Blog abode of Solarisis

Cooking: Art or an acquired skill?

2011-08-31T23:54:00.000-07:00

The river flows again after a long time. Not that it was empty of water but rather the lack of a trigger. Rather than muse about the trigger, lets engage in the topic of the day. Do natural cooks really exist or are they purely a figment of my imagination? I have been blessed to live amongst great cooks in my life. Even better, I have had the privilege of eating great food from such cooks everyday! Most of these people have not had the sometimes overrated formal education or been to cooking competitions that showcase their talents, yet they seem to cook well. Which brings me to the question - Is cooking an art or an acquired skill?

I have seen some of these people cook on a day to day basis and the observation process makes me wonder. When I cook, I strictly follow my mom's recipe or more recently, my wife's directions. If some ingredient should be added in two teaspoons, I follow the law to the dot. While I still think I am ingenious, i like to be safe and cook known good recipes. On the other hand, my mom, my friend, or more recently, my pretty lady cook with abandon. All measurements fly out of the window and they add ingredients as they feel the dish needs. It is scary to see that they seem to throw an unknown amount of spices or salt (yeah, I am an engineer who likes to know the exact measurements). When it is time to eat food, each and every dish tastes great! Their minds apparently work the recipe on the fly. While cooking, their hands sing the tune of their minds.

If you see it once or twice, you think it is a fluke. But if you have been seeing this everyday for 20 years with your mom, 2 years with your friend, or for the last 6 months with da wife, it makes you wonder! Is cooking natural to some people and totally a skill to others?

Howard Roark or Peter Keating?

2008-05-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

Sounds like a great question; although the novel suggests otherwise. For people who havent read "The FountainHead" , I recommend that you read it. Howard Roark is the quintessential man who is "as man should be" while Peter Keating is the supposed "the man who couldn't be, and doesn't know it". Roark is ideal; he falls to the edge of wretchedness before regenerating from the ashes - ideology is his life. Keating is pragmatic, wants to be liked, and is a victim of his own desires.
He embodies the result of a soulless man devoted to altruistic means. Rather Intriguing!

Business and the Godfather

2008-03-06T22:17:00.000-08:00

surreal but nice - is it? or AOL and the french kiss girl?

KATHLEEN: My business is in trouble. My mother would have something wise to say.

JOE: I'm a brilliant businessman. It's what I do best. What's your business?

KATHLEEN: No specifics, remember?

JOE: Minus specifics, it's hard to help. Except to say, go to the mattresses.

KATHLEEN: What?

JOE: It's from The Godfather. It means you have to go to war.

KATHLEEN: The Godfather? What is it with men and The Godfather?

JOE: The Godfather is the I Ching. The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather is the answer to any question. What should I pack for my summer vacation? "Leave the gun, take the cannoli." What day of the week is it? "Maunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday." And the answer to your question is "Go to the mattresses."

You're at war. "It's not personal, it's business. It's not personal it's business." Recite that to yourself every time you feel you're losing your nerve. I know you worry about being brave, this is your chance. Fight. Fight to the death.

Poignant!

2008-02-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

I never did talk to him a lot. I never felt the need to. We were fundamentally different people. He respected the system and strictly adhered to its rules. I believed that the system was a byproduct of people and was always likely to have cracks. I was joyed to identify those cracks. He was a man of principles set by our timeless ancestors while I believed in what I thought were principles. His unnerving trust in the system surprised me, baffled me too at times. Yet, I never realized I had so much respect for him as a child. The respect only grew as I my exposure to the system increased. To have never appreciated the man I revered for such a long time only makes it worse. He is not with us anymore after his tryst with destiny, as the system calls it. After a little more than two years since I last spoke to him, his fire for appreciating things for what they were still burns inside me. I can only hope that one day, I will probably see life as vividly and clearly as he did.

The Evolution of the iPod: Apple squeezing its competitors

2007-09-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

As Gump called it, the "fruit" company has ushered in yet a new generation of the uber-cool and the uber-profitable iPod. From a consumer standpoint, Apple seems to be releasing a newer version every year and it looks just out of the world. From a purely technical standpoint, Apple seems to be reducing the design time for a new generation which requires a significant level of planning and thus, a greater number of resources from it competitors. This keeps Apple far ahead of its competitors given they still havent closed in on the "cool" of the fruit brand.

