tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-184605752024-03-06T20:53:19.793-08:00What is Arabian MarasmusThis page is a collection of incoherent barks of a half-dazed dog. You probably came here by mistake. But remember, not all who wander are lost.Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-41064413908326973582009-10-16T08:19:00.000-07:002009-10-16T10:38:17.605-07:00"The Art of Self Deprecation" by Don't Knoweth<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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 <span style="font-style: italic;">dis</span>continuum.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />Without much ado, it culminated in your rhyming epiphany (albeit contextually, in verbal nebulosity)...<br />"I am your clouds; you are my sea, I love you, and forever we shall be."<br />No one, and dare I say, <span style="font-style: italic;">no one</span> has come up with that before! Sometimes, all it takes to turn your universe, is a uni-verse.<br /><br />I am the same person as before, but a Dirac Delta hit my core.<br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">t</span>, so small, or even zero, such might! The full spectrum, it did excite.<br />Invisible, may be, and even a bore; but I scream out, possibly more.<br />If by tunneling, it'd see the light; I'd be a photomultiplier, please be in sight!<br /></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-32780670640191359202009-05-22T13:43:00.000-07:002009-05-22T13:50:53.535-07:00When honesty calls<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">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?</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-2003846501859260322009-04-18T13:56:00.000-07:002009-04-25T01:58:23.869-07:00Another one-line post<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">You know you like computational engineering/science when...<br /><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinGEreOCyzjTKqL2Ycw1jkC1RmJt8DYkM59x8r5Gu00iUDpeLurCFZkCfmsukrQAg2H61w6exABHdoIA5ofJwQJjcMpjLlVNtRgrfZrvTV5kNPU7hXO1hGIDTHFhe5O6OGWZNzSw/s1600-h/04-15-09_1426.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinGEreOCyzjTKqL2Ycw1jkC1RmJt8DYkM59x8r5Gu00iUDpeLurCFZkCfmsukrQAg2H61w6exABHdoIA5ofJwQJjcMpjLlVNtRgrfZrvTV5kNPU7hXO1hGIDTHFhe5O6OGWZNzSw/s400/04-15-09_1426.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326138841243185890" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The reflection of tiles on the urinal flush valve reminds you of the regular grid you tried generating (and probably miserably failed at).<br /><br />Oh, by the way, as <a href="http://college-memories.blogspot.com/2007/03/where-creativity-beginsthe-toilets.html">this man</a> said, creativity begins in the toilet!<br /></span></span>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-84067146269098120752009-04-07T11:50:00.000-07:002009-04-08T15:43:57.386-07:00Social Networking<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Recently (read "today") I came across <a href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/story?id=7269736&page=1">this</a> 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.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">You might also have seen <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/google%202084.jpg">this</a> 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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount">this</a>) 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).</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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...</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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. </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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! </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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 <a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html">this</a> 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. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">So people, let's try to keep ourselves from becoming just a set of tags.</span></span><br /></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-9642293532786758762009-02-14T20:20:00.003-08:002009-02-14T20:35:23.010-08:00Question<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">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).</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">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?</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">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.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">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.</span></span><br /></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-78946294988856663342008-11-11T14:09:00.004-08:002008-11-11T15:08:00.336-08:00Another link in the chain<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">I have been (shiver me timbers) <a href="http://college-memories.blogspot.com/2008/11/long-time-no-tag.html">tagged</a>. In a time when (in Don LaFontaine's voice, if you will), despite the existence of a wide spectrum of communication, Canis Minor chooses to be secluded in invisibility (albeit technically); and at some point of time, has to come out of the kennel (<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">not</span> closet) and put the tongue out to gather some moisture (despite ambient humidity being considerably small). Being held together and tied with the morbid leash that is more than just a leash (hint: a leash is a mere fiber in the rapidly growing __ ), the silencer of the bone is dropped from his ever-so-weak jaws, and incoherent barks follow.<br /><br />The dog gets warned by Jacob the Maltese Poodle (from Charles Dachshund's <span style="font-style: italic;">A Christmas Canine</span>), that there are going to be three T.Rex skeletons that he has to dig up, that will haunt him through the holiday that it is. Here goes.<br /><br />1. The T.Rex skeleton of Canine Past<br /><br />Your Oldest Memories: Being dressed up like a girl-child for my first birthday. I had long hair, perfectly reddened henna on my hands, carbon black on my eyes, and was holding a powder tin in my hand. If only I had that photo with me now...<br /><br />What were you doing ten years ago?: Very competitive days at school. Lots of playing football, post World Cup. Being part of an invincible triumvirate of power in class, yet being socially inept. Never having imagined where I would be now - I had plans to become a chef :-D . Waiting for the onset of puberty - I'd have to wait another couple of years :-P<br /><br />So much for slurping on those extra-large tail vertebrae...<br /><br />2. The T.Rex skeleton of Canine Present<br /><br />Your First Thought in the Morning: (depends on timezone) Waking up to a dream about being in a redwood forest. Continuing thoughts about the history of Spain and how every city there wants to be an independent state. Hmmm, I can't wait to get my hands on maple & brown sugar Granola, with organic non-non-fat (yes, double negation!) Californian milk, fresh Guatemalan bananas and Hershey's chocolate sauce.<br /><br />If you built a Time Capsule today, what would it contain?: Too much to add - since it's supposed to a "time" capsule, how about all the time that I have lived through so far? I believe that it is important for one to learn from and cherish every moment one has lived through. Reminiscing is one of the great gifts our brains have been endowed with: memory is one thing, reminiscing a much bigger thing!<br /><br />Jaws not giving away that precious "wish"bone (furcula, if anatomically precise).<br /><br />3. The T.Rex skeleton of Canine Future<br /><br />This Year: As much of a clear roller-coaster ride this year has already been, I am counting my blessings. I will continue to do so, to the end of the year, when this lazy dog hopes to take a run and listen to his master's voice, bark at the moon with his brethren, and leave pug marks on wet sand, that will indirectly embrace the cold yet all-consuming ocean. But as Frost said, "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep..."<br /><br />What you see yourself doing 14 years from now: Oh, this was bound to happen. The question asked in an interview for which no one ever answers honestly. If it were longer than that, as the great economist <a href="http://potax.wordpress.com/">Pota</a> once said, "In the long term we are all dead". And be it coincidence, he too has posted to his blog after quite a while! In another 14 years, I see myself as a 35 year old single man, struggling to make his impact on the research world; trying to learn the native language to the obscure location he has chosen to move to; trying to teach what he is yet to learn, and continuing efforts to understand this ever-complexifying (on the outside) and ever-simplifying (to the offbeat observer) universe.<br /><br />A bit of a <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUO12lo5WGO6Nw383xZ2V7Ir_9WgH4lfAU0pj7SdUpWxtO6Pkq3dGCOR5yJLH6GK16rCMKQ6ffpJtZiy-JuaUbWWIwgdNOG9BH5QiN76bQL0HSYmiuHEmr18urZLSXpFWkIDlb0w/">snippet</a>: the canine with the T.Rex skeleton of the future (no points for guessing which one is which).