Organized Chaos

The Spice of Life

2012-01-16T18:11:00.001-05:00

It's been a long time since I read a book that was simultaneously very thought-provoking, and extremely easy to read through. At any given time, I'm generally burning through a bunch of fictional books, (recently, several Alexander McCall Smith books, Middlemarch, and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town), and slowly leafing through others in bursts of a hundred pages every two weeks or so (War and Peace, Brideshead Revisited). Last week, this series of essays by Chesterton entitled The Spice of Life seemed fated to end up in the latter category. However, about ten pages in, and I knew I would be finishing it off in the next two days.

Like G.K. Chesterton's only other novel that I have read (The Man Who Was Thursday), this contains a mix of light-hearted philosophy mixed with spiritualism, a smattering of thoughts that run very deep, but seem on the surface not to take themselves too seriously. He writes about a series of topics, including writing different kinds of literature ("How to Write a Detective Story"), classic English literature that is all too familiar to those of us who were educated in India in the 90s ("Disputes on Dickens", "The Macbeths"), philosophical observations on real life ("The Peasant"), and suchlike. Some of the ones on Christianity give the impression of Chesterton struggling to find evidence of his faith in random aspects of life. But apart from these, the essays are fairly light and most importantly, pleasurable reading.

Some choice quotes from the collection. Anyone who likes these will probably enjoy the essays.

"Let it be understood that I write this article as one wholly conscious that he has failed to write a detective story. But I have failed a good many times. My authority is therefore practical and scientific, like that of some great statesman or social thinker dealing with Unemployment or the Housing Problem." (How to Write A Detective Story)

"Now secular education really means that everybody shall make a point of looking down at the pavement, lest by some fatal chance somebody should look up at the lamp. The lamp of faith that did in fact illuminate the street for the mass of mankind in most ages of history, was not only a wandering fire seen floating in the air by visionaries; it was also for most people the explanation of the post. If a low cloud like a London fog must indeed cover that flame, then it is an objective fact that the object will remain chiefly as an object to be bumped into. I am not blaming anybody who can only manage to regard the world in that highly objective light. Even if the lamp-post appears as a post without a lamp, and therefore a post without a purpose, it may be possible to take different views of it. The stoic, like the tramp, may lean on it; the optimist, like the drunkard, may embrace it; the progressive may attempt to climb it, and so on. So it is with those who merely bump into a headless world as into a lampless post; to whom the world is a large objective obstacle. I only say that there is a difference, and not a small or secondary difference, between those who know and those who do not know what the post is for." - (The Religious Aim of Education)

"In this connection I think the educational arrangement about holidays has long been a ludicrous mistake. Holiday tasks are a mistake. Home-work is a mistake. Give the boy or girl less holidays if you think they need less. But be sufficiently businesslike to get the best out of the boy or girl for whatever concession you make to them. If you can excuse anyone from work, you can excuse him from worry. Leisure is a food, like sleep; liberty is a food, like sleep. Leisure is a matter of quality rather than quantity. Five minutes lasts longer when one cannot be disturbed than five hours when one may be disturbed. Restrict the liberty in point of time; restrict it in point of space; but do not restrict it in point of quality. If you give somebody only three seconds' holiday - then, by all the remains of your ruined sense of honour, leave him alone for three seconds" - (On Holidays)

The more you learn..

2011-10-03T21:33:00.002-04:00

This post of Aniket's made me think about why I don't write a lot any more. For a bit more than two years now, I have been twelve thousand miles away from the delightful, cosy little city I was born in. Working, laughing, and falling into twin extremes of joy and sorrow in a place halfway 'round the world which is unbearably muggy for four months of the year, and freezing cold for the rest. (In fairness, fall in Michigan is beautiful, I'm not exactly doing it justice. Nonetheless.)

When a lot of new vistas open up to you, there is a certain kind of apprehension about writing about your experiences. There is a story I remember reading as a child; that when Huygens first saw that Saturn's rings, unattached to the planet but still somehow floating around it; he was pretty terrified. He didn't think of it as a triumph of discovery, but wrote it down in a notebook in a couplet in Latin or something. I have never bothered to check on this story - it's delightful even if it is untrue, and makes for good dinner table conversation. (Incidentally, "smart" phones destroy these anecdotal soundbites, but that is a topic I shall touch upon another time). So anyway, I am but a kind of Huygens - trying to make a bit of sense of things which I realise I have little idea about.

