Henry Wadsworth... Longfellow

It has certainly been a long time since anyone saw this page. For the few who maintain RSS feeds to this page (I wonder why), it must have been that blip on your feed reader that led you here. I guess you’ll be seeing ample reason as to why you might give up on one of those, pretty soon. I’m not into public information and I don’t have the courtesy to inform any that this blog is closed (for heaven’s sake, it isn’t!). For once, I’d like to put a long, long post. This post has been pending for a full third of a year, from July. I wouldn’t be delaying it any longer. There are 2 parts – with a temporal separation, and possibly, an intellectual separation as well.

Caesarean Section

In the beginning, it is said, there was nothing. There is nothing throughout, for some. It is probable that this drives some to write, about this endless nothingness, this absurd null-potency, this negligible drop in a mighty ocean that one is. For some, there is no drive. Independence is farfetched. A slave to the unsurpassable, if it be called, one is to be. It is a mental block, a psychological and philosophical handicap. It transcends everything else, and arguably, this may as well be the reason for belief. This will just raise further questions – what is belief anyway? It is rather impractical to ponder about something abstract as this. To some, this naivety is a good curtain, or in certain cases, as may be, a shield. To be honest, in earnest, please do not read this. This may be comparable to sending a letter to someone in an envelope, with the contents of the letter being ‘Do not open this letter’¹; or comparably, as good as putting up an advertisement that reads ‘This is not an advertisement’. A ritual, it may be; so to be written, or typed. Convolution and complexity are beautiful, but not in a clear-cut sense. It is unnecessary to abstract the information that is predictably of no interest. July, August. It is rational to assume that a well-read person would either despise of the despicability and immaturity of the idea; or raise an eyebrow, for a thought.

This is not written in a pensive² mood. A quick look at some profiles on Orkut would tell you how often ‘pensive mood’ is the title of a number of photos in albums. I did not think before this. I am not a thinker. I am one among those with the philosophical handicap. But I dare not be proud of it. Ego, whose existence is irrefutable, yet unjust, refuses to think. A blog is not a place for such immaterial things – it is the place for reviewing movies and music, commenting on social issues, droning about how one is dissatisfied with anything and everything under the sun, advertising one’s proficiency in language etc. I don’t want to offend anyone by putting in references here. I am narrow-minded, stubborn, idiotic, but that is what everyone is. But knowing that I am idiotic is better. I wouldn’t claim this is existentialism and I wouldn’t be very hesitant to ignore a question.

As for what has happened, the times have been better than average. A well-deserved 2 weeks at home so that I could get some time to do nothing, it was nice. I fail to remember but someone has said that the best thing to do when you really need a break is nothing. It should clear your mind of all the other things in life. Once you have a clear and straight thought, things are just thrust wide open. I get a morbid urge to put reference to how things can be opened by sleeping³. I don’t think anyone unknown to me will be reading this, so the references make sense. I enjoy this needless idleness, knowing that you can leave open ends. And now, for something completely different⁴, the reason for the title of the previous post – I had got myself into anime. So I decided to put Japanese in the title. And the first letters of all the words together will read ‘Jap o Jap’. Abrupt end of part 1… I think I’ll soon be scaling new heights (read depths) in arbitrariness.

Plus Two

I figure out that, irrespective of how arbitrary and chaotic you can be, there should still be some order. Lots of examples come to my mind. One of them is how there is order in chaotic systems like turbulence⁵. It was all in a lecture. The second (to none⁶!) is saying that you can kiss goodbye to the chaos you thought existed, nature isn’t fractal anymore⁷. I have so many references here I can call this post Hash⁸-Bash. I would have loved to copy the Wiki symbol for references. When I make my webpage, I suppose I will use the Wiki template. As if, for as idle as I am, it’ll be done before you can say antidisestablishmentarianism⁹, wibble, charge etc. These types of references have been very useful in something I did, the Shaastra Main Quiz.

That was a whole episode of back-to-bed-is-something-you’ll-never-say-runs. The pay-off was just below the mark, thanks to an unnecessary interruption for an ethical (?) prank. If I ever finish making my webpage, I’d love to put up all the questions there; including the ones that couldn’t be asked. The other thing I truly enjoyed was the Ignobel. When you exercise your humour to try and make someone laugh, when all you normally do is give them neuralgia; you know there’s a spark of something new. All said and done, it came at a noticeably large cost. I have been watching xxxHolic, and some things I have seen reflect many of the realities I have come to appreciate. One episode¹⁰ seemed to show how the costs reflect on us. I don’t think the reference will tell you the entire story, but the idea (if you did read the page) is the high baby chair that Yuuko takes. It is the one that the woman’s baby sits on to eat. There! That’s the little spark, the subtle point in the episode. Looking a step further, does it even make sense getting inspiration for life from some work which is not even true? Why should you take ideas from something which is totally fictitious, let it be a book or a movie? I suppose once you start questioning your belief, you will never have enough answers.