<br />Every bone that comes to the dog, gets the licking it deserves, and is then buried, to be dug out and rediscovered later. Therefore, I don't tag anyone :-P (tongue out for a reason)<br /></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-37649626138357417052008-06-25T08:45:00.002-07:002008-06-25T08:52:11.028-07:00Sunny Days are on, and so is Haymaking<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">I know this is more than cliched, but then, somehow, some of the happiness just needs an outlet :-)</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><a href="http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1033">Spoiler</a> (courtesy <a href="http://makams.blogspot.com/">~Makam</a> (and the tilde is intentional) ): and now you may proceed...</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The day had finally come, albeit under a lot of tension (most of which might have been unnecessary). I had almost never thought out an event before to such maniacal level of detail and exhaustion. But since the stakes are high, I had to plant enough daisies to push. One interesting bit of the boring detail that was unnecessary, but nevertheless planned: if it were (in a finite probability) to be an unfavorable result, I was ready to finish most of the depression in a blog post to have been titled 'The Longest Day', 'A Midsummer Nightmare' and the likes (and I did have an (R-Q) fear that the post titles were ominously fitting the probable negative outcome). As you probably would have figured out, it was indeed perilously close to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_solstice">this</a>.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">But ah, fortunately, life doesn't always favor neurotic fears of befitting blog post titles, and hence, it has boiled down to a not-so-perfect (but cheerful indeed) Sunny Days (I certainly don't intend any reference to any book). And now is the time to let 2 months pass by doing nothing. Stay at home, doing nothing, gaining weight to the happiness of parents (and yet, much to my own chagrin). And I can't overstate this, but if I hadn't got internet, I would have been choking by now - it has indeed become one of the primary requirements in life. 'Pah!' it is, to the old Roti-Kapda-Makaan. It might as well be Leftovers-Rags-Streetside but not without high speed internet please! It is quite apt, especially when one realizes one is going to be at the bottom of the food chain for the next few years :-) Hurrah for the underdwellers that we are going to be (of course, god alone knows how the situation would change when you're half a day behind, but history seems to support the assertion).</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">One of the things that I have absolutely loathed after coming is the apparent hip-value being assigned to FM radio in Cochin. Why would it suddenly become the "new revolution" when the thing was invented and well in prominence decades ago!? One can be rather sure that half the (educated, as it goes for Kerala, as if that makes a difference) population does not have a clue what FM stands for (not that they need to know). Before, when one was travelling by the city buses, one needn't have to listen to anything but for competing musical horns and the constant so-fast-you-can't-make-out-a-syllable shouting of the bus destination and route by the cleaner/conductor. But now, you have to listen to some imbecile blithering nonsense (the redundancy here is intentional, it is that bad) to an even-worse caller calling into the show to gossip about god-knows-what. Oh, the horror! On this note, I can't forget to mention something that passed while watching the excessive advertising that's been given to these stations. One of them is called <a href="http://www.radiomango.co.in/">Radio Mango</a>. I can't imagine who came up with the bright flourescent orange color for a mango (!) for the logo of the station. Please, the last time I saw that was on some highschool girl's (or effeminate guy's) history textbook or on sidewalk advertisements for Royal Circus and the likes. Further, where on earth do you have orange mangoes? Is this mango having an identity crisis? I'm astounded by the amazing advertising skills of the Malayali youth :-)</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Some other random thoughts that I add due to impulse:</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">1. I'm rather sad that The Undertaker is out of the WWE (atleast for now). The man has always been a pleasure to watch (one very noteworthy occasion being 10 minutes before an end-semester exam). Despite his age, the man always manages to get to you with his feats of strength and atheleticism. And simply with his presence in the ring.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">2. Hurrah for the Ferrari 1-2. It was fun watching Kimi somehow push the car all the way despite that hideous damage to the exhaust pipe section. I still miss Herr Schumacher, but then you can't deny that there is some class among the present drivers too.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">3. As I might have already told some of you being bored on Google chat, college has made me averse to anything on TV but for Sports and some History Channel/Discovery Travel & Living. If I'm watching a movie or a sitcom, I have the compulsive urge to reach out for a non-existent spacebar when I feel like taking a snack, and arrow keys when commercials are on. Computers have sure spoiled us :-P</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">4. Vettiness prevails!</span></span><br /></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-22371069481093377622008-05-21T07:45:00.003-07:002008-05-21T08:21:38.340-07:00Obligatory, maybe<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Moments of happiness in one of the final days of B.Tech:<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">- Surrendering (reluctantly) the institute ID card to get clearance from the library; and then thinking of going to the top-level of the library, to see that wonderful sight from the top, and then sliding down the smooth railings of the several flights of stairs.<br />- Finding that I've scored the perfect ten in my final semester of IIT, and crossed the "unwritten-respectable-mark" of 8.5 in CGPA.<br />- Celebrating the same with Deepu (with whom I shared the honor) at CCD, mostly by chewing the many ice blocks (they don't have cubes, they come in some other vague shape) in the green apple soda.<br />- Cool, windy, cloudy evening after a hot and sunny day.<br />- Getting my cycle repaired, and in better shape, before it changes hands in the near future.<br />- Writing this blog post :-)<br /></span></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-56886677714220034112008-03-01T00:14:00.006-08:002008-12-09T13:45:00.838-08:00Quoting<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Small World</span></span></span>"<br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Now that's going to be my favorite phrase to quote for quite some time to come... And it only makes me proud that I am quoting someone with whom I've seen this phrase in use just too many times (so much, it makes sense that it be used more).</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">One might think that I have a bit of what is nicely described in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Mirror_%28House_episode%29">this episode of House MD</a>. But then, doesn't what we see, hear etc ('sense' may well be a generic term of use here) also become some part of us? Shhh!</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">PS: With reference to <a href="http://karthikcb.blogspot.com/2008/02/hmmm.html">this</a>, for some reason I feel the other way round. (And now, I have to remind myself to be more subtle...)<br />But then again, I have an almost uncontrollable urge to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xkcd#Life_imitates_xkcd">do this</a>, and hence I choose not to be extremely subtle :-) (Hint: See below)</span></span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnaRQFNIQmMccp52K2Z6_xsc0ZTRdPMvlIOJBHYmSGpZe9dUFLwS3r1GmmJKiU2h5MUXX3PMGgE5yIB1dhS0ZHA4jCLbYDrBB0kn6-CZoxV8LNpeKgb9tpBTg_zilMN75PB4qhxA/s1600-h/useful.PNG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnaRQFNIQmMccp52K2Z6_xsc0ZTRdPMvlIOJBHYmSGpZe9dUFLwS3r1GmmJKiU2h5MUXX3PMGgE5yIB1dhS0ZHA4jCLbYDrBB0kn6-CZoxV8LNpeKgb9tpBTg_zilMN75PB4qhxA/s400/useful.PNG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5176314641416375762" border="0" /></a><br /><br /></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-61957606123148180582008-02-09T03:07:00.000-08:002008-02-09T04:45:07.500-08:00LSD Anyone?<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">At the outset, let me point out that the title has nothing to do with wild my digressions about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD">LSD</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_day#Bicycle_day">Bicycle Day</a>, which have been just a result of how impressed I was with the amount of stuff Wikipedia has about it. It is more to do with a claim that I want to make about something else.<br /><br />Much like this quote from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now">Apocalypse Now</a>: "I like the smell of napalm in the morning... smells like victory;" and a score of similes used by the British in their comedies... I'd like to make one such statement. The music I like most, feels like it's 8 AM on a cool and sunny January day in a hill station in the Nilgiris, and you've just had a bath in cold water, and are watching and feeling the warmth of the sun and comfy wind.<br /><br />This might sound completely idiotic, but it is an existent and recorded feeling for me :-) Now, I'm really sounding like I'm on LSD am I? Take it only as a reference to something called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia">synesthesia</a>/synaethesia. This is a phenomenon where sensation is "in the wrong sense" - something like being able to "see" music, or associating words with color etc. There are some beautiful ideas pointing to probable causes of this being neurological. They can be found <a href="http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Ramachandran_98.html">here</a>. There is something else that I'd like to pick up on, from the same source, but I'll write about it later.