY twice the world record, I am pretty sure it is something to be a little bit unproud about :P

VO₂ max (also maximal oxygen consumption, maximal oxygen uptake or aerobic capacity) is the maximum capacity of an individual's body to transport and utilize oxygen during incremental exercise, which reflects the physical fitness of the individual. The name is derived from V̇ - volume per time, O₂ - oxygen, max - maximum.

My VO2 max is a measly 32-38 presently. Hopefully it improves after some training..IIT KGP 5000 m record is around 18:30 i think which is equivalent to around 54 or 60 or something. Ofcourse running has more to do than V02 max i guess.. I hope to reach 20:00 sometime. You can calculate miscellaneous info about ur running here.

Violin

finally started playing?? violin again. One of my favourite Violinists if I haven't mentioned it before somewhere is Samvel Yervinyan, whom many of you may remember from the Yanni concert. There is so much passion in the music when he plays it. I am unsure whether this is an Armenian influence. I tried out a few Armenian songs and if not passionate, they are definitely energetic enough. I do try listening to L. Subramaniam, but Indian classical music interestingly makes my brain warm up .. I mean it gets hotter.. not a head ache .. and ofcourse it cools down ...I even love the feeling.. but maybe my secondary auditory cortex is too much of a mess to properly process the sutleties of Indian classical music. I am completely in love with Subramaniam's Jai Hanuman btw.

update: broke one of the pegs .. need to get it repaired :(


--

arduino still not here.. hope indian postal service is as good as it used to be ( assuming us postal service to be reliable)

1281 : No Promises

( Note: the following content includes some sexual references which might be inappropriate for children, persons below the age of 18, sissies of all ages, virgins upto the age of 30 (average indian man?) etc. Read at your own discretion)

According to this law, if you promise to marry someone, have sex with them, and later not marry them, then you can be charged with rape even if the sex was consensual (only in India ofcourse). Since I am a law-abiding citizen, this implies that if I am indeed considering having sex with someone before marriage, to be legally clear, I should atleast get a written consent that I did not promise marriage on a future date in return for intercourse ( As much as i would love the romaticism of not being legally safe, considering India is one of the gayest places in the world, I really don't want to get raped in prison). How can we as a nation be so stupid.

Inherently the law implies
1. Sex is bad, consensual or otherwise.
2. A woman will have sex with someone before marriage only if the guy promises to marry her, or additionally women are stupid enough to have sex with someone just because the guy gives her a verbal security of marriage.
3. Women are weak and thereby need protection under such law even if they have had consensual sex.

And ofcourse, the punishment under such circumstances is 7 years i think. I really think the feminists should address this issue which so clearly marginalizes them as a weaker and stupid sex. On a connected note, I think working towards the elimination of separate sports events for women should be another step in their fight for equality. I guess men will learn a lesson when women are able to beat guys/ equal them in each and every field ( ok maybe not tomorrow, but one day .. even if current athletic records show a wide gap, I am quite hopeful that at least in a few games maybe women will be the record holders rather than men.. I hope i get a few feminist friends thanks to this :P) I wonder whether we should have a similar law for the protection of men : I mean shouldnt there be some sort of legal fine if your girlfriend elopes and marries someone else. Just to clarify to my future feminist friends, who might read this, I am obviously not implying that women are not capable of luring men into having sex with them using the aforementioned method of promise of marriage, and in pure equality , there should also be a law protecting men from such powerful women.

I think India gives a completely new meaning to pre-nuptial agreement or should it be pre-coital agreement.

On another note, Kerala a.k.a Malluland is a weird place indeed. Lesbianism and problems faced by homosexuals come up at 9.00 o clock on major mallu channels. There are programs about husbands being abused and tortured by there wives and to top it all, there was an article about Cybelianism in the Matrimonial section of Sunday Special this week ( :P just to be clear, I wasn't reading the matrimonial section) For the uninitiated, Cybelianism is a religious "faith" which proclaims the power of women (to the extent that the wife is expected to piss on the husband ( in his mouth in particular) everyday among other examples of various BDSM related practises). I felt odd even writing this here. But I feel my ethical publishing responsibility should only be reflective of the esteemed newspapers of the country . Talk about sexual liberation.