A Relaxing Vacation in San Diego

2007-09-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

Just a fast update. A bunch of our undergrad friends decided to visit San Diego and also meet up with Mahesh for a relaxing vacation by the beach and it was a Blast! Kayaking, Sailing, Swimming, Boogie boarding, Football, Tabletennis - all in all, it was a great trip to sync up with long time mates. I will get back with details and photos.

VMW - BuZzzzing in Silicon Valley today!

2007-08-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

Sounds like the luxury carmaker BMW, but this is the innovative virtualization software maker "vmware" making its debut in Wall street! It took off with good acceleration like it's luxury counterpart and shares are up by 80% already. For starters, virtualization is a software technology that makes it possible to run multiple operating systems (windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, etc.) on the same hardware, thereby increasing the utilization and versatility of hardware. For more details on virtualization, follow this wiki link or vmware's page. EMC, a software behemoth, bought it for a bargain in 2004 and vmware is already up 17 times the value it was bought for...

Brazil 3 - Argentina 0: Signalling the end of the classic "passing" game?

2007-07-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Argentina wanted to play the game with the classic passing style, but it came unstuck against Brazil's rapid counterattacking offense and a compact defense. And, not to forget the 37 fouls to interrupt the fluid passing game. Football has taken more of a physical nature over the last couple of decades, and this seems to have left many of the south-american nations behind. Argentina, the most popular of such nations, and the team I have been supporting ever since I was a kid, will keep searching for their trophy while still playing their way! History will tell us if they get there or change their style. As a football (soccer) fan, I just hope the classic passing game comes back in a big way :).

Involuntary Judgementalism: Are we a victim or the cause?

2007-06-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

It is human nature to form an opinion as we perceive our surroundings. Our perception of things as we see/hear/touch/taste/smell gives us an idea of what we think of those things. This idea forms the basis for all of our actions in relation to that thing. Sometimes without our knowledge, this opinion forms a critical part of our decisions. As time flies by, these opinions still have a say on our decisions irrespective of where we are and what we do. It gets to a point where we are being judgemental about things even when we dont realize it. We like to believe that we always make rational decisions, but do we? Is man a victim of involuntary judgementalism or merely the cause for it? Are we sophisticated enough to figure if our decisions are truely rational?

A grim time with tech sector lay-offs?

2007-06-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

While some companies are still interviewing people for new jobs and growth, we have had a slew of layoff announcements in the last weeks. Some examples that come to mind are:

1. Motorola axes 4000 jobs

2. IBM cuts 1570 jobs

3. Dell removes 7000 jobs

Add this to Bernanke's recent comments on interest rates and the persistence of slump in the housing market, it calls for a cautious approach to the near future.

Seaworld, Shamu, Universal, and the Disneyworld

2007-05-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

A bunch of us friends decided to drive to LA and SD in the past weekend. We drove through highway five for most of the way before taking a host of other roads. Apart from visiting a couple of old friends, we hit three theme parks in three days and needless to say, Shamu, the killer whale, and Seaworld emerged as the best of the lot even though in fairness, they are different beasts to be compared to each other. I am tired, but I need to get back to work.

Status: food's great in CA

2007-05-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

For people who read my blog to know my status, I moved to california (bay area) two weeks ago and started my summer work. Life has been fun the past days: getting to meet a host of old friends, learning to play tennis, and eating amazing south indian food in the bay area. I will get back to work now and give details of my road trip soon.

Change: The Sole Eternity of Life

2007-04-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

I wondered about things that have been permanent in life ever since I have been a child, and it took me long and hard to realize that there is absolutely nothing that is permanent other than my parents. Then, I had to think long and hard to realize that I have been changing everyday in some aspect and that is probably the only thing that hasnt changed :). It is a parody that change is the only permanent thing in my life and I wonder if it will go away sometime...

Pushing People to a Corner

2007-03-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

It is amazing how certain people respond when they are pushed to a corner and have nowhere to go. If you are a person doing research in Psychology, this probably is a area that you heard about a lot. Anyway, I was amazed by a series of events in which an person can totally avoid habitual events that are inherently part of everyday life (think sleeping, everyone sleeps for five hours atleast each day on the average). The object under study had to meet a deadline that could only have been accomplished if he worked continously for a week, getting about two hours of sleep every day. One would think that after about a week, you would probably feel tired and would sleep days together to get better. Surprisingly, the person picked it up as a habit and has been fitting his schedule around two-three hours of sleep every day. It gives you the path that so many things taken for granted are more or less changeable if you want to! It gives a new foray in the beautiful journey that is life.