<br />Coming back to synaesthesia, I do have one brilliant example of a related idea, in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBgf2ZxIDZk">this</a> music video of the song '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Guitar">Star Guitar</a>' by the Chemical Brothers (check <a href="http://www.stage6.com/user/Cryogenics/video/1046230/Star-Guitar">here</a> for a high-res version). Watch the video (preferably in high-res) once, watch it again, and then read the Wiki article. If you're watching it the for the first ever time, and are able to get the idea of the music video, in all probability, you have a thing for the arts, or you just have good skill of observation. You ought to watch some of the other music videos by the same director, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gondry">Michael Gondry</a>.<br /><br />Now for one of the <span style="font-style: italic;">other</span> nice neuro/psychological problems/phenomena discussed in the book - about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_savant">autistic savants</a>. It is an interesting anomaly, when one may have very little skills in basic arithmetic and yet be able to find 8-digit primes with astounding ease; or have very little writing skills adnyet be able to draw in finer detail than HD. It's like an image of a serial killer made with collaged images of his victims (and damn, I don't have that link!). I wonder how many of these people write the trivia sections in Wikipedia articles - because some of the things in those sections are incredibly difficult to spot (and some being not easily verifiable, this being one of the reasons Wikipedia discourages trivia sections). So, being unbearably painful and bad at writing as I am, I'm writing the trivia section for my <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovd78PS6Dl8">favorite episode</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter%27s_Laboratory">Dexter's Laboratory</a>.<br /><br />Dexter's password to the lab: Star Wars<br /><br />The list of things to do correlates very nicely to what Dexter does:<br />1. Study for French test - which he does with the Subconscious Discographic Hypnotator<br />2. Break DNA Code - for which he just looks at a glowing jar.<br />3. Podiatric sterilization - trimming toenails :-)<br />4. Rodent aerobic trials - hamster!!!<br />5. Aquatic nutrification - feeding the fish<br />6. Solve energy crisis - which doesn't completely show up on the display initially, and then never...<br /><br />In the game of Tic-Tac-Toe he plays after finishing items 2-5, crosses began the game, and won with the diagonal (0,2)-(2,0) (if your indexing starts from 0)<br /><br />When the list is shown again, the items are different:<br />3. Fix Hubble, 4. Split quark, 5. Name the galaxy<br /><br />The discs he finds: Atomic Fun, Sound of Math (which uses a strange base D, for the numbers), Steven Hawks Sings (obvious reference), and finally... Learn French (Francais disc).<br />The French disc starts with the speakers Jean-Pierre and Sophie/Sofie, talking about breakfast items, the first being cheese omelet - the immortal <span style="font-style: italic;">omelette du fromage</span>. The record gets stuck on the word, and there is a good job done on the sound too. If you listen carefully, you can hear the head going back to the original position at the end of each omelette du fromage.<br /><br />The next morning, Dee Dee calls him "Poophead" prompting him to shout at her, only to realize that he can only say "Omelette du fromage"! And then she goes into mocking him with "That's all you can say!" Interestingly enough, you only see cereal on the table, but then she kicks out pancakes from there.<br />Despite this misfortune in the morning, our man does get <span style="font-weight: bold;">the</span> question he cannot get wrong :-)<br /><br />Advanced math class - tempts me to link to <a href="http://mohankv.blogspot.com/2007/10/information-entropy.html">this</a> post. "A train traveling at 460 W from England, by the circumference of the city of Wisconsin, terminated in air-speed to ground-weight ratio. What city in France will the trains collide?" The same goes for what is scribbled on the board...<br />Later, as girls fall for French, the bully kids (one with a cap reading "Phat") too get intimidated by it.<br /><br />In the gameshow in which Dexter becomes the 'greatest winner of all time', he wins $ 700,000. Soon he is singing the magic word, and it becomes a bestseller. Yellow T-shirts with it written on them...<br />Then comes the Nike spoof with 'Just Dü it" (I wonder whether that is supposed to be a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_umlaut">heavy metal umlaut</a>.<br />The Times hails omelette du fromage as Miracle Cure, and our man as a genius (which of course he is). At the United Nations, the flags visible are India/Hungary (wrongly represented in either case), Monaco/Indonesia, Sweden, Panama, South Korea, Pakistan. Shown shaking hands are (stereotypical) Russian and American, Egyptian and Ethiopian(?), Indian(?) and Scottish, Arab and Mexican.<br />Soon, he is the Times Man of the Year (the s obviously added so as to prevent copyright infringement).<br />He arrives home in a limo with French flags, dressed like a Frenchman, complete with cap, shoes, and bread! To add to the celebrity status, there is kissing the baby (only to drop it right after).<br /><br />He goes to his lab, only to use omelette du fromage as his password. Access is denied, thrice. The computer advises complete computer memory core meltdown and engages it. Dexter in recognition, smacks himself in the face (and Smack! is visible). The computer tells him that all active experiments will be terminated and demolecularized, and the lab self-destructs in ten seconds, with the computer's countdown slightly slower than 10 seconds. Dee Dee drills the last nail in the coffin with "That's all you can say!" Oh what a brilliant episode...<br /><br />Phase of B.Tech called Final semester lunacy, thank you so much for being!<br /></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-38205886121608362762007-12-12T18:29:00.000-08:002008-12-09T13:45:00.990-08:00Immortalized<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Enclosure convection, caught on my home digital clock.<br /><br /><img style="width: 551.61px; height: 413.91px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVlZPLcadBGt2PQ342oQ-gmxpgxHxR2hGEhfDQHSFlhmf1huXnWeZ_0hQ9b3RTlX4pz_mwpAyGQ7-diwyNnbbxwANSxEKlHbqsVwCd_yKPedtIfzXlp3u429yBkAtkdj4eqmWPTA/s320/IMG_0007.jpg" width="100%" /><br /><br />Now, if you're wondering how that happened, we forgot to take it off while conducting a yagya, and then it was just...<br />"Holy Smokes!" :-D<br /><br />More than sometimes, a picture speaks a thousand words...</span></span>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-52792311814676960222007-12-09T16:11:00.000-08:002007-12-09T17:08:43.855-08:00To Remember<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">And then (<a href="http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book1.html">Spoiler</a>), one Thursday, more two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one guy sitting on his own on a small bed in his room</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">, recollected this poem he had learnt in a Hindi class in class VI.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Hum panchi unmukt gagan ke</span>, We are the birds of the free skies,<br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Pinjar baddh na gaa paayenge</span>, Caged, we won't be able to sing,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Kanak teeliyon se takraakar</span>, Hitting against golden bars,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Pulkit pankh toot jaayenge</span>... Our tender wings will be broken...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Hum behta jal peene waale</span>, We used to drink flowing water,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Mar jaayenge bhooke pyaase</span>, But we will die of hunger and thirst,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Kahin bhali hai katuk nibori</span>, The bitter fruit of the neem is way better,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Kanak katori ki maida se</span>... Than grain served in a golden vessel...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Svarn shrinkhla ke bandhan mein</span>, In this prison behind golden bars,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Apni gati udaan sab bhoole</span>, We forgot our days of flying and our speed,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Bas sapnon mein dekh rahe hain</span>, Only in our dreams do we see,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Taru ki phungi par ke jhoole</span>... how we swung on the branches of trees...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Aise the armaan ki udte</span>, We used to wish that we'd fly,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Neel gagan ki seema paane</span>, to reach the top of the blue sky,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Laal kiran si chonch khol</span>, Open our beaks, red as sunrays,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Chugte taarak, anaar ke daane</span>... and eat all kinds of seeds...