How does it smell like?

Smells like iamgoinghome!!!

san diego seaworld

san diego seaworld
Originally uploaded by vijitvnair.

We went down to San Diego during thanks giving. This photo is from the "Journey to Atlantis" ride @ Seaworld. I have a theory about adventure parks. You can only enjoy this shit when you are not earning and can't pay for it. Once you start earning, and you can actually buy the tickets, your life becomes worth something (you think) and you just can't bear to be yanked to death by gravity.

San Jose

SJ downtown sunset 02
Originally uploaded by DPTRONZ.

This is where I am right now. Thanksgiving break! Happy Holidays... and a short sojourn from blogging.

Customize right-click menu

I installed the Konfabulator! (Yahoo) to fiddle around with their widgets. The thing was pathetic. You have to download a new widget for every RSS feed you want. Then there was the analog clock where you had the choice of making the second's hand visible/invisible(??!!). And then Yahoo proceeded to add useless shortcuts to my right-click menu. WTF? I right-click on an email-link and I see Yahoo Maps! ... how does that make any sense? Just like popups and flashy ads are obsolete, so also is putting crap on the users short-cut menu without authorization. Anyway I found a way to take that shit out...

regedit
HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Internet Explorer > MenuExt
and delete the offending folders. If you are using any other browser, I suspect that you will see corresponding folders in "Software". Don't go screwing around with the registry if you don't know what you are doing.

Go here if you want to know more about customizing your right-click menu.

technorati tags: right-click shorcut menu regedit

SUN dives into Niagara

Had the opportunity of listening to Kunle Olukotun’s talk on Chip Multi Processors (CMP) last Friday. Dr. Kunle is one of the founders of Afara Websystems where Niagara was conceived. And SUN, having acquired Afara in 2002, is hoping to make a comeback with Niagara.

With 8 multiprocessor cores and speeds of upto 32Gbps, Niagara is poised to take over the as an extremely powerful and "cool" server. These servers will realise their full potential when they are utilised by highly pipelined function calls with parallel processing needs. Sequential programming will soon be an artifact and parallel programming will emerge as the norm.

technorati tags: Kunle Olukotun SUN vlsi

Dilbert on Outsourcing

courtesy Dilbert - by Scott Adams

Done with my paper

Finally done with my MS paper... no pain... out of breath... more about this later.

;GrA,mMaR.!

Some guy sent this mail into a group yesterday. Now if there is a good example of how not to use grammar, then this must be it.

I today from the bottom of my heart; Wish U dear Friend; a Very Happy Diwali & a Prosperous New Year!!!!!Shubh Deepavali aur Nutan Varsh Abheenandan!

I count 2 missing commas, 2 semicolons in the wrong place, 6 exclamation marks, 8 randomly "titlecased" words, an incorrect abbreviation and a whole different language... all in one sentence (I think). Agreed that grammar is like statistics... a freakin lie. But this is pushing it, my friend....
Wish you all a happy new year and a glorious grammarification.

Google Base

Google Base... Google's latest foray. It is all set to take over from eBay, Craigslist, (i hope cars.com too). Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. Contest hosting, free classifieds,

and a lot more I don't even know.

Examples of items you can find in Google Base:

	•	Description of your party planning service
	•	Articles on current events from your website
	•	Listing of your used car for sale
	•	Database of protein structures

And this will be integrated with main Google search, Froogle and Google Local. So you don't need a website for your name to popup on Google's Search... just upload into Google base and voila...

We are ... Penn State

Saturday, Penn State's football team catapulted to rank 8 after they beat Ohio State in a 17-10 rout. It was huge. After four straight losing seasons since 2001, Penn State had been ranked #91. But this season, they have been playing like champions. After knocking the ball out of T Smith's (OSU quarterback) hands in the last 2 minutes, the defense just savoured the moment. Not soon after, the record crowd of 109,000 hit the streets and chants like "faaaaaccckkkk ooooohhhhhaaaayyyyyyooooo" rent the air. The t-shirts said it all... We're Back.

Video iPod?

Video iPod? Can this be true? Can that small thingie tied to you arm play a high-res video? Well if Stevie has his way, Apple is all set for world domination... one sucker at a time. I mean selling an mp3 player for 300 bucks is something. Cramming it into a matchbox and selling it for 250 beats that. And now video?...

Pretty soon you will be telling me it can check email, surf the net, answer phone calls and do your homework. But never mind... if you haven't tried the iTunes5 yet, get off your lazy butt before Stevie gets pissed. There is an iTunes for Windows too ... take that up-ur-ass Bill.

