Hiatus

It has been some time since I last blogged. There was a time when the words never seemed to flow right. Whatever I wrote sounded hollow, artificial, forced. As if it was for a reason and not for the act itself.

But lately the words seem to have resurfaced. With renewed fervor... energy. They seem to be everywhere... teasing, playing, flirting, soothing. I can feel my fingers caressing the keys again, effortless, real. Yes. I can feel what I write and write what I feel. How liberating. How can everything be the same and yet be different at the same time? How can I go from empty in a moment to sated the next?

Now I am overwhelmed with words. So much to say, so little time to say it. Let me try to make the most of it.

the damsel and the devil

"Will you be mine, pretty damsel?", the devil asked.

"Oh, but you are the devil", the damsel sighed, " how can you be capable of love?"

"I would rather not be who I am, pretty damsel" the devil choked. "I do not savor what I do. But it has to be done and it is mine to do. I wish it were otherwise, but the die has been cast. I am who I am and I do what I do. "

"But your sharp horns will hurt me devil, and the fires around you will scorch me. The cold in your home will break my fragile heart."

" Oh, but if you only knew pretty damsel. These fires are the fires that burn my heart, my soul. The horns are the atonement I will carry to my grave. I may be ugly as a beast dear damsel, but my cold heart too aches and grieves and yearns and pains. "

Choices

Life twists and turns in odd ways. The pitch is usually flat and the bat makes contact with the ball and there is an occasional boundary interspersed with a dot here and there. But more often than not, there are ugly curve balls and random speed spurts. How do you deal with these? Do you hold your breath before every throw and hope against hope that it flies straight? Do you cross your fingers and fervently appeal to the pitch-god to spare you this time? Or do you swing your bat at it with all your might, hoping-praying-wishing that you will connect? Of course, if you do not, there is that long lonely walk to the pavillion. And as you walk, you wonder whether you could have swung another way and would that have been your century.

I have played. I have missed. And as I walk back home I contemplate. What mistakes did I make? Can I change? Can I perfect my stroke for the next time around? But that is the deal. Life is full of choices. And you make these choices in the split second when the ball, dislodging itself from the bowler's grasp, makes its way to the stumps at breakneck speed. And as the ball approaches, you think of all the balls you have faced and make a choice. As the ball comes hurtling-shearing through the wind, spinning-hissing through the air, the choice is made, and the bat, as if it had a life of it own, takes control of your arm and weaves and heaves in a hook towards the far end of the field. The bat does not know whether the choice is right or wrong, good or bad... it only knows the choice as it rushes towards the ball.

Maybe it is only possible to make choices and destiny casts the die of right-wrong. Maybe the choice is the prelude to your destiny. It is the old chicken-egg run ... ah well.

...and back

Been gone for a long time. But am finally back... and getting into the rut called life.

Four weeks in Bombay sped by, like it was never there. Life in Bombay was familiar. Same place, same people, same crowds, all same. Just a different perspective. It was like seeing the past twenty years of your life in a new light. Be as it may, it was very refreshing.

So now? Back in State College. And the grind has begun. Only consolation? This grind comes with a paycheck (finally!). Will be back with more interesting stories soon. Until then... drink hard, drive safe and don't miss the SuperBowl.

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.