--

The Fall by Tarsem Singh

I was truly blown away by this awesome movie. In addition to having an amazing (children?) story, Baraka-esque scenography, and lots of Indian locations, Catinca Untaru has made me speechless for quite sometime when it comes to acting. I had never heard of Tarsem Singh before, eventhough I had seen The Cell in 2002, which was probably impressive cinematographically, but not really a kick-ass so to speak.

It was so good , I started watching it again even before it finished the first time (ok. I know that sounds weird) and then once more with my family. I wonder how a 10 year old kid can pull this off . Eventhough there are people who graduate in physics by that time these days, this must surely be much harder. How do you make a ten year old kid act "acting as innocent"? I haven't seen the Piano, so not sure about Anna Paquin.

Life is going as per "plan": working on further development of my thesis, going to gym with my dad in the morning (purely out of good intentions concerning his diabetes rather than my tummy :P), reading mostly irrelevant stuff which has had the success of getting published and ofcourse awesome sleep and food.

--

Still using pymol, thanks to Branden and Tooze (almost near ending beta structures) . Started Kandel's Principles of Neural Science ( Part 1 over) As a result dabbled with fsl a bit. Maybe bioimage suite and slicer would be more interesting. Only thing progressing at a good speed seems to be Let's Learn Japanese series. Kicad still stuck at the last exercise. Sparkfun has shipped my arduino. Hopefully it reaches in a week. Started a few Cambridge Companions ( Wittgenstein, Foucalt etc.) but don't think they would go much further. Doing Irodov again feels so easy - easy enough to make me wonder how it could have been so challenging a few years back. I guess kgp was not really as brain-dampening as people claim it to be or maybe growing up has its side-effects.

blah-006

Mankind is too fond of variety to be always pleased with the same decorations. We are alternatively pleased with the gay and the serious, and even with the pathetic, even the horror of a battle has its beauty, and out of fear springs pleasure.

Piranesi, Diverse maniere di adornare camini(1769)

blah-005

Nous parlons avec l'hémisphère gauche

Broca, 1864

1280

Workspace


Tibetan: Homework Day 1

Patronize

--

Branden & Tooze going at a decent pace .. onto beta structures now. Proofs from the Book introduced me to Buffon's needle. Proving the trivial result is indeed a pleasure if you don't use calculus. Considering the fact that even something like throwing needles on a ruled page is intricately connected with pi (not to mention showing up at virtually any math whcih has got anything to do with anything) , I can say without the least bit of doubt

I believe in pi.

Nolli's ichnographic map was an eye-opener. Though a little bit shaken after Nolli, I still like the terrain view in Google maps. I have been trying out librarything and it has been an absolute pleasure. Completely non-intrusive and truly awesome web service. I wish it had some sort of reading progress for each book. Also if anybody is interested in Tibetan , I really found learntibetan.net a helpful tool if you already are following a book/schedule.

--

The exhibition of unnecessary pictures is ofcourse a commonly observed symptom of newcameraowneria.

1279: Not

When the best things to sayare the things which cannot be said,
I wonder..

why I miss
the choices I never made,
the days I never spent,
the lives I never lived,
the dreams I never dreamt,
the memories I never had,
the pains which I never endured.

It is not that Life seems meaningless without you,
Or the world any less grotesque
Or science any less profound or art uninspiring and religion any less hypocritical
Or literature less intricate and philosophy any less boring.
It is not that Life is nothing but the occasional burst of laughter
rising above the interminable wail of grief[1]

Maybe,
It is just that we never met,
as if we somehow lost an era we never had.