Btw, my birthday is coming up... if you are wondering what to get for me, here is a hint (an iPod nano you dumb fuck!.. just look at the image for chrissakes). Start saving up...

Outsourcing

courtesy Vikas Tiwari @ Infosys

Engineering Village

Enginnering Village is a potpourri of contemporary Compendex, EI and other databases. It has documents that go as far back as 1884 (that's what the site claims). But the search feature is great. The site comes up with different vocabulary terms that match your query, different hierarchies under which they fall, authors, citations, and full-text (yaaaaaaaaaaa....). And if it doesn't find your document, it comes up with a close match (which is pretty close unlike the crappy IEEE Xplore search). It also has an expert search that looks like a PL editor and it has search by author, affiliation, publisher, year, d/b.

The Bangash Brothers

Sons of the legendary sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan paid a visit to State College today. Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash performed a symphony par excellence for the Indian Graduate Students Association's, Omkar 2005, here at Penn State. For the uninitiated, the sarod is a 25-stringed instrument, whose body is hand carved from a single block of Indian Mahogany with a steel fretless finger board and a diaphragm made of goat skin.

Witnessing the two brothers in action is beyond what words can describe. Their fingers moved effortlessly over the strings picking out sharp, soft and melodious tones. Paired with Sandeep Das on the tabla, the group escalated into a seemingly impromptu jugalbandi where Das replicated on his tabla, each tone that the brothers challenged him with, on their sarods.

The recital was topped off with a Raga Alaap. As the music flowed from the sarods and crescendoed in the air, the hall reverberated with a thundering applause. The crowds gave the masters a standing ovation.

technorati tags: sarod Bangash

World is Flat

Just finished reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman.

Published in April 2005, this book is one of the few that deals with the global upheavals we have seen in the last few years. As is his style, Friedman dissects the issue to the very core and gives a bird's eye view of its causes and consequences. Presented against the backdrop of the new world economy where the balance of power seems to be shifting towards Asia, this book is a whole new look at globalization as we see it today. Some salient features are

1. Globalization 1.0 in the 1800s was driven by countries, muscle and brute force. The force behind Globalization 2.0, in the 1900 - 2000 era, were corporate entities, industries and companies (like the East India Company in 1850s or more recently WorldCom etc.). But Globalization 3.0 is driven by individuals, all across the globe, who are equally empowered. This empowerment is thanks to the high bandwidth blanket that wraps the globe, open source applications, and a warehouse of information (aka Google) available at the fingertips of the President of USA as well as a villager in Chile.
2. Friedman also deals broadly with outsourcing, the different forms and shapes it has assumed, its why, what and how. He also tries to analyze what its consequences will be, desirable as well as undesirable, and how we, the citizens of the new globe, will deal with it.
3. He describes the ten flatteners of the world and how they came about. From supply chaining (Wal Mart as we know it) to informing (Google) and insourcing (UPS). Just like the Interstate system shrunk the USA in the post war era, so did these factors play an important role in the shrinking of the globe in this century.
4. He discusses how complacency, under-ambition has affected the super-power-for-past-half-century, the United States. He details the challenges faced in terms of incoming competition from countries like India and China, as well as those from terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda.

A great postscript to this book will be an article on Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons in the latest BusinessWeek issue. This deals with the matters that are closer to my heart. This article outlines the business models and growth patterns that these countries have adopted to help them sprint faster in this marathon towards being a superpower.

technorati tags: Tom Friedman World is Flat outsourcing

the Chariot has arrived

This is my new ride. Blue Nissan Maxima, 2000, 3L with V6 engines. Nice power, great styling and expensive enough to burn a hole in my bank account. Say goodbye to greyhound buses, rented cars and grudging favors. I am the king and I ride my chariot.

Probably not a great time to buy a car when the gas prices have spiralled to a 50% increase... but what the hell.

MATLAB

This is for all those engineers out there who know C like the back of their butt. Thankfully all is not lost for us creed of engineers. Someone thunk and that someone thunk it well that if you are gonna get anything out of these losers, better make coding easier than tacking a 48-pin chip. And that someone came out with MATLAB.....there still is hope! If you are an engineer and you haven't used MATLAB yet (doesn't work if you are one of those coding kinds), you better begin quick.

If you are a die hard MATLAB fan, join the club and blog this. There is also an open-source MATLAB community where you give and take .m files. Hallowed be thy name .....