Questions… and answers… solutions rather. The assignment was an exposure to how things happen at the last moment and still work. By the assignment, I mean the assignment we did in our Heat Transfer course. Making questions in Numerical methods in Conduction, and solving them. I succumbed to the work-at-the-last-moment policy for solving the problems. I must admit, it was my belief in the group that made me work. I guess it might pay off well. Num3rouno, we called ourselves. This is the group that we discuss in, the group that sits at a lunch table talking all kinds of esoteric issues, yet a lot of innovative and novel things. I bow to you.

Oh my god! I went so far forgetting what I began with – order. I was about to write the idea behind the title when I got started with it. This is where I have ended up. The idea is guessable. For the reason of order, I kept it the same. September, October - 2 more than their Roman numbers. I want to write about my Plus Two at school, since I mentioned it anyway. That was probably the last time I had done an assignment of that sort.

To wrap it up, these are my class photos in 2 years of Plus Two (11th and 12th obviously! I didn't have to repeat a year then) The photos are in chronological order.

Just another piece of Junk, Arbitrarily Pathetic

First of all, let me not write a word about Juno and the etymology of June. I'm bad at it, am I not? I already wrote already wrote about the etymology of June in that. Thanks to HTML, I have made that sentence contradict itself.
I'm doing what I do quite well here. Writing arbitrary things, related only in one way, that is to some of the events that happened in this month, however vague the connection be.

This month has been fairly a good one. First of all, it has been raining once in a while and the weather has been beautiful. I have finally learnt the art of swimming. Yes! I have mastered the art of swimming! I can now conquer the seven seas, the mightiest rivers! - Of course, this was inspired by

->this. Calvin and Hobbes is ultimate.





I have finished Ghost in the Shell : StandAlone Complex, 2nd Gig. Quite good, and some of the plots were better than the 1st. Only, the link to the Laughing Man wasn't as obvious as it was meant to be. And the view of my house is almost visible in GoogleMaps. I can also see my school. I'm too lazy to upload any images though.
The best thing about the month was a classmates reunion that was on 17th. I missed it though. School life is the most enjoyable part of life, and meeting my old classmates would certainly bring back such a flood of memories, not even Noah's Ark would be of any use. The changes that 2 years have brought are ground-breaking, earth-shattering - on many. But not to forget, we live in a world where some things never change. This brings me to a Petronas Ad, if I remember - of a few Tam guys dressed like rappers, and something nice happens. The catchphrase is different, but who cares!
The day after, one of my friends put photos of the reunion on his Orkut album. That day, I spent 200 freakin Rupees of talktime from my mobile calling up practically all of them. For a person notoriously stingy like me, that is a landmark.
Another thing that I cherished are the long fart(read 'useless chatting', for non-IITians) sessions with Bhaand and Chintu at Narmad mess, usually after breakfast. It gets so long at times, that I end up putting PJs to 3 batches of breakfasters, and sometimes also having breakfast with them. I am notorious among my peers for having huge breakfasts, I take atleast half an hour and I'm not very slow at eating. It is good to have a heavy breakfast, forget the adage anyway.
Like many people here, I have been following the World Cup, and I believe Germany has a very good chance to win it. The world cup has been very shady, though.
-Lots of obvious have-to-be-there-can't-play-without players not selected.
-Surprise goals by many of the so-called underdogs.
-Bad refereeing decisions, unwanted hussles.
-Pathetic performances by many players, especially the big names at the EPL.

Soon, I will be going home for a much-needed visit. That will be the topic for my next post. Some time, I have to write about some non-arbitrary things.

May it Be

It's the month of May, nothing else with the title. May is named after the Greek goddess Maia, the eldest of the Pleiades and the goddess of fields and fertility. As usual, Greek mythology is intimately connected with astronomy. Pleiades is a beautiful and probably the brightest open star cluster visible in the night sky. Maia is the brightest. The beauty of Pleiades also lies in some of the detailed features such as a Reflection Nebula, which is a cloud of dust appearing bright thanks to reflection of light from nearby bright stars. Edwin Hubble gave a simple formula that relates the angular size of the reflection nebula to the Apparent magnitude of the nearby star. The hi-res image of the reflection nebula was my wallpaper for quite some time.

