Quitting

I love to voice my opinions about things, talking about events, reflecting upon people and perspectives.But lately i feel i have hit some kind of a creative roadblock. Bella's lullaby seems soothing, and star trek unattractive.Prolly it is another personality metamorphois that am going through.Human mind is a complex adaptive system too just like the market, there are losses and profits but at the end of the day ,market takes its own control , and when sometimes there is a huge recession or upheaval the system kills itself and creates a new avatar which is just the same but with different learnings.

I shall be back , once my mind finds its creative inspiration back again.

Freedom

For some it is the state of mind..........(I feel free, am different, i enjoy my work, am so special, i stand out,i achieved, i proved myself blahblah).

For some it is the state of grind...........(All the above is a self help books generated lie, i live for good health, good company and life is not about winning or losing, it is about making people happy)

For some it is a point somewhere between this hypothetical bimodal curve.

The desire for freedom, which includes freedom from peer pressure, societal norms, the beaten paths, stuff like making a difference, changing the world; in short all the stuff protagonists in academy award winning movies are made of, is just another cage.

The desire to eliminate your desires is just another desire, the proclamation of freedom just another cage and so is the realization of am sooooo special just another way of saying "all in all am just another brick in a different kind of wall".

So what did great people say to this.....Buddha suggested the "middle path", yoga suggests restrained indulgence so on and so forth.

I suggest just remember the second law of thermodynamics......"the amount of disorder keeps increasing(entropy is always positive)".

Every piece of automation generates the desire for more comfort, every patent ends with a section for future research.

All in all, you are not finding the answers , ur just generating more questions.

"Freedom is opening your mind", beyond all judgements........judgements is where freedom ends............don't judge ,be free.

Defense

Have met two kinds of intellectuals:
1)Down to earth.
2) Nasty and arrogant.

It is almost a bimodal distribution, is what i used to think, now i feel otherwise,the more nasty one is, the more insecure he is, and the more he uses his intellect as a defense mechanism.

You have just one life!! really?

Well,after you are done reading let me know if the whole idea sounds crazy and stupid to you.
So, what exactly was multimedia built for:entertainment. How exactly do we get entertained: escapism. Whether it's the picture of a perfect lover as edward in twilight which women all over adore, whether it's the picture of success after years of struggle in all the oscar winning ones and tonnes of power in every punch kinda ceremony which every man loves, whether it's the arabian nights, avataar or harry potter kinda, "give the user a blood rush" sorta fantasy world's ride, whether itz a virtual meritocratic world,like the role playing games or the books of ayn rand, or some melody engineered for ur eardrums............blah blah ........it takes u away from reality for a while, makin u think that you are thinking, making you feel that you are feeling and for once making you look at a reflection of who you think "you are, you can be".

What could be the greatest form of escapism? Escape the cycle of life birth and death and worldly possesions, and all that surrounds it, Buddha called it nirvana, vivekananda is reported to have gone into days of samadhi(meditation in one difficult position), sexual orgasms make you feel that for a few seconds,so on and so forth. So escapism or pure pleasure is when your mind reaches zero,or the feeling that it can't think or the feeling that it's feeling exactly what it wants to feel. So make his mind numb or put his mind under trance........he's entertained.

Now,the next point. You are born in a certain family, you go to a certain school, go work in a certain place,have a few friends and spouses,so on so forth. Your life is your set of decisions and sadly life has no undo button, no redo task,so we have regrets, intimacy hungers, recognition hungers, structure hungers etc. Your decisions shape you and you end up creating your own universe and live "there", The famous hindi song by raj kapoor "jeena yahaan , marna yahaan, iske siwa jaana kahaan" , which means , am a clown in a circus, this is my life , i shall live here , die here , be here.

BAAM, achilles the soldier, alexander the emperor, ramanujan the math guy, einstein the physics guy...........sounds boring and dull, the messge is better captured by rockstars proclaiming their existence in form of "itz my life , i want no peer pressure, i care not for the world etc.

So whoever you are, you will have a job and some hobbies and your definition of fun and adventure and hence your choice of esacapism varying from slapstick comedy to mind boggling books.What if you could escape your universe, what if someone could tell you the boundaries of your universe, what if tomorrow you could create a new one,what if you could live in it,what if tomorrow i can go live in a lionel messi's(argentina football star) universe and be back without that affecting my life at all. What if i can live multiple lives, what if i can go do the job i wanted to do when i was 3,marry the woman i fancied but who is not compatible with me, what if i can juggle between these universes, what if i always knew what grass is like on the other side, what if " jeena yahhan" song as quoted earlier is proved to be bullshit, many famous people have done that, "super politician quits career to become dog trainer", u think they were full of conviction,maybe, i think they were too pleasure seeking...........

So if i can find out the limits of my universe, dodge it and live in multiple universes in one life, would i need multimedia, or will that be the greatest form of multimedia ever, shutting down hollywood and gaming companies.Now how can this be done, i don't know.It is just a thought an idea, which sounds good in my head. Good Night all, enough blabber.