Chesapeake Bay

Had been to Chesapeake Bay last weekend. Went down to the National Aquarium in Baltimore in the morning. Second in the "all of two" aquariums I have been to in my life (the first was Taraporevala Aquarium in Bombay). Since the first aquarium happened when I was 10, I barely remember seeing any seafood. But this aquarium was simply amazing and there were thousands of aquatic species, half the names I couldn't spell (like a biology class nightmare). And there were sharks too... didn't get to check if they were man-eaters. We left to have a Shrimp Pad Thai (so much for marine conservation).

Proceeded to get drunk at the Hard Rock Cafe. Overlooking the USCG Cutter TANEY (apparently the only ship to survive Pearl Harbor) docked on the serene inland bay, delicious smoke from the barbecue pit, live rock music being played behind us, we sat, me, Tanmay & Sid. After we decided we had had enough, we went to the wharf at Fell's Point and sat down at Timothy's to have some more. We discovered that the Chilli Chicken at Timothy's (fried chicken in garbanzo beans with tortilla chips) was not even remotely like the Chicken Chilli at Dara's Dhaba.

Spam Bots

If you are the kinda guy who jealously guards his inbox. And you have started receiving a lot of spam on your email account and are scratching your head about it, here is something to chew on. Apparently there are programs called spam bots or spam spiders that crawl through the net feeding on email addresses carelessly left lying around. These are used for sending unsolicited mails and probably sold and resold by a whole host of spammers. So if you like to leave smart comments on websites, trying to appear intelligent (like me), and sign off with a flourish - If you wanna find out how smart I am, spamme@iamadumbjoe.com (unlike me), then you are probably getting what you deserve. This is the reason why some really smart guys like me put up their mail ids with an [AT] in the middle.

But I like Bill's solution to this. If you can't stop it, then stuff their faces with it... wot say?

Maximum City

Bombay is home to 17 million Indians, most of whom have come to the Island City in quest of their livelihood. Being the second most poulated city after Shanghai, Bombay also holds the unique distinction of having the most densely populated metropolitan area in the world. To give you a baseline, NYC has a population density of 26000/sq. mile, whereas Bombay has a density of 117000/sq. mile. The trains in Bombay known as "locals", carry 6 million passengers everyday, making it the most densely packed transport system in the world. At peak hours, there are upto 16 commuters standing in one square meter and the trains are packed upto 3 times their regular capacity. Bombay contributes to 33% of income tax, 60% of customs duty collections, and 40% of India's foreign trade. The people of Bombay come from all over India and even from all over the world. The diversity that splits Bombay is the same that sustains it.

Poets, writers, historians, journalists, film-makers alike have tried to describe Bombay. They have called it a city, a temptress, a power, an addiction. The big bad city, the city that does not sleep, that dreams with its eyes open. The city of hope and despair, of aplenty and scarcity, city of dreams and nightmare city. The city where the towering heights of glamour look upon the filth of poverty. A heartless city whose tales of compassion bring tears to the eyes. A city of infallible spirit, a city that vibrates with each of its million people. A city that is not slowed down by bomb blasts, riots, floods and earthquakes. City of excesses. Maximum City.

But Bombay is all this and much more. I wouldn't dare to describe the essence of this megapolis. The fact is, many have tried to fathom what makes this city and its people tick and have failed. Bombay is a nation unto itself. It allows itself to be ruled by the powers that are, but it rejects any change in its being. It changes the people that come to it and is changed by them. But it shrugs off any effort to change its essence.

I have been following closely the recent floods that hit Bombay. Bombay has never learned succumb, not even to nature. I read stories of the hardships people went through as they fought to keep their chin above the water. The floods brought out the worst in Bombay in terms of governance and disaster management ability. It also brought out the best in Bombay - the innate goodness of the people who do not shy away from extending a helping hand. I read the stories of buses and cars and motor cycles and autorickshaws that plied through the streets, taking stranded Mumbaikars from one place to another. Of people getting out of their cozy homes and wading through waist-high water to bring succour to stranded Mummbaikars. Of people putting their life in danger to save the life of a stranger. I read these stories with an ever tightening gut wrenching longing for my beloved city. Maximum City.

technorati tags: Bombay Mumbai Maximum City Mumbai floods

Intel leaps down under to 45nm

Intel has just declared that it will be investing 3bn$ in a 300mm wafer fabrication facility in Chandler Arizona. This "Fab 32" will start churning out chips using 45nm process technology. For the uninitiated, 45nm will be the length of the gate in the MOSFET (transistor). Considering that current Intel processors use the 90nm node, this will be a giant leap. Exciting times ahead for nano super computers ... call it Ultra Large Scale Integration (ULSI).