The more you learn, the less you write. Or do you? Is it better to rust away while growing wise under the patina of the years, or is it more meaningful to polish up your writing, put your thoughts on paper, "get it out", as I remember an article by Churchill in the Reader's Digest saying? I think I might be practicing a bit more of the latter henceforth. Just not enough to get boring.

---------------------------------

Linux users these days

Speaking of which, while browsing the ubuntu forums the other day to resolve a kernel panic issue, I came upon a gem of a post from someone that went something like,

"I really hate how they wasted time teaching us LOGO at high school when they could have been teaching us useful skills like using Word and Excel"

I can only hope it was a troll looking for a reaction. Otherwise, we're well and truly doomed in 2012.

Trip to Meijer Sculpture Gardens and Grand Haven

2010-09-03T00:12:00.002-04:00

On Deaf Ears

2010-07-19T01:10:00.004-04:00

In the final chapter of his famous book, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhiji ends with a moving and thought-provoking farewell indeed.

"Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self- purification; without self- purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings.

But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experience of the dormant passions lying hidden with in me. The knowledge of them has made me feel humiliated though not defeated. The experiences and experiments have sustained me and given me great joy. But I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility."

Makes me wonder : We call him the Father of the Nation, but how much of Gandhiji's precepts do we actually even think about putting into practice? (I'm sure this is an oft-addressed topic, but still). Do we ever even make the slightest effort towards trying to reach "the farthest limit of humility"?

Based on my experiences, specially for the last seven years or so, I would say that we do not. We pay lip service to the Father of our nation, and are possibly committing a far greater mistake than those who do not agree with his teachings, or are ignorant of them.

As your bright and tiny spark

2010-07-08T23:03:00.000-04:00

Picture two figures, huddled on a less-travelled path, with the sky wrapped around them like a blue-black blanket lined by the fire of the setting sun. Talking; sometimes profoundly, sometimes desultorily. Soon it turns into inky blackness, and the stars come out, and twinkle merrily overhead.

So........ you like the stars. It is a statement.

Well, in a way. They are...constant.

Are you always this cryptically poetic?

No. But there is something terribly beatiful and permanent about a ball of gas several million miles away, which shall change but little during our lifetimes; and which we shall probably never get to visit.

I love how you say 'No', then prove yourself wrong. And will you ever travel to Africa?

No, but therein lies the difference. Africa is possible, within reach, almost..easy, one might say.

You are such a dreamer. You do get results though.

Perhaps.

Is that why you are depressed so much sometimes? Because you dream too much?

Maybe.

Well, you should try doing smaller things more often. Like this.

And they walk off, and go to a place less quiet, and more warm, leaving the sky alone behind them.

The Men That Don't Fit In

2010-07-01T15:43:00.000-04:00

A poem by Robert Service.

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

Overloading

2010-05-14T19:59:00.000-04:00

I could never understand the logic behind this post by Ted Dziuba, until I read Sun's excellent documentation regarding method declarations in Java.

The haze is clearing a bit. :)

Lamplighter

2010-04-11T20:15:00.003-04:00

Evenings. The perfect time for reflections and ruminations. Memories, some floating back to what seems like eons ago, but was probably just a series of ripples in the pool of your life. The pleasant cold of the spring evening brings a touch of the chill, and is perfectly countered by the life-giving warmth of the lamp. And you think, and you go over seasides, and mountains, and forests with dripping lichens, cities with magnificently lit skylines, and you marvel at the beauty and majesty in it all. And then you go back to the paper you are supposed to be have been writing two hours ago.

Happiness [According to Mark Pilgrim]

2010-03-28T12:36:00.000-04:00

Stop buying stuff you don’t need
Pay off all your credit cards
Get rid of all the stuff that doesn’t fit in your house/apartment (storage lockers, etc.)
Get rid of all the stuff that doesn’t fit on the first floor of your house (attic, garage, etc.)
Get rid of all the stuff that doesn’t fit in one room of your house
Get rid of all the stuff that doesn’t fit in a suitcase
Get rid of all the stuff that doesn’t fit in a backpack
Get rid of the backpack

Fantastic.