Totem

Two days, after watching the movie am still thinking about it subconsciously.I need to move on, hence jotting down my final thoughts about the movie "Inception".

If u haven't seen the movie yet, please don't read further.

So, this is a movie which drops sufficient clues to the audience and leaves the climax to them. The typical high school " Lady and the tiger story" where u can't tell which door was opened, lady or the tiger.

According to me,these are the possibilities.We don't know whether the totem toppled or not.

So assuming equally probable independent events this is what might have happened.:

1) Cobb and Saito wake up in the real world and Cobb goes home to his kids.

2) Cobb was inside a dream. He was wrong all the time and his wife was right. When she killed herself , she went back to the real world and he was still stuck in the limbo.

3) The third one to me is the most likely possibility, the entire movie was real, except the climax which was a dream, they never show Cobb and Saito getting the kick, they just get up in their seats after Cobb's realization and after all this time his kids are still wearing the same clothes.

The biggest problem with the script(deliberate problem) is the concept of the goddamn TOTEM, it can only tell you that you are not in someone else's dream. But what if you were in your dream, all this time?

But as a story teller the message Nolan was trying to send us was that, once Cobb leaves the totem to spin, he doesn't turn back to check itz state,he has reached his reality, he has gone back home to his kids, awake or asleep doesn't matter.

Hats off, if u can think of better explanations, please post.

Creep

While watching inception, i happened to watch the first theatrical trailer of "The Social Network" ,the movie about the story of Facebook.The thing that struck me about the trailer is that, the background song in it was a mashed up version of Radio-head's "Creep". A timeless, ageless masterpiece. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk

The mashed up version had these few lines reverberating over and over again in it.

I don't care if it hurts,
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul

I want you to notice
when I'm not around
You're so fuckin' special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?

I don't belong here, ohhhh, ohhhh

Huh, so many researchers , mathematicians,computer scientists are trying to mathematically model the human behaviour in the virtual world and radio-head had all that figured out, since yore.

The vicarious me , the voyeuristic me, the meforming me,the informing me, the connected me, the " am so fuckin " special me, the facebook profile me.

Hats off, radiohead!!

Binary Search

This is how binary search works, and this how you will find it written in most popular books.This one is straight out of Wikipedia.

low = 0

high = N

while (low <>

mid = (low + high) / 2

if (A[mid] <>

low = mid + 1;

else

//can't be high = mid-1: here A[mid] >= value,

//so high can't be <>

high = mid;

}

// high == low, using high or low depends on taste

if ((low <>

return low // found

else

return -1 // not found

It feels perfect, looks perfect even the Prof in your class must have written the same, then why am I talking about it. Well ,it has a major bug which had stayed undetected like for ever and detected sometime very recently. (Google for more details and timeline)

Problem: Well line 4 says, mid=(high+low)/2.Say if "high" is the highest integer your compiler can access and if low is any number greater than zero then mid goes out of range and causes overflow problems. :O :O

Solution: Do (high/2 +low/2) or low+(high-low)/2

Come to think of it: While implementing many other array based divide and conquer algorithms like merge sort etc, we do the same to get to the center of the array.

Caution :Don't take the average.

Romeo and Juliet

There is a system which consumes every brain once the person dies,downloads its intelligence and keeps it alive.That system is now the brain or "God" of this world.

Romeo:If the world was to end today and we were the last two people to be consumed into a sea of artificial intelligence, would you still want me?
Juliet:Objectively??
Romeo:Yes , because love, care,longing is just a chemical imbalance,causing a dispersal of electrical signals in our neurons giving us lag periods which provide moods like "i wanna work", "i wanna relax" creating statistical processes which give name to our outcomes like success and failure at the end of the day,you wanting me is you moving towards a greater state of imbalance.

Juliet:I still do, cause that's the only thing that keeps the process random, the fact,that am capable of loving,its what answers the age old question of indeterminacy the debate between free-will and destiny.
Love separates free-will from destiny.Love towards your work ,family,friends or for those few minutes of life left with us.
I don't want a predictable life, I want to love.

Sufified

I am shunning all western music for the next two months.

I never knew the power of sufi music before today, which I have been thankfully introduced to by my Pakistani lab mate.

Try this as a sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clt1SPTymwc

The "FRIENDS" Conundrum

Part1: (Amogh at NITR) Amogh the teenager hears huge praises about the series "Friends" of which he had only seen a few episodes here and there on Star World, he thought it was funny , he never knew it was GOD like, like others he sits down and watches all the 10 seasons loves them and sometimes just to be with friends he watches the same episodes over and again and again and again and again.

Part2:Amogh's friends in social networking sites like "Facecopy" and "Chirkut":

Jackass just joined the community "I will never get bored of watching friends".

Iamthedude joins the group "Friends will live forever"

"How u doing"?