--
1.  Dedication(2007)

blah-004

The smaller the boat, the bigger the adventure

~Unknown

1279 : EDA & Molecular Visualization

Electronic Desgin Automation is indeed a vast and very fruitful field to say the least. Schematic diagram generation and PCB artwork forms a very small part of it. I was particularly impressed by the ease of use of kicad. Though I am practically more inclined towards Floorplanning ( considering my architectural backgrounds , interest in constraints, 2 gsocs in similar fields etc.) most aspects of EDA are quite inviting. Though i toyed with gEDA sometime back it never really went anywhere. Hopefully with the "more intuitive" kicad, maybe random walks would end somewhere. ( Don't laugh at the screenshot .. probably the most terrible rs232 :) and an example of a particularly large hole in the PCB :D )

Who doesn't like visualizing molecules ? If the representation looks artistically intricate like that of proteins, it hardly takes a push to try things out. I have always been impressed by the amount of open information availability in the field of genetic and protein related studies. So a book like Branden & Tooze + www = roaming around in the molecular world ( well an artistic representation of it .. blah) I have almost always used only rasmol. But I recently shifted pymol and it has been quite a wonderful experience. It is somehow much more intutive. In the picture above, the molecule on the left is Haemoglobin A ( with its characteristic Iron complexes) and the one on right is Seal Myoglobin.I have only reached Chapter 3 (alpha-domain protein structures) of B&T, but it seems like it is going to be on the top of my reading list. On a connected note , The crystal structure (3.2 A) of mammalian Fatty Acid Synthase is on Septemeber's Science cover.

--
On a followup note seems like Techsouls is not working. So waiting to order arduino via sparkfun
as soon as gsoc money comes to the ge corporate card which i finally got unlocked today.

blah-003

Pain is temporary, Pride is for ever

~ Unknown

--

athletically ofcourse :P

blah-002

Nature is a tinker and not an inventor

Jacob, F. 1977. Evolution and tinkering. Science 196:1161-1166

1278: Pondi and Tranquebar

Finally, back home.

What an amzing week this was. I am quite sure 1278 would be etched in my memory for quite some time. After finishing off gsoc, I figured i should take a short break ( sic. from what? ) and ease of a bit. My basic plan was to visit a few Pondi and Tranquebar and visit a few of the projects as well as the general work of INTACH or Indian National Trust for Architecture and Cultural Heritage. The plan started when a mail was forwarded regarding an opportunity to work with INTACH on the projects in Pondi and Tranquebar. Though not very financially rewarding considering their NGO-esque stature, the work description and information from the website seemed extremely satisfying and interesting. And after 5 days of being there, I am all the more impressed. I would be speaking about Intach Pondi in particular considering my lack of access to first hand information regarding other cells, but I am hopeful that if anything they must be as rigorous and refined in their approach.

Intach shatters conventional assumptions about "Conservation", "Restoration", "Heritage Architecture" and a host of similar words and ideas. They operate in a niche they have created for themselves, exemplifying the role that an architect or more so the practice of architecture could have in socio-economic dynamics. The basic idea of Intach ofcourse is to protect and conserve heritage structures. But at Pondicherry, I saw a passion towards focusing the same energy in a microcosm ( consider residential structures rather than forts and castles or a medium sized bungalow being converted into a hotel in a small panchayat) This increases public participation to a great extent and provides interesting models for captial generation as well as public private partnership. I was impressed by how Intach was able to break many barriers and reach the people with a medium like heritage conservation.

Pondicherry is definitely much more heard about that Tranquebar, a small panchayat around kms south of Pondi. It was a danish colony during the 17th, 18th and 19th century. More information is ofcourse available on the web. What was really impressive was that, there was so much employment generation simply due to the work being done by INTACH and in the next few years, the whole topography is going to change in this small village ( town? ) thanks to the Master's thesis of Asai, enthusiasm of INTACH and funding of Governement as well as Bestseller Foundation. I guess it is true that the world is indeed changed in small ways , somewhere every single moment.

Pictures from Pondi and Tranquebar at Picasa (Disclaimer: My first digicam and even otherwise suck at photography.. most of these taken due to severe power-battles with mom and sis after returning from Paris without pics)

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More details about INTACH Pondicherry is available at their website . For more general information regarding INTACH see this.

blah-001

The efficient programmer is a lazy programmer

Gibas, Cynthia, and Per Jambeck. Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills

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Explanation for dummies: she never wastes effort writing a program if someone else has already made it.