Eldritch Wanderings

2009-06-02T08:34:00.001-04:00

Dug out an old poem from my email, and it is suddenly very profound

A light goes out,
(Four long years have passed)
and all is still.
(I didn’t expect you here.)

A faint thump is heard;
(You catch up on old times)
another, and another.

(As if nothing has changed.)
“Thump, thump, thump.” (a heartbeat)
(But it has.)
A mask is removed
(I used to cry over you.)
And thrown to the floor.
(I wish I could cry still,)

Let all the world know
(But my tears for you)

Vivandi is no more.
(Are long since shed.)

The dark returns with silent violence
(Nobody deserves a third chance.)
And we shall enjoy ourselves.
(I never wish to see you again.)
This I promise you;
(This I promise you;)
Welcome to the land of Shattered Dreams.
(Welcome to the land of Shattered Dreams.)

Earth and Water

2009-05-22T05:47:00.000-04:00

You tell me we can stop the rain,
You tell me that we all can change,
You tell me we can find something to wash the tears away.....
And I know, of the pain, that you feel the same as me,
And I dream, of the rain, as it falls upon the leaves.,
And the cracks, in the ground, like the cracks are in our lives,
They are sealed, and are now, far away......

Why is it that rain is only fun when it drums violently on a metal rooftop?

Also, I find, not for the first time, that rains are good times for contemplation, colds, soup, and heavy metal.

Content

2009-05-19T05:47:00.001-04:00

A bunch of Cory Doctorow's essays on DRM, electronic texts, and piracy are extremely insightful. Obviously, like his other books, licensed under the Creative Commons license, and available freely online on his site here. This is one of the best texts I've read on this stuff for a while.

Thoughts in the Night

2009-04-09T08:34:00.000-04:00

As you go upon the trail, the vistas become less and less familiar. You leave the cozy cottages and the inns behind, and go into the dark and bleak wilderness, and terrors await you, lurking and unknown. Some of your comrades fall, some prove treacherous, and others part ways, while you go along the road less travelled. A part of the heart longs to be back, on the rug, beside the fireplace, safe and warm, and another part says that the sword can never gain a true edge unless it endures the heat of the furnace.

Exhausted, you sleep as well as you can, on a bed as soft as you can make it, and wonder how far your journey will take you, and what you shall encounter further. You think in grief about all that has passed, and find a kind of catharsis in resolving to forget it all. The resolve does not hold long, however, and you drift off to sleep, looking long and hard at the shoulder and belt of the hunters in the sky. You wonder what beings could there be on those worlds, and what their joys and sorrows would be like. You ponder upon how little a speck in the immense world you represent, and how little it would mean if you suddenly vanished off the face of this world.

The oblivion, when it comes, is welcome, for thoughts can go on forever and always, and try to span the universe, which, unfortunately, cannot be spanned.

:)

Faust

2009-03-05T01:23:00.000-05:00

I have not had the time or the patience to go through the entire of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, by Kit Marlowe, but some parts of it are very soul-searching. Specially when Mephistopheles (spellings vary), himself a devil, tries to dissuade Faustus from striking a pact with Lucifer.

Faustus : Where are you damn'd?

Mephistopheles : In hell.

Faustus : How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?

Mephistopheles : Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss?

Do you yearn more for something you want to have, or something that you have lost?

The Tide Runneth Me Over

2009-02-18T23:42:00.001-05:00

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.

Sometimes, I think I would pay to have my memories wiped as well. The movie [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind] was a bit tedious though. :)

Depression?

2009-02-17T04:24:00.000-05:00

from Good Omens by Neil Gaiman:

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.
And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot… no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular tune into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human…
Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield…
…forever.

H'm.

Farewell

2008-12-18T11:53:00.000-05:00

It is 13th December, 2008. As shafts of sunlight stream through my east-facing window, I am clearing up my room, while Anand sits at my computer humming a tune about stars fading into the night. Half heartedly, I tell him to shut up, and get on with my packing.