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Hoti seemaheen kshitij se</span>, With the endless horizon,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> In pankhon ki hoda-hodi</span>, would our wings take a challenge,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Ya to kshitij milan ban jaata</span>, We'd either meet the horizon</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Ya tanti saanson ki dori</span>... or die trying...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Need na do, chaahe tehni ka</span>, Don't give us a nest, (don't know the meaning)</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Aashray chinn-bhinn kar daalo</span>, Destroy all our support,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Lekin pankh diye hain to</span>, But if we've been given wings,</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Aakul udaan mein vighn na daalo</span>. Please don't stop us from flying<br /><br />Interestingly enough, when looking for lines that I didn't remember, I found the same poem posted in a totally different context, on <a href="http://sdsthebest.blogspot.com/2006/03/freedom-vs-restrictions.html">another IITM fellow's blog</a>...<br />Let me make it clear though, that the context for me is only pleasant memories and some nostalgia. Somehow reminds me of how rendition can make a difference...<br /></span></span>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-5096135296441528952007-10-17T22:37:00.000-07:002007-10-17T22:40:33.490-07:00I get pained with...<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">... these one-line blog posts I see all around ( :D Man, I just <span style="font-style: italic;">love</span> this irony).</span></span>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-48845414382775501322007-10-11T23:02:00.000-07:002007-10-11T23:49:31.168-07:00Of Food and Money<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span>This is a recent decision I made - I don't want to take up a finance job whatsoever. The story is about 2 weeks old.<br /><br />After a disaster-averted kind of GRE, I returned hurriedly to Madras (to avoid the bandh called regarding the Sethusamudram controversy). From my experience with the DMK's <span style="font-style: italic;">modus operandi</span>, I wouldn't want to take a risk with them. Not more than a month and a half back, I was on my way home on train (going home for Onam, and that was something I was looking forward to very much). But to my utter misfortune, the DMK had called a railway block for Salem depot to be formed (and that too, to favor a decision that was in the <span style="font-style: italic;">personal</span> interest of a minister, obviously, of the DMK). A set of highly uncivilized people blocked the train at six in the morning, held it there till 10, and then entered the train and forced us to exit. And then, they ask us to go find some other way of transportation, saying there's buses to Coimbatore, and that's all they can arrange. Thank god, the central government agreed (not exactly very positive, but at least it helped us get out of trouble) to the demands, and the train was released around 1 o'clock. The train was pretty much vandalized when some of us (who were left not taking the bus) re-entered the train. But since many people had indeed taken a bus, there were enough untampered seats left. After this incident, do you think I'd have the guts to be traveling on a day there's a bandh by these chaps? (Note: I don't support any political party. In fact, I'd like to oppose them all! I'm not venting my anger on a particular party alone. It's just the sick system of politics we have here)<br /><br />Oops, I'm digressing too much. Anyway, back to the "story". I came back to Madras, and fell terribly ill; so bad that I was completely bedridden for 3 days. In this state, I had a friend buy me some food. It was 7 in the evening. I was trying to get eating something. I hadn't eaten for 24 hours (my last meal was dinner on the train the previous day). So I was in this dazed state. I had been sleeping most of the day. And I dream very intensely. So there was this huge intersection set of dream and reality where the border was heavily blurred (or at least, appeared to be). I tried to get myself to eat a bun. As I slowly moved my hand toward the bun, I saw 2 guys enter my room, breaking the door. They had laptops, and were dressed in formals. Anyway, they began doing something on the computers, and they were intensely involved in it. It looked as though nothing could deter them from simultaneously observing my every move, and doing whatever it was that they were doing on the computers. At some point of time, I asked them and they told me they were "running an automaton to see how my eating/not eating would affect the market and the value of the rupee". At first, my attention was diverted to what they were doing. I saw the value of the rupee changing from lots of other things. The parameter being plotted had 8 digits of precision beyond the decimal place! Now who on earth had imagined that somebody is spending all their time on calculating the 8th digit after the decimal for the value of a currency? My pupils dilated at the thought (I was just awestruck, and I hadn't taken a dose of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide">this</a>, I was just dreaming!). I had to squint to avoid the light from my rooms fluorescent lamp for a moment. The effect subsided very quickly though. Soon, I found this 8th digit calculation very repulsive. It did remind me of what's happening in parts of computational engineering, but then I found this more repulsive. It even reminded me of a plot element in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_S.A.C._2nd_GIG">Ghost in the Shell: StandAlone Complex: 2nd GIG</a> (which is something I like a lot - not necessarily the plot element). But somehow, I was being irked by merely the process. Things got worse - every single step towards eating that I took, seemed to make this calculation ever more complex. Further, the analysts were beginning to comment on whether or not I must eat. They began taking the food away from me. These experiences, contrary to most dreams, weren't time-stretched. Note that most dreams last mere seconds, although it might seem like a long time to us. But this was happening in realtime. There were bursts of determination telling me it's a dream, telling me to break out of it. But the visual and auditory signals were extremely compelling (then). This continued for a fairly long time. There was nothing more strenuous, especially when I hadn't eaten for quite a long time, and was weak and sick. The whole thing lasted 4 excruciatingly painful hours. It was 11 o'clock when I finally had a bite of the food.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">I am very much into abrupt endings. So, this dream's why I decided that I don't want to take up a finance job.<br /><br />PS: the days that followed were full of action. A recovery, Shaastra, TOEFL, an exam - man, it's been a roller-coaster ride!<br /></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-60600747090915830112007-08-03T20:18:00.000-07:002007-08-04T00:15:21.212-07:00... and thanks for all the facts<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">I don't want to be giving an impression that I'm closing the blog (and that's the title story). I've been <span style="font-style: italic;">tagged</span>. Now why is this so much of a phenomenon on blogs? What <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> are you going to know with 8 random facts? About me!? Ah well, who cares? After all it's a meme, and let me not disrupt the progress of a (localized) internet phenomenon. But I'm rather sure I'm the last among my peer group to put a post on 8RF, so I have the right to brutally terminate the phenomenon by <span style="font-weight: bold;">not </span>tagging anyone! Ah, fatal hilarity :D (not from <a href="http://xkcd.com/214/">Batman</a>)<br />Here goes:<br /><br />1. I was one of the few kids in my kindergarten who didn't cry on the first day of LKG. I was rather dumbstruck thinking: "What are so many kids crying about?" But I did have reason for crying on the second day, as I left my water bottle there and got scolded a lot at home. To make things worse, when the water bottle was indeed found, and shown in class, I couldn't identify it as mine.<br />2. There is no photo of me showing the red eye effect. Man, have I got one good pair of eyes :O<br />3. I had a reputation for arguing with my teachers during my 11th & 12th. So much so, that I have skipped at least 10 lunches just for arguing with my teachers (and in the process, made them skip lunch too!). And with all due respect to them, these were only over subject doubts.<br />4. I have a thing for old clothes, and I've had luck with them. My 8th standard school uniform trousers still fit me, and I wore them here in my 1st & 2nd year (till my mother threatened to burn them if I wore them again). I have a shirt that I was gifted in 1997, and it too still fits me! Fancy clothes that have outgrown a full teenage! Or for a more imposing figure, 10 years - that's half my life!<br />5. I collect straws of Appy/Frooti. I have more than 400 now, and probably only 20% of that is what I really consumed. I want to make a Buckminster Fullerene model using the straws.<br />6. While in a Bangalore mall, many of my friends were drooling at the girls, and I was drooling at a Maisto remote controlled <a href="http://www.formula1mall.com/product_info.php?cPath=34&products_id=371">Ferrari F1</a> car model.<br />7. I am very obsessive-compulsive and have vague habits. I chew on my fingers, pull out my hair - as thought stimulants. So much, that I have a bald spot from it.