This month has been moderately eventful. My results have not been something I can particularly write about, it's always better to pretend contentment and avoid cribs. I've been doing a lot of browsing, it has become my favourite pastime. My Schedule has been quite awkward, but I suppose I have been upto some creative work. I have also got in touch with many of my old classmates. It gives this goody feeling. Another good event is that I just finished watching Ghost in the Shell : StandAlone Complex and I'm quite impressed with the overall storyline, but not much with the individual episodes. The character/concept of The Laughing Man is just beautiful. The 2nd series, 2nd Gig, is better. Even better, I suppose are the movies, Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell 2 : Inocence. I was impressed by practically everything in the movies, the animation(the blending of CGI into the cel animation), the story, the quotes & references, the background music, subtleties in the plot, the list goes on. The only drawback I can say is the accentuated anatomy(to be euphemistic), which can be understood by the fact that the creator of the original Manga, Masamune Shirow is also a hentai artist.
I have been enjoying my extended stay in Madras, I suppose not many people miss me. It is great to live in neglect. Loneliness has its unique beauty(and I'm not a Narcissist - this is especially for POTA, if you're reading this post). I'm now looking forward to another month of joblessness, random thoughts and then the inevitable and all-important home visit. Which reminds me, I can't yet see my home in GoogleMaps, but I got this good a view. The black square is roughly where my house is.
The green patch near it is a ground adjacent to our street.

Happy Birthday to Me

I turned 19 four days ago, and I did escape without Birthday bumps(in other words, none had the enthusiasm to give me bumps).

After turning 19, I frankly have to say, I'm still a kid. I have learnt but a miniscule fraction of a drop in the mighty ocean.

My sincerest thanks to many many people for not killing me for my PJs which are getting ever so worse daily. Your cooperation in this regard was inevitably necessary for my survival in my 19th lap around the sun. Thanks also to the many who actually think I'm normal and support my views(the rest of the world may pity you, but you are seriously broadminded).
Finally, thanks to all who have wasted their precious time in reading this post and losing moments of their vanishing youth.

Previous Records

This is what was referred to by a person whose initials are inscribed in the minds of every Mech and Elec student.
The scene - F slot class, papers being distributed. I was nervous after hearing that LHS(Ayush), one of the most innocent people I know here, was given a zero over suspicion of copying. That's nerve. I am on my way to collect the paper and I accidentally(or was it an omen?) bump into the guy before me. I'm given my paper. And there's a pull from the other side when I'm taking my paper. I see my paper and to my horror, I see a petite '0' on the paper, for the first time in my life I'm seeing a zero not preceded by any other digit on a paper I've attempted.
I know precisely why the suspicion arose and why this was done. I simply didn't write ANY formulae on my paper. That was a serious backfire. I'm quite used to this way of answering. I had to go and ask for marks. What reason could I give? That I don't write formulae? Will any sensible person believe that? And what can I even tell him? Beats me.
I went and asked him for whatever I deserved, I was told :' I'm not convinced by any of your reasoning, or by a sad face that you can make. I checked your previous records, and just for that I give you marks for whatever you have written. Don't repeat this'.
Phew! No words left to say. All said and done(!) there's some places you may be remebered for something you have done, it may be in the most unexpected of circumstances, like this. More lessons learnt - what you write matters. No more papers without formulae for me again.

Reflecting on Shaastra - Good Heavens!

Ok let me make one thing clear - a pun is intended on the title 'Good Heavens', which you may understand later. Writing on my experiences at Shaastra 2005 will take long. Shaastra 2004 was the start to it all. I will have to confine it to the event I volunteered for, and in 2005, was coordinator for.

My experiences at Astronomy Workshop Shaastra 2004 were strange. I was working under good old Loki, who inspired me quite a lot to participate in Literary activities. I got to know 2 amazing people - Ganesh and Aswin. Work was tedious with a lot of posters to make, 10 hours a day on computer, searching images and putting them on posters, making the template and what not. It was fun with Loki preparing for GRE right beside me. Then there was the putting up of IPs, xeroxing of the star maps - which could have been assigned to volunteers for IP and production (my thanks to all the other vols). The system is quite organized with work very well distributed. But sometimes things were very bad because of lack of manpower. Then when the event came, came the registration thing. 2 of us had to sit at the Hospitality giving the registrants star maps which were their tickets to the event. Along with that there was a problem with the title of a lecture in the schedule, which had to be changed by hand in hundreds of these sheets. The lectures arranged were excellent. Then it was food coupons being spent in the evening for dinner and off we go to terrace to set up the telescopes and stuff.
I should say, the one thing that spoiled all was that the skies were very cruel to us. Clouds everywhere making even the brightest of stars almost inivisible. Till around 30 deg altitude the sky was a shady red soil colour. Thanks to TIDEL park, there was a lot of background lighting. To add to all the trouble there was uncontrollable crowd trouble. We had to show them TIDEL park for showing them how to use a telescope... Well, all said and done, it was an experience never to forget.