It is 8th August, 2005. I sleep fitfully in my new room at BITS, with expectations and fears of what college might bring. Everything here seems strange, new, and weird in some way. Early into the morn, I wake up, and gaze at the luminous dial of my digital watch. It reads 5:01 A.M. I generally do not voluntarily wake up this early, but I cannot seem to go back to sleep. Thoughts keep rushing around like eddies in a whirlpool, and try as I might, I cannot stop thinking what this new microcosm willl mean to me .

14th December, 2008. I sleep with a heavy heart and the realization that this is probably my last day as a student at this campus, though I will be a student for the next six months, and an alumnus thereafter. I go over all the things that the last three and a half years have done to me in this place, and the result brings a wistful grin, and the realization that I have no regrets. I sleep peacefully. In a cliched world, I would wake up to the same numbers on the same watch, but I have packed it away ages earlier. As it happens, when I wake up, it is around 5 AM according to my mobile.

15th December, 2008. We say our goodbyes to friends and teachers, try to laugh it off, but with a kind of foreboding underneath. Talking in sombre tones deep into the night, we walk to our hostels. I leave my college at 6 AM in the morning, and say one last farewell to friends at the campus.

It is 17th December 2008. I am back home, and a couple of relatives having dropped in helps to focus my thoughts somewhere else. When they are gone, I unpack, and memories come flooding back. When I put on the music, I am hard pressed to select a tune. Only for a while, though. Remembering, with a sigh and a smile, I play the song by Oasis on the soundtrack of The Butterfly Effect, and it makes a whole lot of sense.

Cause all of the stars,

Are fading away

Just try not to worry,

You'll see them some day.

Take what you need,

And be on your way,

And stop crying your heart out...

Mot juste, I'd say.

Thursday

2008-11-02T16:19:00.001-05:00

"Are you the new recruit?" asked a heavy voice.

And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.

"Are you the new recruit?" said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. "All right. You are engaged."

Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.

"I really have no experience," he began.

"No one has any experience," said the other, "of the Battle of
Armageddon."

"But I am really unfit--"

"You are willing, that is enough," said the unknown.

"Well, really," said Syme, "I don't know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test."

"I do," said the other -"martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day."

Recently, I read a book called The Man Who Was Thursday (A Nightmare). Written a hundred years ago by G.K. Chesterton, one of the best books I have ever had the fortune to read. In the book, Gabriel Syme, a poet turned detective works his way using an ingenious method, involving a gathering of poets and a matter of honour; into the central anarchist council; consisting of people known only by their names, and headed by a funny, yet terrible mastermind known as (what else?) Sunday.

What follows is a heady mixture of surrealism, philosophy and dark humour as the members of the anarchist council discover each other's true nature. The underlying theme of the whole novel, and indeed, Chesterton's purpose in writing it (according to a couple of reviews) is that righteousness is at the heart of a lot of evil in the world, and was intended to reaffirm the author's faith in the world, when he had suffered from depression for most of his life.

These sort of books generally lead me to introspection, and often self-doubt, but this was on a different scale altogether. What if the things we love and the dreams we chase in life are just dark shadows, and what if the world is not black and white but just a miasma of shifting, gray shapes? Already, as an astronomer of sorts, I sometimes feel painfully aware that our lives on this speck of a dust in the universe are entirely insignificant and unimportant, and the span of our lives does not even merit the blink of an eye in the cosmos, if such be there.

But if the reality we perceive may also be distorted, then it is a strange one indeed. Of course, the concrete must thrive, I suppose, but the riot of colours that we often surround ourselves with, on reflection, appears to be a subconscious effort to escape the gray.

(Well, I suppose I have rambled on long enough.)

Morning Glory

2008-10-08T16:07:00.003-04:00

From the sleeve notes of an old Oasis album, one of the best pieces of writing I've ever seen. End.

"Coming down off the nova somewhere near the boiled egg that is the Royal Albert Hall, we watch Paul's sun crossed with John's star and hold ice cream hands. Someone slipped on a cassette as the one you wanted left with someone else but somehow it was cool because as the music filled the shadows, you heard a sound that was a million miles away from fakery and a step away from your heart.