BLAHBLAHBLAH.....................I get it dude, FRIENDS rocks.

Part 3:Amogh joins joins a varsity in USA,where some his friends lab mates etc are americans.

Their reaction:Older ones:"Friends" yeah that was good, it was kinda huge.

Middle aged ones:Friends oh yeeah it was kinda nice.

Undergrads:"Friends" wattt???

Epilogue: Mahabharatha and Ramayana were the biggest hits Indian television ever witnessed which started a trend of religious serials on Indian TV, still get telecasted on some channels, toh rooz dekhoge kya?????

PS:Teenagers living in a conservative environment like india have their EQ sharpened only by such sitcoms, for ameraicans, yeeah that was big, so wat, we have dozen others on air now, can u watch mahabharatha everyday??

My favorite poem, truly inspirational.

Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Dreams development lifecycle!

Naa am not gonna talk about software or it's development life cycle in any possible way if that's what the title suggests.

Back in Hyderabad, i met a guy named Smruti Parida, we got talking as we were from the same Junior college in Bhubaneswar (BJB); him being a couple of years senior to me; we became friends travelling in the same company bus from banjara hills to gachibowli, discussing crazy tech ideas over coffee and getting drunk at Club 8 over the weekend, guess i had a great time with him and i respected the person inside him as his soul was that of a true techie, a person with shrewd insights and someone who was great fun talking to.In one of our drinking sesssions in club-8 when deccan chargers was being taken to the cleaners we started discussing about innovation heads up.I said that "Germany had built the rourkela steel plant in 1950s and after 50 years of india producing 50 batches of metallurgical engineers from IITs,NITs and other prestigious colleges, they had to come back in to remodel it, shameful ,but that is just a trailer,we have engineers in every field but our in house expertise in none. Our engineers do most of the innovative work in most of the MNC's but still except a few silver lines like Tata motors etc we summarily don't build anything, we have all this hype as a booming economy because we are like the office of this world, a billion people who would take up any job and work as anything, almost every engineer ends being a coder and every manager ends being a consultant,so how do u expect us to be able to make active contributions in creative fields like manufacturing, research papers,patents, etc when we pick up any job that comes our way, coz if we don't someone else will. He said" It is not the population which is a problem, india has lot of people way too smart way too secure to take their set of risks, in the last 6 years some of the big companies of the tech world could be youtube,facebook, twitter,netvibes,37signals etc.These companies were started by 25 something old americans and then turned into multibillion projects,what have we done as the most educated 20 year olds in this country,maybe our creativity has been killed by 200 years of subordination or maybe it is a little too early , and we are expecting too much." I didn't agree to the last line that he said, come on!! what does creativity have to do with subordination.

Deccan lost to bangalore we were drunk like hell and had a great time, but this point kept distubing me,is creativity connected to ego. This is his blog about that:link

Few months later ,I happened to see Larry Page's commencement address in the University of Michigan .(link)Please watch it if you haven't, it is heart rending and makes u bow down to the the greatness which created google. In a section of the speech he says, My grandfather who was a assembly line worker used to drive my dad around this place and tell him "son this is where you will come down to study, that was the american dream and my father happened to come here and went on to become a professor here". In the next generation Larry happened to go to join Michigan and ended up being a PHD drop out to create google. Hmm , the story of strength and honour, the tale where characters believe in the pursuit rather than the sit and wait of happiness.It is this restlessness to go after one's happiness is what created america,it is this restlessness which is like a trademark of modern india, as some one put it, the life of a modern indian who disagrees to be in a sarkari naukri, who doesnt settle for a "contentment is happiness" formula, who doesn't settle down with best MNC's (if you knew the attrition rate at Microsoft and Google India , you would agree with me), who is a hypocrite as he is caught between his logical mind and a conservative upbringing(watch DEV D, u will get wat am saying) is underlined with just one characteristic: "restlessness", no hopes no dreams but an infinite possibilities.

Thatz modern india.

So yes,subordination affects creativity as it directly affects your ego, it hampers the confidence of those before you those smarter than you and hence yours too.(Vivekananda and Gandhiji were just exceptions). So yes 60 years hence this is the Indian dream , which university i will join, which scholarship i will win, which job i will get, which hottie i will land up, which place i will get to.I am sure there must be so many gradutes who must be looking at an IIM/IIISC/TIFR and telling themselves this is where i want to come and study, like Page's father years ago, there must be so many who would have promised themselves that one day they will end up working for apple.That is the Indian dream, the then american dream.

But there are exceptions to this rule, a 60 year old built the first Electronis voting machine and india had the first e-elections, it is called india's pride world's envy, a bunch of grad students at IIT Chennai built the cheapest ATM machine a bunch of 24 year old IITians came up with Adam the I-pad killer, nothing world shaking but we are getting there, from being third world to dreaming of a good life, to actually getting there, from chasing mirages to becoming a generation of go getters some time in the future.

Thatz the development life cycle of dreams.