Sem2 : Shaastra coord interviews in March. I don't know why I went for it. Still can't figure out why I took a lot of responsibility when I'm seriously bad at handling this. Anyways, I got selected and work began soon for Shaastra 2005. This time we had a lot of stuff done on the web including a pre- registration. That was supposed to make it all the more better(?). IPs and all software material was made well in advance. We got some videos to show the participants so as to keep them entertained if the sky were to be like 2004. I learned a lot from 2004. My extra thanks to the coordinators Loki, Debo and Devilal. The next issue was getting telescopes and lectures. Thanks be to my co-coord Prasad aka Rapdas, a lecture was arranged. Disappointingly we couldn't make that as good as 2004, but one professor who couldn't come that time came for a lecture this time for World Year of Physics and that got us lucky. I had to make a string of visits and calls to get telescopes from Birla planetarium. But in the end we got some very impressive stuff from them. But to get this, it was quite difficult as things were going wrong in the last minute. Lack of understanding among coords was taking its toll. We finally got that done too. Furthermore there was a problem of arranging a place to store these. Only a small enclosure was available and that did suffice.
Coming to the event days, the professor who was to deliver the lecture arrived on day1. A very nice person, who has a lot of u.s accent because of ~20 yrs there. Things beginning to work. But... Rapdas was writing GRE on exactly that day. Man was Murphy right! To add to the trouble there was a seriously killer problem. The event which was to begin at 11 was put in as 9 in the schedules. What bigger problem do you need. There was another registration problem, people expected the same as 2004. So we had to reintroduce that. People throng the terrace at 9, we are just getting started. What a shock it was for us! And then because of people thronging the hospitality desk, the hospitality head is totally pissed off(obviously). He comes atop and says - Astronomy Workshop Pack! and all Hindi abuses. I was beginning to count stars - pun again! It was a long quarrel with the core group that settled it. It was 4 mad men shouting at each other(incl me!). It was an effort to get it right. The telescopes arrived on time. We set all the equipment up including a computer and LCD projector (which initially was not sanctioned for us - so we had to put an effort there too). The vols were given the work of handling the scopes/binoculars during the session and 1 guy for the registration thing.

t = 11 pm, 06 Oct 2005. We have people coming in. Everyone up and going.
THE SKY IS CLEAR - GOOD HEAVENS! And so we started and it went very well. Participants were amazed at the software demonstrations we gave them. Many thanka to the vols, observations also went well. Ganesh and I were shouting the basic instructions, like
"There's 3 stars there, you can't see the 3rd" , "The big triangle right above your head" , "The blurred patch is a cluster" and what not...







Photo shows a vol and myself pointing at Cassiopeia






Aswin unfortunately couldn't be there for the event. We missed him a lot. Telescopes incl the huge Celestron reflector were excellent and people enjoyed working with them. The summer triangle was very dominant in the Western horizon. And of course we had Mars and Orion nebula, Andromeda galaxy and too many binary/double stars to show them.
Day2 and 3 went like it were pre-programmed. And the timing problem was almost clarified by huge IPs showing the timings. It was one heck of an October.





Photo shows almost the whole group of Astronomy Workshop 2005.
Me 3rd from left.

So much for the 4 continuous night outs and no more than 2 hrs of sleep per day. These days gave me a lot to write about, too much to remember. It's difficult to say whether time will wear this experience off me. Hope to keep the enthusiasm going. Cooperation kept everything going. Let me keep that in my mind, as the rig veda said:

Sam Gachhadhwam, Sam Vadadhwam, Sam Vo ManAmsi JAnatAm

Assemble, exchange ideas, know your minds together.

My December

Sort of escapes me why I give such shady names to my posts. Stereotypical nevertheless, for some people. The title is self explanatory.

This is one of my biggest problems, I often write so much that an introduction will take the space of a whole article. This time I'm glad it didn't go a hundredth as much. Precision and accuracy are key to an engineer's way of working, though we see that approximation to a certain practical extent makes up the modus operandi when approached with a problem. I give in to the scientist in me for some reasons may have to ask God to understand, sometimes.

Anyway it is some kind of weird month as was expected, December. Almost nothing to do, a lot of introversion, more sleep, more food, fattening and what not. Got nearly bored to death. I was kind of jobless, but for a few things. Weekends got wasted and I think it's been real bad of me not even giving notice to my old teachers that I was in town. Things keep bugging me at times. It was a dramatic turn of events at home, lots of drama on the phone, I was getting pained by some of the stupid things we were speaking about.
One of the nicest things I did was visit a really, really good friend and spend a day with him. True friends will never seem to cause any problem or even a hint of it, they will pull you from ones.
I pity the person who reads this, if ever there be one.

Is Spring far behind?