<br />8. I have plans to learn skateboarding this semester. All the inspiration for this comes from ESPN X-games and Tony Hawk's game series.<br /><br />So much for random facts. I'm sure my next post will be much better.<br /></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-68475574082567706292007-06-26T22:00:00.000-07:002007-06-26T23:01:09.386-07:00Bookmarks<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">There was an old story of Google releasing the most popular search queries. Along the same lines, since I've been reading a little too much for that past 2 months, I decided to put up my Firefox bookmarks list online. This will give you a vague idea of a tiny, minuscule bit of what I've been reading. But I strongly want to recommend these books before going on to the bookmarks (I wouldn't recommend any of the bookmarks :P)<br /><br />Phantoms in the Brain - V.S.Ramachandran<br />Collection of Sceptical Essays - Bertrand Russel<br />The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde<br /><br />And for bookmarks: (I would like to thank <a href="http://havetimewillwaste.blogspot.com/">Sayan Ganguly</a> for the idea of a CSV or a list representing a large turn of events) Let me remind you that <span style="font-style: italic;">most</span> of these links are on Wikipedia, which has been my single most faithful companion during my internship :)<br /><br />Bohemian Rhapsody (song by Queen), Boojum (superfluidity), The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits) (a poem by Lewis Carroll!), Debye Model (lattice specific heat), Fresnel Lens, SnorriCam, Requiem for a Dream (the movie), Ampersand, Hyphen War, a picture on the mech2k4 Google group :D, Rom di Prisco's personal page, Area 404 (a collection of 404 error pages), Yahweh, Differential Geometry, Nash Equilibrium (Nash of 'A Beautiful Mind'), Hex (a board game developed by Nash), Godel Escher Bach, Molecular Borromean Rings (on nOnoscience), Board Crazy (a skateboarding site), MCPlus+ (a nerdcore rapper), Constellations in Popular culture, Psychoacoustics (see BOSE), Equalization, DirectX, Mellotron, Mondegreen (you have to read this!), Ich Hasse Musik (on Rammstein's page), Ma Baker (the song and the real story), Bonnie and Clyde (the fashion designer too!), Linux Audio software list, Hydrogen (drum machine for Linux), Tor (the famous anony - also Torpark, OperaTor), 0xDEADBEEF (the brilliant few among you will realize it's more than easy meat), Cult of the Dead Cow (now I'm giving it away), Tyrannosaurus, Dromaeosauridae, Yahoo (see Jonathan Swift), Batman: The Animated Series, Golden Raspberry Awards, The Elements (fanimutation of a song by Tom Lehrer), Audrey Munson (an actress), Fakelore (and similar portmanteaus), Science Park (read IT Park), And Then There Were None (novel by Agatha Christie, also a poem), American Serial Killers, Snowclone (see <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad</span> lib), Powers of Ten, Simpsons Chalkboard Gags, Homer Simpson's jobs, Red Hot Chili Peppers (the homepage), It Must Be True! (an episode of Garfield and Friends, see also Wyoming), Capitalsaurus (see also List of US state dinosaurs), LMS colour space, Terratag (makers of the Laughing Man logo), Bible Black (see also Futanari), Bakunyuu, lonelygirl15 (meme), 120 Days of Sodom (book by Marquis de Sade), The Bus Uncle (video meme on YouTube), Blueprints database (an online database of actual blueprints), Nonogram (a puzzle/game), Tesseract (4D equivalent of a cube), RS232, Salvador Dali, Ambient Occlusion (a realistic reflection model), ContextFreeArt (this is an amazing crack of a software).<br /><br />There are lots more, but this is just to give a flavour of the variety of stuff that I've been reading on.<br /></span></span>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-91448715197212120732007-05-15T23:10:00.000-07:002008-12-09T13:45:15.528-08:00h4x0r<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">To begin with, let me not go ahead with the formalities of </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >it's-been-ages-since-I-posted</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> <span style="font-family:verdana;">and all that usual nonsense. I've done enough of that in previous posts!</span><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />The story I'm posting is from Slashdot, and you can read the original story <a href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/15/2327248&threshold=-1">here</a>. It put me into a 5-minute laughing fit, so someone reading this blog might chuckle :P<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Munroe">Randall Munroe</a>, the creator of XKCD, was recently invited to deliver a lecture at MIT. I badly want to read the transcript, so if someone has a link, please leave it as a comment!<br />Anyway, coming back to the lecture, do I even need to tell a word about XKCD and how simply brilliant it is? So, what did MIT have in store for Mr. Munroe?<br /><br />One word - <span style="font-weight: bold;">HACK</span><br /><br />Part 1: "<span style="font-style: italic;">MIT hackers dropped hundreds of labelled playpen balls onto the audience from the hatches in the ceiling</span>"<br /><br /><img src="http://web.mit.edu/unlocked/Public/xkcd-lecture/images/DSC_0688.jpg" /><br /><br />The image shows Randall Munro reading the contents of the labels on the balls - the XKCD logo and the 128-bit <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System">AACS</a> key.<br />The key is one of the encryption keys required for HD-DVDs, It got leaked into the internet and has spawned a meme ever since. The leak would mean that one could easily play a licensed DVD on an unlicensed player, losses in millions. The key was spreading like wildfire over sites like Digg, and the controversy it created is in no way, small. The key (of which I shall not use the name, owing to fear of copyright allegations!) has spread a lot through things like T-shirts, songs, YouTube videos, tattoos, comic strips and what not! Here's an example from Wikipedia.<br /><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjduvC4wwhU5MsJHMcWygeD0p0_Z_cSiH8mZYyzuoRfon2jORvh5rjsA55FCO25NjBZRBBf4J42rP2qAPpdizaMiPRdnuPcCcvNxN6Lsbbt46Mi_8EGOgmq87aXgzDTzQ1c356YA/s1600-h/flag.GIF"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjduvC4wwhU5MsJHMcWygeD0p0_Z_cSiH8mZYyzuoRfon2jORvh5rjsA55FCO25NjBZRBBf4J42rP2qAPpdizaMiPRdnuPcCcvNxN6Lsbbt46Mi_8EGOgmq87aXgzDTzQ1c356YA/s320/flag.GIF" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5065048954720759106" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is called the "Free-Speech-Flag". The idea is that the RGB code of the colours on the flag give away the code. But whoever created this, couldn't fit in the last part of the code, which is C0, which figures at the end of the flag :D<br /><br /><a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hd-dvd/hd-dvd-the-code-shirt-257597.php">Here</a> is a link to a T-shirt with the code on it. By the way, stop staring at the wearer, and look for the code!<br /><br />Time for a PJ on this: <span style="font-style: italic;">Were the MIT guys trying to delete the code from their database by doing this?</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Part 2: "<span style="font-style: italic;">Munroe was stalked by remote-controlled <span style="font-weight: bold;">mechanical velociraptors</span></span>"!!!<br />This is the part that made me go ROFLMAO.<br /><br /><img src="http://web.mit.edu/unlocked/Public/xkcd-lecture/images/DSC_0741.jpg" /><br />What an absolute crack! I wonder how it would have been if he were wearing a "<span style="font-style: italic;">Say no to velociraptors (and all other members of the dromaeosaurid family)</span><span><span><span> T-shirt. For all the mortal fear one should have for Velociraptors (and all other members of the dromaeosaurid family!), lady luck smiled on our man.<br /><br />"<span style="font-style: italic;">He had been supplied with a squirt gun full of grape juice</span>" - and is it a sad thing that MIT haven't yet uploaded an image of him using the gun on the vicious predatory attack on him.<br /><br />Concluding Remarks:<br />I have one more nice image, of which I have analogy to show. The credits for the second image are to <a href="http://mohankv.blogspot.com/">Mohan KV</a>. The connect is "Conformal <span style="font-style: italic;">Mapping</span>"<br /><br /><img src="http://web.mit.edu/unlocked/Public/xkcd-lecture/images/DSC_0782.jpg" /><br /></span></span></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7zTHv7cKsrQlCO-hohzQ6Ev2O56G7ClHWLD0E8V7FDdB3z0f0_WudDjSiOD9C22lPmaRFaKeNVz_yUraqPcS0z0xvnegyM18sZ0WVCBzcKVfrzb2ZfWCZPlK0hjtNK0wPgMTSJA/s1600-h/yum.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7zTHv7cKsrQlCO-hohzQ6Ev2O56G7ClHWLD0E8V7FDdB3z0f0_WudDjSiOD9C22lPmaRFaKeNVz_yUraqPcS0z0xvnegyM18sZ0WVCBzcKVfrzb2ZfWCZPlK0hjtNK0wPgMTSJA/s320/yum.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5065058725771357522" border="0" /></a></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-65336789995391410202007-04-06T02:42:00.000-07:002007-04-06T05:37:38.680-07:00The story quoted most often, in a science/engineering class...<div style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >...just has to be </span><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">'The Blind Men and the Elephant'. The story, I must say, is of deep importance in understanding what the goals of science are. We are all but blind men, trying to understand what the elephant is. Each of us is at a different place/viewpoint, and hence, we all infer differently about it. But ultimately, we are just blind. It has to be made clear, though, that we aren't blind by choice, although some do choose to be, and I have no need to speak of them.