Just like it always did, this sound puts the swagger back into your step, the rush into your blood but somehow, and I don't know how, they had become deeper, wider, soulful, better at their craft, inspired by so many things like a world that is tilting who knows where and the applause they always knew was theirs but waited so impatiently to receive. Words cut you from all angles, back up by a monumental sound that rises high, high and high to crash against your rocks and then changes, majestically and magically to soothe the wounds inside. As you are dragged inside on this trip abandon, you hear a council estate singing its heart out, you hear the clink of loose change that is never enough to buy what you need, boredom and poverty, hours spent with a burnt out guitar, dirty pubs and cracked up pavements, violence and love, all rolled into one, and now all this.

At the end you flip over and start again because now you are not isolated. They have gone to work so that you can go home. High above the day turns pink and you feel your feet lift above the ground as new roads open up in front of you. In this town the jury is always rigged but the people know. They always know the truth. Believe. Belief. Beyond. Their morning glory."

Flicker Illness

2008-09-27T09:35:00.001-04:00

A couple of days ago, I read about this weird thing in New Scientist : flicker illness. Apparently, if you flash a bright light at a person with a frequency between [sic] 2 and 60 Hz, said person may suffer from anything ranging from headaches and muscle spasms to violent epileptic seizures. Apparently, this was also the cause for people in Japan getting violent seizures from watching a Pokemon cartoon (not because the damn' thing was so awful, as was initially thought.)

Far-fetched as it might seem, I can't wait to head back to the elec lab, rig up an astable at around 30 Hz to a few ultra-white LEDs, and start flashing the damn' thing at anyone who stands in my way.

The Road

2008-09-08T18:19:00.000-04:00

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

- Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Some paths are weary indeed.

And though they're pretty bad, a couple of photographs from last year.

Sendoff. Fifty years hence?

Library in the setting sun after the rains

Wishmaster

2008-08-27T11:16:00.003-04:00

Working as a PA, I have officially run through so many semicolon errors in third year Verilog code that I shall go mad if there are any more.

On another note, a friend told me about something he had heard regarding outcome bias - which basically means that if something goes wrong after taking a certain decision, one would tend to pause and ponder before taking that same decision in a similar situation, regardless of statistically the outcomes work out. Or, exaggerated (as is my wont), someone who has lost by calling heads nine times will tend to call a tail on the tenth flip of a completely unbiased coin.

All this sounds like a lot of nonsense (which it probably is), but it also tends to get me thinking about whether I am too quick in thinking that a whole lot of my decisions in life have been wrong. And still, I am not entirely convinced to the contrary. Decision biases et cetera notwithstanding, I still think that, contrary to the cliched 'I'd do the same all over again', I probably would act differently at the crossroads that I stumbled at, and choose the exact opposite path. Stands to reason, I guess. (or maybe not)

Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid

2008-08-07T16:03:00.000-04:00

Some people feel that abstraction is undesirable. The world requires hard, proper, concrete stuff, and has little time for the person who thrives on the unknown and the unsaid. In this world of 'rapine, avarice and expense', as Wordsworth put it (and he lived more than a hundred years before us), the tenuous, inchoate clouds of thought and feeling are rarely welcome. Often in a half-formed state, they are rent, ripped or brought to earth by rampaging hordes of base materialists, hell-bent on pursuing arbitrary motives, which are ironically often not very clear to themselves. The thousand deafening echoes of a single cry of supposed certainty, more often than not drown out the inaudible sighs and whispers of more ephemeral feelings.

Dreamers, I sometimes feel, more often now than at any time in the past, are scarce, and will continue to be so.

Atavisms | Spindrift

2008-06-14T17:02:00.001-04:00

"Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. He looked at Mort as if he wasn't entirely there.

You haven't heard of the Bay of Mante, have you? he said.

'No, sir,' said Mort.

Famous shipwreck there.

'Was there?'

There will be, said Death, if I can find the damn place."
- Mort, Terry Pratchett

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.