Successful people measuring success: An irony or Consummation?

2007-02-26T23:26:00.000-08:00

The following blog attempts to think about the lives of people who cannot make it even when a country is riding a wave of success and better living. The example being used as the artifact is a lower middle class family in India which can exploit the ongoing globalization/technology wave sweeping the country. The family is teetering on the edge of the poverty line because the their living through supply of products to small vendors is washed by the arrival of supermarkets. More info can be found here. While the technology crowd can afford the negative effects of inflation, other struggle to make ends meet.

Some people have questioned why the family did not invest their children's time in education and that those people have to blame themselves for their state now. This brings us to the bigger question, " While most people get lucky with the positive wave, purely because of sheer dumb luck and not because they brought about the change, they get successful and start questioning others; Is letting such successful people measure success a good idea or a moronic idea?" While I understand that history is written by winners, I think it is better that successful people think about ways of improving society rather than giving amateurish advice.

The Song of the Indian maid: Keats it is!

2007-02-02T23:28:00.000-08:00

To Sorrow
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

Diversity Evolution: A peaceful theme for the 21st Century

2007-01-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

Will the 21st century be the flag-bearer to the arrival of what I call the "global" man, who can live, travel, and sleep in the country of his choice and contribute to the growth of the "globe"? Given that people in many countries are so very diverse and contribute to the total growth of the economy, I view a future that will be relatively peaceful and "man" will be free to live, eat, and sleep wherever! Of course, there is economic imbalance and that creates restlessness and there is a long way to go, but I hope we break the barriers and create the unified globe.

lucrative graphics chip market: Intel wants a piece of the pie

2007-01-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

Intel is hiring for a new "visual computing" group that will build many-core chips graphics processing capabilities for the scientific community. Given that this market returns a revenue of $5 Billion every quarter, it looks like a good investment to get into. Further, Intel is looking to have it own piece of the GPGPU (General Purpose Graphics Processing Units) or the CPU+GPU market that AMD is already touting. Looks like a new area of work for the program analysis folks and the hardware designers.

Lake Chad, Africa: A lost lake

2007-01-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

Lake Chad used to be the third largest inland water body in Africa until sixties. Since then, the lake has shrunk by a whopping 95% due to a combination of agriculture and global warming. Delving further into the reasons would show that human activity and agriculture have been around the area long before the sixties. So, is human activity a significant reason why the lake is shrinking? reason yes, but not significant. That leaves us with one thing that has been a big debate for some time now; global warming. While newspaper and academicians don't seem to have a clear consensus on this issue, we do know that it is the human race that is causing lakes to dry up. I think it is time that we actually make an attempt at identifying the cause and work on correcting it.

Predicting like a market analyst: Difficult or Easy

2007-01-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

This is one of those random thoughts that come across your mind when you think about the technology industry in general. How does a new gadget like the iPhone perform? What is the best initial prediction to make? Come to think of it, you have around tens of thousands of new electronic gadgets coming out every year. Of these, some where between 1% and 5% are of good quality that should even have made it past the design process. I believe that does not include the copycat and shadow products out there. Of the good quality ones, only about 10% make it to the market at the right time. Of the right timed ones, only about a tenth of them really capture people's imagination and become a huge hit that changes the lives of people. I am just guessing the percentage and there is no proof to support them , but I think they would be in a reasonable ballpark. SO, finally we have about one of two products every year that may succeed depending upon the complex equation that is the consumer. Given all this, I think the market analyst's prediction that "I question if the product will succeed?" seems to be right almost always.

Two behaviors that are common among market analysts are "I dont think the product will make it" or "always predicting in the same direction for the company quarter after quarter". So, I am beginning to wonder if you can say "no" to the product's success and still have a great record that fails once in ten thousands times because those are the products that really make it?

I understand predicting a product's success margin is a hugely complicated job that depends on infinite factors, but, there are people who bank on market prediction and make the big bucks. So, is market prediction almost always easy? Can u make the big bucks with a negative attitude?

New year, resolutions, and people

2007-01-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

It is the new year! And, it is time for resolutions that help orient people towards their goal, atleast theoretically, and temporarily. January is one of those months where euphoria is high enough that everyone has an amazing perspective of the coming year: the images of things coming through to fruition and the wave of expectation and excitement. And during this time, I wonder, if last year has made me a better person in society? Can I get rid of my known follies? I have quite a list of things to do that have been on me since long, but, will I finally take the steps to chase my ambition, which brings me to a question; Do I know what my final goal is? I begin the quest today to these questions during this "man made" new year with the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson in "The Brook",

I chatter, chatter, as I flow,

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

Ski season starts! yippee!