</span></span><br /><br /><img src="http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/anatomy/images/elephant2.jpg" /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Ah, the arguments go on, and we still think the elephant is but a snake, a spear, a broom, a wall, a pillar, a winnow; and many of us would just have to stick to our opinion. Yet, it's fun being blind.<br /><br />The other big-time story that is quoted just has to be Alice in Wonderland. Now, let me get to the point of why this is being written about. A few days back, we had our last lecture class of the course, 'Introduction to Turbulence'. The course was being taken by a new faculty, Dr. Prasad Patnaik. It used to be taken by Prof. N. R. Panchapakesan, a known god in the field. There was adequate mention of his work during the classes. Things went rather slow (probably, owing to the post-graduate audience), but there were many things in the course that I have enjoyed. The references in the course were just the thing in this semester's courses. We had ample links and book chapters to read, and not one source was boring. For what little we have learnt, there is still a long way to go - which is why I had to mention what he showed us in his last class.<br /><br />There was the mention of the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant. What each of us has learnt from the course largely depends on where we are looking. How very true. Alice in Wonderland hadn't figured yet. And then it happened. The reference was to a dialogue with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire_cat">Cheshire Cat</a>. It was intended to tell us about what to do with what has been taught in the course. It goes like this:</span><br /><i><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"> “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”<br />“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.<br />“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.<br />“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.<br />“As long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.<br />“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”</span></i><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">The sheer brilliance of this statement just astounds me. I feel like reading the whole book all over again now. The beauty of Alice in Wonderland is in the fact that, as a kid, one would see the beautiful and fancy wonderland; and as an adult engineering/science/philosophy student, one sees the amazing references made to all kinds of scientific and philosophical concepts, controversies and things like that. So, as the Cheshire cat said, you're sure to get somewhere, if only you walk long enough.<br /><br />A quick read through the Wikipedia page for the Cheshire cat, and I found this nice factoid. Cheshire cat is also a name used in C++ programming, for a data type that hides its implementation using a pointer. The amazing part is the example given, exactly in dedication to the Cheshire cat.</span><br /></span></span></span><pre style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:100%;" ><b>class</b> Handle {<br /><b>private</b>:<br /><b>struct</b> CheshireCat; // <i>Not defined here</i><br />CheshireCat *smile; // <i>Handle</i><br /><br /><b>public</b>:<br />Handle(); // <i>Constructor</i><br />~Handle(); // <i>Destructor</i><br />// <i>Other operations...</i><br />};</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >and then, the implementation</span><b><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:courier new;">#include</span></span></b><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:courier new;"> "handle.hpp"</span><br /><br /><b style="font-family: courier new;">struct</b><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Handle::CheshireCat {</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> ... // </span><i style="font-family: courier new;">The actual implementation can be anything</i><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">};</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">Handle::Handle() {</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> smile = </span><b style="font-family: courier new;">new</b><span style="font-family:courier new;"> CheshireCat;</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">}</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">Handle::~Handle() {</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> </span><b style="font-family: courier new;">delete</b><span style="font-family:courier new;"> smile;</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">}</span></span><br /></span></pre><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Keep smiling, Cheshire cat!</span></span><br /></span></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-79912784583867089672007-03-09T03:43:00.000-08:002007-03-09T04:28:18.798-08:00Selfish Happiness<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There are some times, some moments when you are happy that something happened to you. I remember examples not really worth quoting. In tenth class, we had a story in our English curriculum, by Anita Desai, called 'Games at Twilight'. The language, the imagery, the flow of the story can very well be described only by one word - shady. I shall not discuss about that much. The plot is something like this - a young boy among many other kids, plays hide and seek. In his desire to win, he hides in a rather obscure place, and in course of time, is practically forgotten by the rest of the crowd. There's a small amount of time for which the boy thinks he has won, defeated everyone. He then remembers such times of "private happiness" or "selfish happiness", like one when he ate a whole huge bar of chocolate(think like a kid, and you know what that means!). That's the moment I'm writing about here - the private happiness. My nomenclature is poor, but I can't find a better word, at least for the time being. So, there are times, some moments of private happiness. And the nice thing is, you won't find any of those on this blog! Am I selfish as ever.<br /></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-84784987036787168922007-02-09T21:13:00.001-08:002007-05-26T22:42:29.309-07:001st post in 2007<div style="text-align: justify;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It's been some time since I posted anything here, as usual. I have been thinking of posting a lot of stuff, but then, it might as well become to long, like the last post. As they say, better late than never. And I wouldn't bother if it is boring for the reader, because I am sure the number of people who actually read this(thanks to RSS/Atom feeds), are less than countable on fingers. In that sense, I <span style="font-style: italic;">practically</span> don't have to bother about the blog being public! Ah, the joy of solitude... By far, my writing style is something that can be translated into speech without having to change words, tone etc. I am hence, at a disadvantage. My written and spoken language have amazingly high correspondence. And I am sure that is a sign of lack of refinement. In my view, written language ought only to be read, preferably alone. Collective reading or reading aloud leaves the reader with a handicap. As said in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Mahabharata</span>(if I remember it right),<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"An arrow that just left the bow, and a word that just left the mouth, are similar - they can't be revoked"</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />There's no perfect return/review once spoken out, or interpreted jointly. That reminds me of the way learn to study(?). In the early years, reading aloud is the best way to read and study. In my estimate, by around 3rd-4th class, this should be done with. That's when one learns the amazing way of reading, learning and understanding without the necessity of a voice, so to speak. Still, there is an inner voice(I am <span style="font-weight: bold;">not</span> preaching religion here!). The brain is the most amazing thing I can think of(crazy enough making the brain think of itself, or there is a place in the brain which thinks about the brain!). It is amazing how the brain can recall images, voices, touch and even smell/taste; leave alone raw information. Of course, all these are ultimately just electric impulses - a lame excuse for us to make(?). Getting back to written language, for a moment, brackets are a powerful tool in written language(and I use them lavishly).