-A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5. 1

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown
of life.

-Revelation, 2. 10

It was a bloody hectic time. Feverishly writing out the final few annoying lines of code for my project, about 10 cups of tea a day, writing lab report for the Comm. labs, reading for tests, trying to be steady during lab exams, thinking about a lot of beginnings and endings, trying to be coherent, and not succeeding very well, writing for interns applications, the cut-and-run of the finals, muted goodbyes, hurried journeys and the final despondency when it was all finally, immutably over.

They say that sometimes when the battle is over, the interminable peace during the aftermath is worse than the struggle.

Sitting in the frigid NCRA computer lab hunting quasars, it came to me that I was suffering from an advanced state of shell-shock, that the gloom was there to stay unless I exorcised it, and that listening to Viva la Vida twenty times in a row was not going to ease the pain. I should have started accepting that I was still capable of enjoyment after all the upheaval, as so many people were trying to tell me.

So here's to devastation and to destruction, to Lucifer and Gabriel, to pride and prejudice, and to resurgam and revelations. And not necessarily in that order either. 'Let there be light' is a sweeping and highly general statement, but there is no denying that illumination of the order of a few candela would definitely not be remiss.

A Long Time Ago, in a Dimension Far, Far Away

2008-04-15T11:07:00.002-04:00

"If you cut us, do we not bleed? if you
tickle us, do we not laugh?If you poison us, do we not die?..

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that."

' That's it'
'Six by nine. Forty-two.'
'That's it. That's all there is.'

In this world, there are too many equations. And too many unknowns. Time was, when I could have twisted and turned them into something clear, something lucid, something tangible. But now all I can see, is mist, swirling.

Smoke and mirrors, as they say. And ne'er was a truer word spoken. When two doors open for every one that closes, you know there is an elaborate mechanism in the labyrinth designed to trap you, squeeze the life and imagination out of you, before you finally get to face the Minotaur.

And the best part is,there is nothing you can really do about it. The easiest way out is the shortest, where you actually enjoy the darkness, the smoke and the mirrors before the part where there is fire and brimstone everywhere.

Black Horse and a Cherry Tree

2008-03-22T06:54:00.001-04:00

Phew! Finally managed to upload an image using ScribeFire....

Into each life a little rain must fall. :)

The sun beats down upon the head, the air is humid and oppressive, and the extreme heat makes it impossible to think, or indeed do anything but curse at the fates that torment you, and not only with the weather. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego entering the furnace come to mind.

And then it comes, a shower of light rain,blowing down with the west wind... sweeping away the heat, the cares...and the thoughts. Most of them.

These Doubts Strike Deep

2008-03-17T15:10:00.001-04:00

Uncertainty pervades every moment of our existence. It is everywhere, right down to the subatomic level where even electrons are only ghostly shadows of probability. What do you do; when you come across not two; as in the poem by Frost, but several paths diverging in a wood, and have absolutely no idea of which one to take? What do you do when you feel as if you somehow are failing to communicate with those close to you; when you feel as if you are under an ocean of doubt, and sinking deeper still?

Though one thing is certain, which I have learned in the twenty-odd years I have lived so far...it is generally much simpler to tell the truth, the essential, the basics. As the ending to the science fiction series of books, Rama, by Clarke goes,

..“I understand,” pseudo-Nicole said in the scene.

I understand, the real Nicole said to herself. That is the most important statement anyone can ever make. The whole key to life is understanding. And now I understand that I am a mortal creature whose time of death has come.
Another surge of intense pain was accompanied by a fleeting memory of a Latin line from an old poem: Timor Mortis conturbat me. But I will not be afraid, because I understand...

And that is all.

All too soon, it is time to take off the masks of contorted emotion and go back to the mundane humdrum ritual of normal human existence; which is a relief, in some ways. Recently, I watched a movie called Enchanted, which tries to play on the theme that morals and ideals are not completely dead, even in today's world, that people can be good, and a lot more.

Maybe it is time to behave as if it is an ideal world after all.