2006-12-05T17:47:00.000-08:00

After a couple of sleepless weeks due to the travails of graduate school, I finally kicked off the ski season last saturday. It is good to be skiing back in Utah after a boring and in-frequent season in the small hills on the eastern part of the country. It seemed pretty comfortable after a long time and spending an afternoon on those intermediate slopes was fun!

Using the CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE combo to kill X

2006-10-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

The above combo kills Xserver and gets you out of any window manager incase of an emergency. Though linux rarely goes to the "blue screen of death" mode, I find that this combo is still useful to help you in your hurry :). Beware that I have heard this may not work in Gentoo and some variations.

work, bz, sleep and the monotony!

2006-10-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

Monitor, screen, mouse, keyboard! Are these mostly the things I know off? More recently, headphones have become part of this sojourn. Passion, dedication, faith, trust, loyalty, frustration! are these some of the feelings I go through in this inevitable journey? More recently, euphoria has joined the ranks. Fire, zoom, jump, dodge, chat, lose! are these things I get to do when I play bzflag? More recently, winning has become more frequent. Computer, work, emotions, bzflag? are these part of my everyday routine? More recently, Blogging has also become essential!

The banana split that made we wonder..

2006-07-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

Banana splits are one of my favorite choices for dessert. On a seemingly normal after I went to the "Squirrel Brothers" ice-cream shop to taste my favorite delicacy. I ordered a split with two scoops and raspberry topping. Just before my first taste, I saw a proud couple come in to the shop with their five children, the oldest being a teenager. The family bought each of the kids a cone and the kids happily ate their choices. This reminded me of two things; the first thought that hit me was the extent to which I missed my family and my kid-brother; the second being a very introspective question? While millions of children around the world would not know if they would have the next morsel, was I having fun because I could afford it for the time-being? As much as I don't like giving up to emotions, the extra money I spent for a banana split could easily have fed many poor children in the world if I had the right intentions. Having said that, I believe it is okay to have fun once in a while, but the people who can afford things should remember to help the ones that cannot. Time will tell if I can make a man out of myself once I can afford more things.

Oh! Argentina! where art thou?

2006-06-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Reflecting a sad day for argentine fans, the world cup loses another one of its beautiful teams in a tense encounter! It is a sad way to go out of a quarter-final on penalties! Football fans will miss the mesmerizing passing game that is so distinctive of south american football!
I will wait for four more years before argentina can challenge for the world cup in africa!

awk tip: simple looping and counting

2006-05-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

This blog on "awk" could be very useful for manipulating numbers over simple filters in unix. If this is too obvious for some of you, put in some more tips over the comments section and that will be of great help to the rest of us. I am going to illustrate the use of awk in counting with a simple example. Let us say that the following file "test.txt" contains the expenses of different groups in a company.

> cat test.txt

10 X-group
30 X-group
20 Y-group
22 Z-group
23 X-group

If I wanted to count the expenses of group 'X' , I need to pick up the values of group X and then add them. Instead of writing scripts to do the job, awk can be used effectively to finish the job easily.

> grep "X-group" test.txt | awk 'BEGIN{s=0}{s+=$1}END{print s}'

63

will count the expenses due to group X alone. The "BEGIN" and "END" constructs have been used to start a loop over the group "X" and to count the total sum spent on X.

Shell tip:Bring background processes to the foreground

2006-04-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

This is something that most people using linux may have known. Though I have been using linux for a long time now, I did not know how to bring a particular process running in the background (using the & option) to the foreground after I have many background processes running. Let me illustrate this with an example. Let us run two processes in the background and see how we can bring either of them to the foreground.

> top &

> emacs &

Now typing "jobs" will inform you of the bacground processes

>jobs
[1] + Suspended (tty output) top
[2] - Running emacs

It can be observed that each process has a unique id on the left. That can be used to bring the process to the foreground.

> fg %1

will bring "top" to the foreground.

This is something I learnt today and may be helpful to you too, IMHO.

Govt employees unhappy with Jayalalithaa

2006-04-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

This happened in 2003 when many government employees in TamilNadu, India went on a long strike with a host of issues including asking for more bonus. The Chief Minister of state made a bold decision (IMHO) and dismissed them because they were **NOT** doing their job (The general opinion is that government employees seldom do their work :)). If you were working in a Multi-national company and did not do your job, it is only fair that you get fired.