<br /><br />I always wanted to experiment with all the brain's abilities. Thanks to me being in engineering, I'm not making guinea pigs of people and playing with their minds(another arbitrary boast which is rather baseless - and for the record, who said an engineer can't play with minds?). From my simple experiments with my mind/brain/whatever-you'd-like-to-call-it, I find that the brain is more or less serial in processing. Of course, I am not intensive enough to do an exhaustive mathematical analysis of this. I'd be happy enough to get an idea. This might explain why it is rather difficult to do different things with either hand at the same time(for instance, musical instrument players, if you'd want to argue, are trained for <span style="font-style: italic;">only that specific purpose</span> for the parallel processing. They can't mirror their skills, as in - exchange the functions of their left and right hands). It may probably also make one think that this is probably why many ambidextrous people are Mensa members. I remember a particular example of a friend of mine telling me about his school teacher who could write different languages with his 2 hands at the same time - now that's crazy! I had also recently read about an MRI/EEG-based program to learn how multilingual brains work. I'm rather sure that there was also a reference to a paper in <span style="font-style: italic;">Nature</span>. The study showed that different parts of the brain were active when using different languages. I don't have the link with me now, sadly enough(I had got the link through StumbleUpon). In India, with the amazingly high number of languages we have, it is really hard to be monolingual. Again, going by classification, we can have more than one native language. There are quite a few <span style="font-style: italic;">communities</span> which are inherently multilingual. I am from one such community, the Kerala Iyers(Palakkad Iyers). We speak both Malayalam and Tamil, and our language isn't really pure. It is very different from either language. Thankfully, most of us can speak enough Malayalam to live in Kerala, and enough Tamil to live in Tamil Nadu. Being the center of a linguistic confusion, Palakkad Iyers have been subject of many a comic character/story in TV soaps, movies etc(again, both in Malayalam and Tamil). So much for the Iyer connection.<br />Getting back to the multilingual brain, <a href="http://mohankv.blogspot.com/">KV Mohan</a> once asked me a very interesting question - <span style="font-style: italic;">what language do you think in</span>? It would be of profound interest to a multilingual theorist. I think in almost all the languages I know, though I have not thought in Sanskrit yet(yeah, very funny). But another question would pop up again - <span style="font-style: italic;">which language do I think most often in</span>? That's still a puzzling question. Anyway, thanks to the world being a smaller place, there are more and more multilingual people around, and the answer to these questions will be found. The other thing I found in my experiments is with our brain's ability to reproduce music. Our brain can reproduce music almost exactly. So good, that you can put in a playlist and let it play, let alone having an iPod do the job. But yet again, the serial processing(or so I call it, maybe wrongly) limits the exact reproduction of the music. There is a rough limit on the details that can be reproduced, as if the brain has some kind of polyphony limit or something. Yet, it is plainly amazing that the brain can merely reproduce sounds and images, and also <span style="font-style: italic;">create new sounds and images</span>. That was one of the ways I used to learn songs. I used to remember the tune perfectly, the lyrics vaguely(as my brain interpreted them) and then fill in the gaps with new information(who knows where that came from!). I have also had songs running in my mind while writing exams, and I used to match my writing speed with the rhythm of the song.<br /><br />Coming to music; there's always some of the music videos I wanted to write a lot to write about. The first music video that really caught my attention was '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californication_%28song%29">Californication</a>', by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I am rather sure that this is one of their most popular songs, despite never reaching great ratings; and it has a pretty well-made and most importantly, enjoyable video. And that was the first ever time I knew that there existed something called 3-D animation. That was in my 8th class. Pretty soon, I got my first computer, came to know of 3-D games, and played <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_Rash">Road Rash</a> for the first time. Around the same year, the series <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roughnecks:_Starship_Troopers_Chronicles">Starship Troopers</a> premiered on TV. It was CG animated, and looked very realistic to the then me. Of course, I was well behind the times in knowledge of technology back then. Year 2000 also saw the release of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_Speed:_Porsche_Unleashed">Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed</a>, a game I still play(I've finished it a million times, but the game is too good). The game brought in too many new features into the Need for Speed series. The graphics was much much more realistic than any other game I had ever played, the car handling was just too realistic, the music was perfect for the game, and the game modes were just groundbreaking(read from the link!). I'd have been writing a 10 page review but for limitations of other things I am thinking of. So, since that year, I have had a fascination with Computer Graphics, Electronic Music, Racing Games and what not. The other thing I wanted to write about in this rather arbitrary stream of thoughts, is about the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1rOCSiYFaE">video</a> of another RHCP song, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zephyr_Song">The Zephyr Song</a>. The video is a brilliantly made with (strangely enough) a psychedelic theme. But the theme just blends into the song like water in milk. There's a kind of beauty in the way it was made(not just the exotic dancer :D ). And it doesn't seem like psychedelic music either!<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;">So much for all that multimedia. Quite a lot has happened in the months past. I'd better not be recollecting the results of my previous semester(yeah, it's the same old disappointment, nothing new). I should say, though, that there were a few courses I really liked and I haven't disappointed in those atleast. December was the month to be last year. After a quick week of stay in the campus, I returned home for what may well be my last full college vacation. And there was quite a lot to it than I expected. On Dec 23, around 20 of us batch-mates at school had a reunion in Cochin. It was quite the thing that I wanted in years. I met some of my classmates after something like 2-2½</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> years. That's a really long time, especially at this part of our life, when things change drastically almost every other second. Obviously, we had lots to talk about, and I'm sure none of us could finish talking. The humans that we are, the reunion would not be complete without food :). We had lunch together, and the fun just swept us all around the dining tables. Trust me, school life is something every person ought to have in life. It is probably one of the most important parts of our lives, and a lot of what we are, is built up at school. I miss those days as much as anyone else. Time's invisible hand can't be turned back, and the changes it brings upon us are as inevitable as time itself. After the reunion on 23rd, we also had a school alumni reunion on 26th. Since most of the publicity was through either word of mouth, or through orkut, we didn't have a really big turnout. Yet, it too gave us much to remember. And a concrete Alumni Association was formed at last. I did put up a handful of pictures of the reunions on my <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/maheshm_iitm/">Flickr page</a>. This time, I don't want to put it up here. The images are better viewed on the Flickr page.<br /><br />Time to digress once again. I have got back to my thinking habit of late. I love thinking. At home, I was so much into thought that my mother thought there was something I was keeping from her. Well, after all, our mothers are so much the most understanding people in the whole universe, to us(atleast to me). The bond between parent and child is very intense. That's why blood relation matters. To quote in Sanskrit(I just love the language)<br /></span><pre style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:100%;">"yam mAtA-pitarou klEsham sahEtE sambhavE nruNAm<br />na tasya nishkrutihi: shakyA kartUm varshatairapi"</span></pre> <span style="font-size:85%;">It translates to - "The suffering which the mother and father endure in bearing and bringing up a child, cannot be compensated, even in a hundred years."<br />Damn! I digressed too much once again! It was all for just some idea behind a question I put in a quiz I conducted in my hostel. The question I put in was - What are the colours used in colour printing, and why? And practically all the answers I received were unsatisfactory. The answer is CMYK(Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK) and it's quite elementary. In colours of light, the colour mixing is additive, and in mixing of paint, colour mixing is subtractive. As in, if I mix Red and Green light, I see both Red and Green light. But if I mix Red and Green paint, I see the colour that reflects both Red and Green. Simple enough. So for colours of light, I would be using Red, Green, Blue and of course, their sum, White. But for paint, I would be using their respective additive mixes - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. What a nice idea! And the beauty is that it can be worked out! Let me not be praising myself(though this question did come to me in a stream of wonderful thoughts). The other very interesting thing that has happened, that I read of, is this method in Computational Fluid Dynamics called MLPG(Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin) method. In all computational methods in Fluid and Solid Dynamics, we(usually) inevitably have to use a mesh to discretize a volume of material into cells. But this method, amazingly is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meshfree_methods">Mesh-free</a>. </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >Now <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> is some serious genius! I love engineering :D. Anyway, I don't know enough mathematics to understand and write an analysis of this absolute spark of brilliance(I leave that job to <a href="http://mohankv.blogspot.com/">this guy</a>). That makes my job easier all the way.