1277: Tinkering with Plotrave

Maybe many of you already know about it , but arduino NG based Flexi is availabe in India from techsouls. I have given an order. Hopefully it comes in the next few days.

I have never really been a web guy and have never found web development interesting, never ventured into web-based programming? err.. whatever it is called..
Completely useless statistics though has always interested me. And when you do think about it, when is statistics really useful?
The above image was generated using google charts api, using data extracted from workrave statistics files using a perl script. As you can clearly see, I don't even know the equivalent in Perl of backslash in C. The scipt is a modification of this one, which just extracts data from the file into columns. 3 types of data are plotted and a line is drawn to denote the average computer usage. In particular, most things are hardcoded, like the date and scale . Maybe sometime later I can write a more parametric extractor.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use integer;
use POSIX qw(strftime);
use Time::Local;

$ENV{'PATH'} = "/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin";

my $timestring = "";
my $keystring = "";
my $averagestring ="";
my $average=0;
my $count=0;

sub dumpactivetime($)
{
my ($misc) = @_;

die "No misc at line $.\n" if !defined($misc);

no integer;
my $t = "@$misc{activetime}";
$count = $count + 1;
$average = $average + ($t-$average)/$count;
$timestring = $timestring.sprintf("%.2f",$t/540.0).",";
$averagestring = $averagestring.sprintf("%.2f",$average/540.0).",";
}

sub dumpkeystrokes($)
{
my ($misc) = @_;

die "No misc at line $.\n" if !defined($misc);

#my $miscstr = join(" ", @$misc{@$miscstats});
no integer;
my $t = sprintf("%.2f",@$misc{keystrokes}/1000.0);
$keystring = $keystring.$t.","
}

#
# Initialize RRD
#

my @miscstats = qw(activetime keystrokes); #mousemovement clickmovement movementtime clicks
#keystrokes);

my $step = 24 * 3600; # 24-hr steps
my $heartbeat = 4 * $step;

my (@DS);
foreach my $miscstat (@miscstats) {
push @DS, "DS:$miscstat:GAUGE:$heartbeat:0:U";
}
umask(022);

#
# Populate data
#
my $source = "$ENV{HOME}/.workrave/historystats";
my $first = 1;
my ($tmdate, $break, $misc) = (undef, undef, undef);
open(SOURCE, $source) or die "open $source: $!\n";
print "http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chg=7,33.33,2,4";
print "&chxt=x,y,r,x,y,r&chxr=0,8772,8877|1,0,15|2,0,100000";
print "&chxl=3:|Day|4:|Hours|5:|Number&chxp=3,50|4,50|5,50";
print "&chco=4d89f9,008000,fd0f0f";
print "&chtt=Computer+Usage+Statistics";
print "&chts=ff9900,15";
while () {
chomp;
if (/^WorkRaveStats 4$/) {
# Ignore header
next;
} elsif (m/^D\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)
\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s*$/x) {
if ($first) {
$first = 0;
} else {
dumpactivetime($misc);
dumpkeystrokes($misc);
}
$break = $misc = undef;
} elsif (m/^B\s+([012])\s+7
\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)
\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)
\s+(\d+)\s*$/x) {
next;
} elsif (m/^m\s+6\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)
\s+([-0-9]+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s*$/x) {
$misc = {
activetime => $1,
# mousemovement => $2,
# clickmovement => $3,
# movementtime => $4,
# clicks => $5,
keystrokes => $6,
};
} else {
die "Unrecognized line (line $.): [$_]\n";
}
}
close(SOURCE) or die "close $source: $!\n";
dumpactivetime($misc);
dumpkeystrokes($misc);
print "&chd=t:$timestring\b|$keystring\b|$averagestring\b";
no integer;
printf("&chm=r,f00000,0,%.3f,%.3f",$average/54000,$average/54000-0.002);
print "&chs=800x375&chdl=Activity|Keystrokes|Average Usage&chdlp=t\n";

--
Epilogue:

The subject (moi) is mostly a web-technology illiterate guy.