I am appalled to see that government employees are upset about being fired when they were really lacking on duty! wake up guys! work for the money you get! do your work first (if that happens), then ask for bonuses :). There is a word called "professionalism", alteast try to find the meaning of the word!

Another Swwwwwaaatchhhh!

2006-03-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

Oh! yeah, I got another swatch to add to my portfolio of watches during my recent NewYork trip. This makes it seven watches on my collection and looks like a cruise towards two digits. Click here to see my newest addition.

The Undulating Mind

2006-03-20T20:40:00.000-08:00

As I travel on a united airline flight from chicago to austin, I cant help but think of my inability to do any work unless under duress. It took me fifteen minutes to debate whether I should get up from my seat, get the laptop in the bag from the overhead bin, and then, the most difficult part of all: switching it on! Now that I have crossed all the barriers and started typing incomprehensible sentences, my mind wanders off in a direction that is totally undulating, I am thinking of my presentation day after tomorrow, and now, I am worried about buying a car. Then again, I havent really prepared myself for the presentation, and now, Should I buy the car in boston or in salt lake city? Oh, I dont seem to be nervous about my presentation, and now, I wish I had a full time job that would get me a BMW 3 series or a Merc C Class. It is a pity that the mind can process unrelated thoughts at such high speed (Hyper-Hyperthreading!), that I wonder: Will a machine ever replace the most mysterious living thing in this world: The human mind!

Hall of 'Shame': Times Of India, An Indian Newspaper

2006-03-17T06:17:00.000-08:00

I wake up in the morning and get online to read some of India's newspapers and by far, the Times of India seems to top the list of the worst papers ever published! If I am talking crap, why does the front page of an Indian newspaper have a quarter page article on Brad Pitt's travel to the Rishikesh to get high (today's issue)? There is definitely "more" critical issues that Indians need to know about. Yeah! Brad pitt's tour needs a mention, but not in the front page!

I just hope that the journalists/editors are more responsible and professional about front page content in the future.

AT&T : vying to be the top telephone backbone

2006-03-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

If you have heard of UNIX and C, then you probably know "AT&T"; It has agreed to buy SBC (Cingular wireless)
and the deal would make it the largest telephone company in the US. That is, if the deal goes through! The consumer federation of America is afraid of market monopoly and has urged the antitrust authorities to block the deal. As a long time C programmer, I would love to see the then famous "Ma Bell" research labs merge with the baby bell labs. After all, hasnt the C programming language been useful to us?

Search: car, phone and cray

2006-03-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

Back to blogging after a self-imposed exile, I am now actively looking for a bunch of things that light up my otherwise quotidian lifestyle. Why am I looking for CRAY Inc, the yesteryear darling supercomputer company that is a minnow today? Well, the minnow is trying hard to turn the corner and its stock has almost doubled over the last two months. At 2.10$ a share, it might be a worthwhile investment for a short while. Until today, I havent put a penny into the stock market and it looks like an exciting avenue to get into, specially for the thrill of seeing the minnows bounce back!

My samsung e-105 is at the deathbed and am desperately looking for a new cell phone! And, to add to that, I am also looking to buy a used car (oh! grammar check: an used?) and have put in some research into the area. It increasingly looks like people have lost interest in the BIG THREE ( Ford, GM, Chrysler ) with their cars struggling to hold any resale value! The japanese carmakers have stamped their superior reliability in the market, but hey, that means I have shell out more money for them!

"I Bid Adieu" My Uncle!

2006-02-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

I had recently been on a visit to India in December to meet all my folks after a year and a half. It was one of the most enjoyable and yet, one of the most sad tours I have had. Just three hours before my trip was over, I heard that my uncle passed away in a road accident! While it left the whole family in tears, I felt sad and shocked by the transience of life! I had met him the previous day and we had completed some shopping and then I came home to wave another bye to him on the phone. To learn that the very same person is no longer alive was a bit difficult to comprehend and it has been the same until today! As much as I would like to accept the fact and move on in life, this incident seems to have left a profound effect on my life!

I bid adieu, my uncle for we have spent a lot of the good times together and it is only sad that you had to leave us at an inappropriate juncture!