<br /><br />I shall preserve all the other things I consider sparks of brilliance for some quiz I may conduct, some time in the future. For now, I'm just enjoying thought.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></span> </div></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-1162679598898286202006-11-04T13:20:00.001-08:002006-11-04T14:33:18.986-08:00Henry Wadsworth... Longfellow<span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-IN" >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.<o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-IN" >Caesarean Section<o:p></o:p><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-IN" > 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. <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Independence</st1:city></st1:place> 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’<sup><a href="http://davegorman.com/history_dgiae.htm">1</a></sup>; 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.<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-IN" >This is not written in a pensive<sup><a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Pensive">2</a></sup> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;" lang="EN-IN" ><o:p></o:p>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 sleeping<sup><a href="http://mech.iitm.ac.in/people/faculty/mallikarjuna.html">3</a></sup>. 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 different<sup><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Now_For_Something_Completely_Different">4</a></sup>, 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.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;" lang="EN-IN">Plus Two<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;" lang="EN-IN"><span style=""> </span>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 turbulence<sup><a href="http://www.jncasr.ac.in/emu/rnsimha/">5</a></sup>. It was all in a lecture. The second (to none<sup><a href="http://www.mems.duke.edu/faculty/bejan/">6</a></sup>!) is saying that you can kiss goodbye to the chaos you thought existed, nature isn’t fractal anymore<sup><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_theory">7</a></sup>. I have so many references here I can call this post Hash<sup><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Plus_Plus">8</a></sup>-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 antidisestablishmentarianism<sup><a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blackadder">9</a></sup>, wibble, charge etc. These types of references have been very useful in something I did, the Shaastra Main Quiz.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;" lang="EN-IN">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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xxxholic">xxxHolic</a>, and some things I have seen reflect many of the realities I have come to appreciate. One episode<sup><a href="http://www.casualsmirk.com/xxxholic/s1_ep06.php">10</a></sup> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;" lang="EN-IN">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.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;" lang="EN-IN">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.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <span style="font-size:85%;">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.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/1600/XI%20A.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/400/XI%20A.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/1600/XII%20A.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/400/XII%20A.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com44tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-1151258373283212332006-06-25T10:04:00.000-07:002006-06-25T10:59:33.640-07:00Just another piece of Junk, Arbitrarily Pathetic<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">First of all, let me not write a word about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno">Juno</a> 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.<br />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.<br /></span></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">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<br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/1600/pocketMoney.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 418px; height: 145px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/400/pocketMoney.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />->this. Calvin and Hobbes is ultimate.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />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.<br />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 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whiLwDoRk_o&search=deepavali">Petronas Ad</a>, if I remember - of a few Tam guys dressed like rappers, and something nice happens. The catchphrase <span style="font-weight: bold;">is</span> different, but who cares!<br />The day after, one of my friends put photos of the reunion on his Orkut album. That day, I spent <span style="font-weight: bold;">200 freakin Rupees of talktime</span> from my mobile calling up practically all of them. For a person notoriously stingy like me, that is a landmark.<br />Another thing that I cherished are the long fart(read 'useless chatting', for non-IITians) sessions with <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/4475412">Bhaand</a> and <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/4946016">Chintu</a> 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.<br />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.</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />-Lots of obvious have-to-be-there-can't-play-without players not selected.<br />-Surprise goals by many of the so-called underdogs.<br />-Bad refereeing decisions, unwanted hussles.<br />-Pathetic performances by many players, <span style="font-weight: bold;">especially the big names at the EPL</span>.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-1148534085330515452006-05-24T20:46:00.000-07:002006-05-24T22:16:54.593-07:00May it Be<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">It's the month of May, nothing else with the title. May is named after the Greek goddess </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_%28mythology%29">Maia</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, 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 </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2000/36/">Reflection Nebula</a><span style="font-family:verdana;">, 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 </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude">Apparent magnitude</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> of the nearby star. The hi-res image of the reflection nebula was my wallpaper for quite some time.</span></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span><div style="text-align: justify;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">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 <a href="http://www.ghostintheshell.tv/">Ghost in the Shell : StandAlone Complex</a> and I'm quite impressed with the overall storyline, but not much with the individual episodes. The character/concept of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughing_Man_%28Ghost_in_the_Shell%29">The Laughing Man</a> is just beautiful. The 2nd series, 2nd Gig, is better. Even better, I suppose are the movies, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_%28film%29">Ghost in the Shell</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_2:_Innocence">Ghost in the Shell 2 : Inocence</a>. 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, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirow_Masamune">Masamune Shirow</a> is also a hentai artist.<br />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.<br />The green patch near it is a ground adjacent to our street.<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/1600/home_maybe_2.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 657px; height: 385px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3368/1807/400/home_maybe_2.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-1145082752808190052006-04-14T23:08:00.000-07:002006-04-14T23:32:32.810-07:00Happy Birthday to Me<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I turned 19 four days ago, and I did escape without Birthday bumps(in other words, none had the enthusiasm to give me bumps).<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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).<br />Finally, thanks to all who have wasted their precious time in reading this post and losing moments of their vanishing youth.<br /></span></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18460575.post-1141390406904538992006-03-03T04:23:00.000-08:002006-03-03T04:53:26.930-08:00Previous Records<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">This is what was referred to by a person whose initials are inscribed in the minds of every Mech and Elec student.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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'.<br />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.<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></div>Mahesh Mahadevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12037274952443908196noreply@blogger.com1