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.
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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 :)

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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
 
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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.

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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 ?

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