India thrash Sri Lanka in Cricket ODI series

2005-11-13T15:41:00.000-08:00

Yay! After a very long time, the theoretically strong India applied things into practise and thrashed Sri lanka 6-1 in the recent one day international series. As an Indian cricket fan, It was heart warming to see our guys perform well as a team. All the newcomers stood up to be counted when needed. Every Indian fan has been envisaging this crushing win for a long time. Ganguly was finally off the team for his low scores over the last three years and it rather looks like a bleak future for the former cricket captain. To all Ganguly fans out there, I hope you understand that he has not performed against the likes of good teams ( and this doesnt include kenya, bangladesh and zimbabwe) for a long time now and he does not merit a place in the team :). Please do not waste pages and pages talking about past glories (things that happened a long time ago, like 5 years) for cricket is a professional game and there is no place for non-performers. Ganguly, probably, extended his stay over the last year or so :).

Malaria vs Cancer: Which disease gets more research

2005-11-01T00:27:00.000-08:00

Malaria kills around 2000 (A huge number!) african children every day and accounts for three percent of all the productive years of life lost to diseases. It is a pity that it only gets one-third of one percent of the total amount of money spent on medical research. One big reason is because if africa is an under-developed country and most people dont care! More money is spent on researching diseases that attack the so-called rich people in the world because they provide the money!

It makes me wonder if mankind is evolving at all? Are we really looking for the welfare of human beings in the world or are we after our selfish goals?

One good news is that atleast one technocrat, namely, Bill Gates recently donated 258 Million dollars for Malaria research through his foundation (link) . Well, I am happy to hear that there a few sane rich people around in the world too! :)

Jorge Cham's talk: The power of procrastination

2005-10-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

Jorge Cham is the author of the grad student "phdcomics" topics. He recently gave a talk at our university, and needless to say, the audience were enthralled. He recently received his Ph.D. from stanford, but is known for the cartoons he writes during his past time as a researcher. I would recommend all graduate students that have not heard of him to click and have fun at the link: http://www.phdcomics.com.

Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made

2005-10-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

Andy Herltzfeld, a mac enthusiast joined Apple as a systems programmer in the year 1979. The book he wrote was released in 2004 (title shown above) and it talks about the history of the team that invented the mac. I am looking forward to reading this book sometime in the future . A absolute piece of technological history!

Massive Earthquake in Pakistan and India

2005-10-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

I woke up today at around 10:00 AM (early morning for engineers :)) and got into my routine of reading BBC, a desire within me to me abreast of happenings around the world early. While fear of the bird flu is gripping the world, I awoke miles away from an earthquake that probably had killed around a thousand people. How many more natural disasters are going to come our way? Man has been attempting to understand science for a very long time now and it has come a long way. I, for one believe strongly that if research in science does not help the ordinary man, then perhaps, we are not doing great justice to ourselves. I understand that there is a value to understanding things but science and technology should help the ordinary man fulfill the basic needs. While our ability to predict hurricanes helped people save their lives, this ability is available only to the rich countries in the world. Millions of people in the poor countries die without the money to employ science to save their lives.

I do not know the answer to the question, but perhaps it is time people thought about the true value of research in addition to the financial implications of success :(. My urge to pen down this thought while my mind is in a cloud requires that I edit this article when my thoughts will be clearer and precise in their opinion sometime in the future.

Men of Mathematics: Eric T Bell

2005-10-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

I read this book a few months back and wanted to recommend other people to read this book too. It was suggested by a good friend of mine and does not have any technical details. Instead, the book delves into the life of mathematicians in a chronogical order starting from the great Archimedes until the mathematicians of the nineteenth century, famously called the golden era of mathematics.

The author explains he believes that Archimedes, Gauss and Newton were the greatest mathematicians ever. He talks about the extent to which Archimedes hated practical mathematics but still had to apply math to devise those giant pulleys and spherical mirrors to defend his homeland against the romans.

This non-technical allows us to visualize a leaf from some of the mathematicians and would believe it as a must read for everyone!

Salt Lake City cooling down

2005-09-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

After a rather "hot" summer, it has been a very pleasant fall untill now. It get a bit cold at dusk, but it is not too bad. I am looking forward to the winter season and hope to go skiing more often :).

Are spirits waning at Man-Utd

2005-09-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

I have been a fan/follower of ManU ever since I started watching football. One of the main reasons why they were/are my favorite was/is the fighting spirit and oneness in the team. We have had a bad last few years without any silverware; partly because of the amount of inexperience and partly because ofthe waning spirits towards the last fifteen minutes in the game. It would always be exciting to watch ManU play towards the end of the game. Sadly though, I should say that spirit seems to be waning and Chelsea just seems to run away with the cup!