Random Poetry

2008-02-17T08:56:00.001-05:00

From Reluctance .. by Robert Frost

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Summer Wine

2008-02-16T22:16:00.000-05:00

And the balmy air of summer arrives again, bringing with it a feel of nostalgia - an acute yearning for the wonder years when life was much more free and easy, and all one had to do was sit or play under the warm sun.

Now one has worries, cares, not to be lightly brushed aside, but to be looked at rationally, and dealt with, according to one's capacities. I have never been very good at expressing feelings, specially on paper/screen , but I feel this is very definitely a part of growing up to be an adult.

This ain't over yet (or so I hope)

2007-11-17T09:55:00.001-05:00

An engineering student, specially one in the third year of his degree, seems to have a tad too many facets of the same basic principles to learn. I mean, come on, we are looking at MOSFETs (Microelectronics), what's inside them (Electronic Devices), and how gates somehow fabricated from them can be used in even more complicated ways to do stuff that we want done (Digital Design). And what with Electric Machines dropping in from time to time as well, it seems as if there's a bit too much of state to handle, and too little IN-Ter-Es-Ting (as Feynman put it) stuff going on.

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On a completely discordant note :

I always loved the Arthur C. Clarke stories from "Tales of the White Hart". They're about science fiction writers, actual scientists, and a smattering of weird characters sitting in a bar, and discussing wildly improbable and fantastic incidents, but with a grain (or more) of science all the same. Maybe I should start to write something of the sort too. I feel as if all of the good names for engineering-based writing have been gobbled by the popular magazines though. I mean, the lowest I would go would be to named my collection Nuts and Volts, and even that has been taken.

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Wuthering Heights | Melancholia

2007-09-09T05:57:00.001-04:00

Some days ago, I read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, set in the 1700s. In the book, most of the people seem to die young, and illness and death are common motifs. I marvel at how anyone could ever experience so many emotions and live life so richly, knowing that tomorrow, a simple cold might be the harbinger of Death. (The author herself too, died in this manner at the age of thirty).

Having a cold (and a fever, etc) right now, I wonder whether I would have tried to make the most of my life if my illness had been life-threatening. In general, I think that I, and most people nowadays, being assured of short lifespans, tend to squander away their time in a lot of useless activities (like sitting in front of an LCD monitor and typing blog posts? Maybe not..)

I should go get some paracetamol and stop spreading gloom all over the place.

Browser Nostalgia ; or, Size Doesn't Matter

2007-08-12T03:07:00.000-04:00

I am writing this in Firefox with a metric ton of plugins, and with all its functionality, it seems like THE browser to me. Reminds me of around three years ago ( I don't really remember the time), when one of my friends, an open source geek, gave me the Firefox setup (version 1.0, for God's sake!), which was only around 15 MB, whereas the huge, bloated IE installs used to be around 50, 60 MB in size. At the time, my first thought was, "Hey, this thing is a lot smaller than IE, so probably not very functional...must be one of those some barebones things written by a couple of coders in their basement"

Three years down the line, I almost never use IE.If I want a heavily functional browser, I use Firefox. For a basic, fast browser, Safari for Windows is more than sufficient. And I have learned to be properly respectful towards open source ideas developed by coders in basements.

Like this new idea for a Wikia search engine propounded by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia (no basement code monkey; he employs them now :) ).It uses a fully open source algorithm for an Internet search where people, instead of machines, will actually rank pages, and things like Googlebombing will probably vanish. Who knows, maybe three years from now, my homepage will be set to "http://wikiasari.com"(that being the likely name for the engine) for most major searches...and I will not cease to wonder.

Third Time Lucky?

2007-08-07T15:11:00.001-04:00

If I recall correctly, I have tried writing a blog twice before now. Both times have ended up in boring husks of blogs that would appear to be written by the quintessential bunch of monkeys with typewriters trying to type out Shakespeare Hopefully, this one doesn't end up like that; or at least ends up being one of the more meaningful scripts in the same simian/machine scenario

Anyway, introducing myself. I'm an electronics engineer studying at BITS Goa, a technology institute in India. I'm interested in a bunch of rather eclectic stuff ranging from digital filters to Renaissance art. This blog will probably mostly consist of scattershot outpourings about vaguely interesting things.

Signing out,
mandark