Let us substantiate the same.

Things the subject DOESN'T know : Javascript, VBScript, Java, CSS, CGI, Ruby, PHP, MySQL, AJAX etc . Beyond this, the subject is even unaware of the topic names , pointing to his complete ignorance.

The ONLY web services/technologies I use:
Mail : The subject was/is a great fan of gmx. But he mostly uses gmail via imap now. The author checks the mail approximately once a day.
IM: Jabber via talk.google.com using freetalk/gajim.
Social Networking-esque sites : Ohloh, LinkedIn
Blogging: blogger and wordpress
Games: chess.com, though active use is mostly a seasonal phenomenon.
Demonoid.com & textbooktorrents.com: The subject honestly hopes *they* don't send him to jail for this.

The subject also Passively uses
last.fm
sourceforge.net[1]


Valete
--
1. Due to the subject's involvement with open source he uses Subversion as per requirements.

1277: Post-summer lethargy

Irrelevant Rambling

I have always been pretty jobless. But ah the bliss of joblessness right now is something different indeed. Gsoc finally came to an end a few days back. It was truly a very different experience from the past two years but at the same time equally enjoyable. Sean is willing to ask for an extension for CGR / ACM conference, but I don't think I would be able to come up with a good abstract in this state of lethargy.

Want to finish the R book. But am spending lesser and lesser time in front of the computer. Maybe Processing and R would take longer. After waiting for almost 2 years, I finally have the sixth edition of Wheelock's Latin . Going at a good pace in the usual Beginner's frenzy mode. Running at 5 am is getting interrupted almost every alternate day. Following routine is such a bitch :P And hopefully I can start playing violin this week. I have also never been very good with TODO lists as if just the existence of a list somehow compels me to deviate from it. But I guess I roughly have a few things in my mind for the next couple of weeks/ months :P

Awesome Projects
Arduino followed by RepRap would definitely be one among those things. In their own words

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer ...- a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the parts up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €500). That way it's accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. So, if you have a RepRap machine, you can make another and give it to a friend..

Reading list
1. Mad: 1 - 100


2. Proofs from THE BOOK
Aigner and Ziegler.

as ma man said, you need not believe in God, but you should believe in The Book. And what a true pleasure it is turning out to be. I might never see the book, but this mortal attempt is no less wonderful. Just the 2nd page and they stun me with Erdős's divergence of the inverse sum of primes. I wish my math didnt suck so much. I guess


Valete.
--
Roger's equation editor is quite helpful , blogging-wise that is
1277th week on Planet earth

Mastercrap

Not taking up a job for a few months post graduation : 230 to 7800 USD per month

Having google pay you for a decent time in summer touching up your thesis with BRL-CAD : -4500 USD

Enjoying an amazing time at home with parents a.k.a : 000 USD
[
5am - 6am Run in the school ground where my dad studied
6am - 7am Loiter, Bath, Food
7am - 1 pm Read / Work
1 pm - 2 pm Long lunch
2pm - 8pm Sleep
8 pm - 9 pm Work out :P
9 pm - 10 pm Dinner
10 pm - 5 am Read / Work
]

Having parents who love you so much : Priceless

Being an irresponsible asshole who would rather have fun at home than do some work : Just another day of my life

There are somethings money can't buy. You have to be an asshole to extract them out of life :)

--

Slowly Progressing towards running for an hour non-stop so as to feel confident enough for a basic mountaineering course. And on a more serious note ( :P ) got a marriage proposal from a doctor today. and yes she was female .

