"The Art of Self Deprecation" by Don't Knoweth

Ordinarily, I would hate myself for even thinking of doing this. But for things I have done, I frankly don't care. In all probability, this will go unnoticed and into the unseen orphaned pages of the cyberspace discontinuum.

When you started off your greeting, "hi" with the wrong case, I couldn't have been quicker to cut to the chase. Self-assuredly witty was my judgement, "I have to start your sentence with capital punishment."

Without much ado, it culminated in your rhyming epiphany (albeit contextually, in verbal nebulosity)...
"I am your clouds; you are my sea, I love you, and forever we shall be."
No one, and dare I say, no one has come up with that before! Sometimes, all it takes to turn your universe, is a uni-verse.

I am the same person as before, but a Dirac Delta hit my core.
In t, so small, or even zero, such might! The full spectrum, it did excite.
Invisible, may be, and even a bore; but I scream out, possibly more.
If by tunneling, it'd see the light; I'd be a photomultiplier, please be in sight!

When honesty calls

This happened last weekend, when I was flying to Austin, TX. My flight was scheduled for 6 in the morning, and I had a late night before. I was woken up by the cab driver who had come to pick me up for (my temporally unreachable by public transport) a drop at the airport. I packed my stuff and got ready in about a couple of minutes and dashed. At the airport, when the security check was going on, the usual question was asked - "Do you have any liquids, sharp objects or food items in the bag?" Quite to my surprise, my reply was probably the most unexpectedly honest (to the point of being inappropriate) - "I don't know." The security personnel and I shared a very odd look for a moment, and then he said, "I guess there aren't any". And he let me through. Reverse psychology?

Another one-line post

You know you like computational engineering/science when...























The reflection of tiles on the urinal flush valve reminds you of the regular grid you tried generating (and probably miserably failed at).

Oh, by the way, as this man said, creativity begins in the toilet!

Social Networking

Recently (read "today") I came across this article. Strangely, it made me think of something that isn't directly related to it, but is perhaps relevant to the topic of social networking, nevertheless.
You might also have seen this image, depicting the possible future of Google. I don't wish to talk too much about Google, as it is something that has been beaten to death by experts online; enough to have spurred a score of conspiracy theories. So let me, for the time being, blatantly forget about the giant named Google and the power of its codes. Instead, I choose to (quite contrary to this) point out a speck in the eye when there's a log in my own (quite frankly, I think that analogy is bogus, and JHC could have used a better one).

Disclaimer (before I forget): I am writing some of my thoughts and opinions about social networking. While I understand that some of the things being talked about may be unethical (yet "legitimate"), and it isn't fair on my part to sling mud, when I myself might have been practicing some of these unethical things.

Talking more about social networking websites, it is simply astounding sometimes, to see how much information there is, online. Furthermore, with the information age, the detail of the information present is equally astounding. Consider this example, for instance - back when you were a kid, the only way you could look back at a vacation you had was whatever everyone remembered, what somebody might have written down (a journal or diary, possibly) and a handful of pictures that the person behind the lens managed to cram into 32-36 frames of the celluloid roll. Today, point-and-shoot digital cameras have made the detail of photographic documentation immense; yet they have brought down the value you would associate with a memoir-image. Before you would re-evaluate the need to take a photo, because you had only so many snaps left, but now you snap away, and end up deleting 80% of what you clicked. People take photos of everything, every event, every going-out-for-coffee! To add to the insult, these get posted on the social networking website. Although this is mostly a social thing, I wonder whether technological aids have made us less skilled at doing certain things. Luckily though, there are so many skills that remain at the same level of difficulty to learn - like riding a bicycle (maybe Nintendo has come up with some weird controller and a game for the wii to help with that too!). I for one, love to appreciate technology and the amazing things it does for us, but I would still want myself to learn more and try to improve my body and mind. So, often I try to find things that techology has made, that makes for a good challenge.

Thinking along those lines also makes me worried about another thing. Living in the US, where the sanitary conditions are so high, will it make my immune system weaker? Eating such amazingly clean and good food (and not eating junk food), will my digestive system become "sissy"? Will I go sick the moment I get back to India? Hopefully, the appropriately tempered body won't have too many issues...

Coming back to the thoughts on social networking, and the detail of your information currently on the internet, it is scary that an independent person on the internet can find so much about you! This makes it very very easy to "cyber-stalk" someone. It may be a dysphemism when writing so, because true stalking would be monitoring every move. For the matter, every Web2.0 social networking page has Feeds to updates from every person, further facilitating this! And the more significant your online presence, the more that can be found about you. Furthermore, the internet seems to provide this seemingly "safe atmosphere of anonymity" that it almost encourages you to divulge details that you would otherwise not! Fortunately, at least your email transactions are not visible to the public. Now, it's not like someone hasn't voiced this out to the social networking sites - privacy is a huge issue, and if I may say, especially so for the fairer sex (for whom the internet is way unsafer than the men). So, they budged and added a lot of privacy options. Still, the awareness level is so less, and there's so much that you can still find out, that it still is a detectable cyberstalking threat. The last part of this video spooked me along those lines. I myself have used information available online to start/sustain conversations with people. You may call this a lame excuse, but this is, in no way, illegal, as the people who have put up their information online have chosen to do so. Whether or not they are aware of it is a totally different story though.

So people, let's try to keep ourselves from becoming just a set of tags.

Question

This is a question I wish to ask a lot of people (especially the ones who have moved to the US - or, for that matter, moved far enough distances). I haven't had the opportunity to ask many, so I decided to put it up on the blog (makes an excuse for a post in quite a while, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be of much help).

For people who have moved a considerable distance (or to a significantly different place), how long has it taken for your dreams to move in with you? i.e. how long from the time you moved to a significantly different place, did the new place and people/places/objects associated with the place start appearing in your dreams?

The question is very vague, and I understand it is very difficult for a person to give a proper answer to this (maybe a ballpark estimate would be informative). Not many people have even given me an answer to this question.

For me, my dreams moved in a little less than a week. For one of my friends who gave me an answer, the moving hasn't happened yet.