Go ManU!

Indian cricketers: professionals or lazy bones

2005-09-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

Here is what some of the Indian cricket players purportedly had to say about the new coach Greg Chappell's ways:

"He's a bit too rough in his approach. He's just come to the job and he's being ruthless. We all know that we have to work hard on fitness and all that, but you can't just push people away the first time they struggle with a fitness regimen"

Oh! please wake up you cricketers! It just means that you guys have been goofing off the last few years and have basically been unfit to win matches! The coach has been with you for three months now and you will be fifty years old by the time you slowly warm up to the fitness drills!

I am not here to support any side here but things apart, I find it difficult to understand that a bunch of professionals (no.. lazy bones) complain about the coach asking them to do fitness regimes. You guys are paid millions on contracts and advertisements to represent the country and you cant even carry out fitness regimen! Fitness is a critical part in modern day sporting regimes and now, we know that our cricketers have not been upto par in the last few years and that has basically shown in bad results. we can only beat Australia or England if we are professional and disciplined! just whining about do working is very sad to hear!

I just hope that we will have a set of professional (fit) players representing team India!

AT&T Bell labs: The legacy of Unix to today's struggle

2005-09-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

It is a well known fact that Unix was an offspring from AT&T Bell labs, the then research giant that gave some of the most important inventions to the world ( think transistors that runs virtually every computer on the planet). I did not know until today that they invented the laser too (optical systems could be a part of tomorrow's computer: we do not know about the future though). But what were the issues that led to the fall of monolithic yesteryear research giants like AT&T and the XEROX Palo Alto research centers.
Is it because the researchers at those labs were crazy enough to work on their interests rather than the future of the company?
Is it a byproduct of the greatly decreased time to market for a research product (it used to be a time gap of 8 years between when a product was in research and was released commercially)?
Is it that mankind is being aggressive enough to virtually see a new product every three/six months(think cell phones; you have a new architecture/model every 6 months or even under that i guess)?

There might be more questions to ask and a greater number of answers to the above questions but it looks like "change" is the only eternal thing in the world. I believe that people normally change for the good more often than not and am hoping that technology too is changing for the good!

The wrath of Rita

2005-09-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

We are still miles away from the eye of the hurricane and already, there have been three significant breaches through the levy in New Orleans. Galveston is already flooded and with Rita expected to fall on land around saturday morning we are already looking at lots of damage. Natural disasters are always very sad irrespective of where it happens in the world. I just hope it affects people very little!

Static Analysis in Compilers

2005-09-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

Compilers have advanced tremendously over the last few decades and combines the right ingredients of computer science theory and algorithms to produce practical programs that run on machines. This article is basically an afterthought of a discussion we had in the last program analysis seminar.

Consider the following piece of pseudo-code for any number 'n':

while ( n!=1)
{
if (n is even)
{
n=n divided by 2
}
else
{
n= 3*n+1
}
}

Watching through the piece of code and employing some static analysis of the inner if loop shows that it 'n' is odd, then the execution path is along the else loop. In the else loop, 'n' (which is odd) is muliplied by 3 and that yields an odd number. Adding one to it always yields an even number. During the next run of the loop, 'n' will be found to be even and will run through the if loop. Careful observation will tell us that we are wasting a set of instructions by running through the compare ( if). Instead the code could be unrolled as,

while (n!=1)
{
if(n is odd)
{
n = 3*n+1
}

n = n divided by 2;
}

we have now saved one compare set of instructions whenever 'n' is odd. Though the analysis looks pretty simple it cannot be exploited in today's compilers. The reason is that during manual analysis, we looked at the algorithm using the assumption that 'n' was odd. Compilers always assume all possible set of values as inputs to the program and cannot exploit the above optimizations. Though compiler optimizations are advancing at a fair rate, I hope to see more sophisticated compilers in the future!

A triumph of Hope over Despair

2005-09-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to one of my roommates and friend narsi, who recently( 4 hours apprx.) got a job in Provo, Utah after a seemingly long time. In short, we hope to preserve the moment we savor for him getting the job. After a bad couple of months where he almost landed at a few jobs, hope started turning to despair when none of his offers consummated.
He attended an interview yesterday (to be exact) and was offered a job today ( a pretty small trun around time) and is practically going bananas over the offer! Well, if you wait the "wait" and hold your hopes, it always is the triumph of hope over despair!