Pics Uploaded

I have uploaded my 4th July weekend pics. There are some awesome snaps of the fireworks @ Penn State (obviously not by me). We had also been to Washington DC, Bushkill Falls and Philadelphia.

the soul of a nation, long supressed, finds utterance

On the midnight of Independence, Nehru promised that the India of our dreams will be a free India. Free to choose, free to speak, free to express. But the newspapers today say a different story.

Dance bars banned in Maharashtra
Gujarat Courts Need Parental Consent To Register Marriages
Jeans banned in colleges
Smoking banned in films

Is the government responsible for safeguarding the rights of the people or in-charge denying them? Are these guys, with a collective IQ marginally better than that of a goat, trying to tell us that they are capable of deciding what is right or wrong for us? Insulting our intelligence by declaring that we are not smart enough. Apparently it is a long to-be-banned list, MMS, SMS, advertisements, massage parlours, TV channels, TV serials, discotheques, belly-dancing and pornographic material. Why does this hegemonistic attitude reign in the world's biggest democracy? I agree... we are probably not intelligent enough to choose the right government either (seems apparent now), but in no way does it condone this. If something needs to be banned, it is franchise (that's just a euphemism for booth capturing anyway). Today, when governance has been relegated to changing the names of cities and roads, burning effigies, and banning dance-bars... the common man is lucky if he can feed himself at the end of the day.

India has traditionally been a nation of suppresed thought. The founders of this nation had a vision. They envisioned their nation and its people thinking freely. Thought unprejudiced by caste or religion or gender. Thought towards greatness and power. But somewhere in the melee to attain the evasive "satta" (seat of power) the vision was lost. But we, the people, cannot afford to accept what is given but have to take what is ours. It is time for a revolution, a revolution of the minds, a revolution of thought. Free thought.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.
Where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth.
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by Thee
Into ever-widening thought and action.
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
- Rabindranath Tagore, Mind Without Fear, Gitanjali

Google Moon

I am sore most of you guys have tried Google Earth. But this by far takes the cake... Google Moon. And try setting the zoom level to max. These guys do have a sense of humor!

and the Creator said, "let there be logic"

But what is logic if not another word for dogma? Logic is nothing but biases passed down in this world by great men who have been audacious enough to define it. And of course logic for one man may be ill-logic for another. So now where does that get you?

Well here comes the hard part. If you are going to be great, you better start thinking beyond logic. There is world of difference between "thinking without logic" and "thinking beyond logic". You cease to be normal and begin greatness when you start thinking above logic. When you start redefining logic itself. It is what separates the boys who try from the men who do.

I can talk till hell freezes over, but I hope this gives a general idea of how this blog will turn out. Enough said. In the words of my mentor, Don't just stand there, make it happen - Lee Iacocca

Disbelief in beliefs

When you say freethought and freethinker, that usually means you are a nontheist. But neither my writings nor my opinions have anything to do with religion, god, or santa claus. Enough has been said and shed over these. I for one have neither the time nor the inclination. I would rather take on the title of nonconformist than nonbeliever.

So why do I advocate nonconformism? A lot, I think, is lost and missed out by our generation because we spend most of our waking time doing what we may not believe in. After an expensive education we end up spending an exorbitant amount of time unlearning what we learned. Many opportunities are missed out in this pursuit. And there are others who live their lives and die without realising that there was a lot more they could have done, or aleast tried.

Nonconformists have always been scorned. But do you realise that it is precisely they who have created the rules for an entire generation to follow? People like Galileo, Newton and Gandhi have preached and practised radical rules and beliefs and have often been branded as maniacs by the people of their times. But who do you think finds mention in the books? Who created the prejudices we carrry today? The church or Galileo?

Great souls have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. -AE

Freethought

Freethought is the idea and practice of forming one's opinions independent of tradition, authority and established belief. Freethinkers strive to form their own opinions based on sound logic and rational judgement. My blog is, but an effort towards thinking and expressing freely. Thought not shadowed by prejudices and biases, not veiled by dogma and not morphed by years of education.

Society, today, is constantly telling us how to think. Educators are telling us what is right, the media is telling us what happened and how, the politicians are telling us who the enemy is, our peers are amplifying and confounding their own biases and we end up looking at the world through a thick veil of preconceived notions and foregone conclusions.

Every once in a while a brave soul dares to break out of this matrix and proceeds to leave a mark in history. I call such souls histocrats, people burdened with creating history of their times. These are mere mortals, like you and I, who unshackled their minds and thereby became immortal.

This blog is dedicated to them. And to the histocrats of our times.