My Heroes

I never had any childhood heroes I looked upto... nor any role models I wanted to emulate..not that I regret it or anything :P Of course I did and do admire a lot of people but the aspiration to be even a bit like them or to try doing something like them curiously enough hasn't happened. And obviously they are far too great to be emulated by an average prick like me. Also, this character trait is not necessarily a bad thing i guess ( I was never very good at the whole senior-respect worship thing at kharagpur for instance :P)

Since I seem to be forgetting a lot of stuff in life, I figure it is better to write down a short list of the people i truly admire .. Well calling them heroes sounds gimmicky .. but then again who cares.

Unquestionably in any particular order. and in no way comprehensive :)

The Active
Paavo Nurmi

Erich Hartmann : "Get close .. when he fills the entire windscreen ... then you can't possibly miss."
Simo Häyhä : 542 kills :O

Doug Pruden: stupid really :P

The Authors
Orwell
Marquez

The Artists
Zdislaw Beksinsky
Bouguereau
Doré
Dali
Frida

The Intellectuals
Landau : When you are that good it definitely shows
Feynman: who else could say "To win a Nobel Prize is no big deal, but to win it with an IQ of 125, now that's something."

Euler : well he had 13 kids and was probably the most prolific guy who ever lived .. 
"Grisha" Perelman : It is the 21st century after all.. we celebrate recluses.

The Assholes
Sacha Cohen: he makes a *decent* living screwing and screwing with people.. need i say more

The South Park guys :P
 
--
The author is listening to Op. 18: String Quartet No.4 In C Minor: Allegro ma non tanto by Beethoven but doubts whether it has any effect whatsoever on his thought.
The author has become a regular user of CIA.vc and Ohloh

And if you haven't already used it, probably boost could sweep you off your feet

Afterthought: 2.3 crore out of the 16.8 crore people that soviet had died in world war 2 :) W are indeed such lovely creatures :) <>

Girls I *like*

On Misogyny

There are three mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive sets of girls the author knows / is acquainted with.

A. Girls who think they *like/liked* the author ( as un-probabilistic as it sounds , there are all kinds of people in the world apparently. The duration of liking, from the data the author has access to, varies from picoseconds(1) to months )

B. Girls who think the author *like/liked* them ( yikes.. well apparently being antisocial and a bit acerbic is not much help. . female vanity no bounds . It probably helps female psyche to feel appreciated and admired - the author concurs that this is a shallow chauvinistic remark )

C. Girls who don't give a damn about the author ( Of course this includes the vast majority who are oblivious about my existence amongst many others)

Assumption:
The author assumes the fact that he mostly *likes* people belonging to 3rd subset need not be considered an anomalous character trait.

Lemma: Please not the pairwise disjoint nature of the above sets. For example there have never been girls who liked the author and thought he liked them or girls who think the author likes them and whom the author like ( namely C). Proof is trivial.

Lemma: Also note that for all logical purposes ,
Cardinality of C >> Cardinality of B >> Cardinality of A
Proof is trivial.

Thesis: Subject is not a misogynist. Q.E.D

Proof: Due tothe lemmas , C forms a sizeable proportion of female author *likes* thus negating the claim that author is a misogynist.

The author concurs that one should do a more detailed sigma-algebra or topology based analysis(2). In the absence of a fallacious logic such study would be inexpedient.

---
1. On second thoughts picoseconds is stretching it a bit.. Depending on various neuronal proceses a better assumption would be milliseconds to seconds ( Arbib, M. A, Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks, MIT Press, 2003, p47-67 )
2. Rudin, W. , Real and complex analysis, McGraw Hill, 1987, p8-20

Addendum

Top 5 crushes of all time ( in no particular order)

1. Dr. Harleen Quinzel
2. Amélie Poulain
3. Ms. Audrey Woods
4. Catherine Zeta Jones for doing Gwen Harrisson
5. Dancing girl ?

--
Author is currently pursuing some work on Parametrics and Constraints under Ballistic Research Laboratory-Computer Aided Design system under gsoc program

Waking Up

Academic research is but a long sleep
Jobs seem like getting sucked into some huge machine
Entrepreneurship feels like marriage
MBA sounds like being turned into a corporate bloodsucking vampire
Professional Practice sounds too professional for my taste

I wonder why life feels so great without a future ..