So long.

A Season McLaren blew !

2005-09-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

I have been following McLaren-Mercedes ever since the days of Mika (Hakkinen) and have been an ardent fan of the technological advances in the sport of Formula-One racing. Right from the aerodynamics employed in the cars to the on-board processors used for electronic control, F1 has always represented the pinnacle of engineering. In this article though, I will try to enumerate why McLaren should have already had the championship in the bag and how both the drivers and the reliability issues blew away the perfect season.

McLaren started the season as one of the favorites to win the championship along with Renault. After the initial set of races, it was pretty clear that McLaren was the fastest car in the field though it came at the cost of reliability concerns. Alonso started off the season in consistent fashion and has kept up to his name by gathering points whenever McLaren failed! Montoya has always been reckless ever since his start on the Williams a couple of years ago and blew away too many team points because of his stupid mistakes; Raikkonen, on the other hand could be considered unlucky to an extent even though he committed a couple of mistakes.

With three races to go and Alonso walking away with the championship mostly, I just hope the McLaren drivers hold their heads to get the constructor's title!

David Copperfield Show: My impressions

2005-09-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

On a recent weekend tour of Las Vegas, I bought myself a pass to watch one of the world's most renowned illusionists in action for 90 minutes. To use the word "dumbstruck" is an understatement after one watches the tricks in action.

The show started with DC appearing in a Harley Davidson out of thin air in the middle of the stage. To add to the amazement, he predicted that he could go to the Phillipines with a technique similar to "appartion" used by wizards in the Harry Potter novel. One by one, a variety of unbelievable illusions were performed to great perfection. cars were magically created out of nowhere and baby were hatched from a woman's womb. And then the final illusion, apparating around 17000 miles to Phillipines from Las Vegas in seconds and back was done!

The man defys science and travelled around the world in seconds! I wonder why I wasted 1400$ for my trip to Chennai, India; a trip shorter than the distance between Phillipines and Las Vegas!

First thoughts: Education system in South India

2005-01-29T01:24:00.000-08:00

I have been wondering why I havent written about the education system through which I was steered through in my life. First things first...

This is my first blog. Hence, I expect it to be as amateurish as possible and apologize to those professional bloggers out there. Well, you could always write about what you do in day to day life but it is always just another day for a normal person like me. I decided to write about something more than personal, but did not know what to blog ....

I have always been aggrieved by the education system I grew up in and think the system I grew was not fair enough to all people. I hope to put in my thoughts that may sometimes hurt people, but then you could always be wrong in this world and then apologize later ;). That is the luxury of human life.

A brief introduction to the South Indian education system is necessary for people who dont have much of an idea. Well, every child starts with the normal schooling as any other in the world, but then, before you even join school, the child must know what caste he belongs to in a particular religion. Each of the umpteen religions in India is divided into one of Forward Caste(FC), Backward Caste(BC), Most Backward Caste(MBC) and so on..... So the child better know the particular caste coz it might help him in future... Oh! you better bribe a thousand government authorities to register yourself as a MBC candidate for reasons that will be evident as we go..... A person belonging to one of the backward castes is privileged to free education in any of the government schools in South India. Alas, the standard in the government schools is pathetic.. an understatement....Noone prefers to study in a government sponsored school...

well, to the advantages of registering yourself as a MBC, scheduled tribe or castes person....After you finish schooling and join a bachelor's degree in Engineering or Medicine....you can afford to get a lower score than one of those forward caste people(though you may be economically rich compared to the unfortunate forward caste person) and still study in one of the premier institutes in India. In Tamilnadu, as much as 695 is reserved for those privileged backward caste people!

hmmm.. now if you are a student belonging to one of the so called forward castes.. for reasons that you do not know... irrespective of whether yor are rich or poor ....you have to score the highest possible percentile to get to the same school as that of the BC person... wow ...does the FC person have to score higher because he intellectually superior to the BC person? No...is it coz the FC person is richer? No. Is it coz the fact 50 years ago the FC person's ancestors were supposedly richer and bullied the BC person's ancestors? I do not think so.... we live in a world where convergence seems to be the buzz word and yet.... there are infinite discrepancies in south India on the basis of the single most powerful word "CASTE".

Agreed ... the FC person somehow completes his education and wants to work for the government. Oh no... you need the caste again... You think you made a mistake by not registering yourself as a BC long before.....

Well.. the story continues... If you have read until this point...I am privileged...As one persons put it ... musings of a mundane person....