Suman's Blog

Istanbul

2011-12-03T00:40:00.001-08:00

Having spent two days in the south of Turkey, we headed for the historic city that was once the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, and then the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul. We landed really late in the night and took a taxi to the Arden City Hotel, which was in the middle of the Sultanahmet area. Given that the hotel was about a hundred metres from Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, and about a kilometre from the bazaar district, Ramya's choice of hotel was nothing short of a stroke of genius.

Given that Hagia Sophia was closed on Mondays, we went in to the Topkapi Palace. The palace was commissioned by Mehmet II after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks. The Byzantine palace was entirely in ruins, so an entirely new one was built in its place. The palace continued to be the residence of the Sultan till the mid 1800s.

A minaret on one of the structures in the palace.

Ramya at the outer entrance to the Palace.

The beautiful, long walkway to the inner entrance.

As we've seen with other Muslim cultures, the taboo on graven images means that artists have to look to other means of expression, such as calligraphy. The Sultan's name is the prominent symbol on this plaque.

A large Byzantine cistern was discovered on the palace walkway in the course of some renovation work. It holds tens of thousands of liters in a huge underground chamber.

Another structure from the outside of the Topkapi Palace.

If you're a Hindi/Urdu speaker, the "Top" in "Topkapi" is what you think it means - a cannon! The palace itself is a huge complex of several different buildings, among which were libraries, administration buildings, harems, circumcision halls (!), Persian-style Diwan-e-khaas and Diwan-e-aam halls, the Sultan's bedchamber, the Queen Mother's complex, the royal kitchen, and the royal prayer halls.

The entrance gate where coronations would take place in the presence of an audience. The
little bronze container at the top would contain some water that would drip down. I haven't really understood the exact procedure, but it looked a bit like the arrangement above a Shivalingam in a Hindu temple.

A pattern of beautiful ceramics, broken only by a beautiful lady in the foreground.

The Sultan's bedchamber. I read somewhere that the concept of a canopy bed was a European invention to get around leaky castle ceilings. I wonder if the Turks had the same problem, or this is one of the European imports (like the baroque facades you'll see a bit further down).

This was a running theme throughout the palace complex - a small structure housing taps with running water. We were outside some sort of a training hall for statesmen, which looked much like a modern day library with more comfortable seating.

A lovely fountain in one of the palace gardens.

Couldn't resist cracking a "Not Found" joke on this one.

Built in the 1800s, and as baroque as can be.

Not sure I remember perfectly, but I think this lovely pattern of windows (with perfect Tetris gameplay shutters) are on the outside of the circumcision hall. I can imagine the princes developing a subliminal aversion to this place.

At least in terms of how the audio guide described it, this seemed to be analogous to the Persian Diwan-e-Aam , where the Sultan meets with the commoners.

After walking through the palace for a while, we found ourselves at the entrance to the harem. The word itself means "forbidden". Visually, the place was nowhere near as fascinating as the concept itself. The Sultan had a harem complex, where the Sultan's concubines, the Queen Mother, and the eunuchs that managed the complex lived. The concubines were specially trained to be . . . concubines, and they had different ranks, ranging from those who shared a bed with the Sultan, those that he called his favourites, those that he called a wife, and ultimately, the one person who would be the mother of the next in line to the throne. The eunuchs were custodians of the harem, and were really powerful; they had free access to the palace and the harem, and the "Lala" (custodian) could have an audience with the Sultan. I'm reading a detective novel called "The Janissary Tree" set in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire featuring a eunuch as the main protagonist. Exciting stuff so far.

This was right near the entrance to the harem. To the left were the rooms which the concubines shared.

To the left here were the rooms of the "black eunuchs", usually men from Ethiopia who were castrated by slavers and shipped over.

Courtyards in the harem.

Recursion in the Queen Mother's quarters.

You could tell we were approaching the Queen Mother's quarters in the harem. The paintings got prettier, and the rooms got bigger.

After spending the morning in and around the Topkapi palace, we went down to the bazaars around the centre of the city, which are every bit as fascinating as the palace and the mosque. Several of these markets have been around from back in the day when Istanbul (or possibly Constantinople) was the junction for trade between the west and the east when cargo ships arrived from South Asia loaded with spices, gems, and other treasures which would eventually find their way to the markets of Europe.

Markets in Istanbul are quite different from European markets, and tend to resemble Indian bazaars a lot more. There usually are entire streets that cater to one kind of product. For example, we came across a stretch of a street that just sold towels and bath robes. A really long stretch that just sold spices. And a small stretch, just a few hundred meters long, that sold jewelry boxes, mannequins (just the hands and necks), and precision instruments like Vernier calipers and high-precision weighing scales. Upon asking, we were told that these were shops that catered to jewelers.

A sheltered part of the bazaar.

More shops spring up nonchalantly against centuries-old walls.

A store that sold equipment for jewellery stores. Talk about a niche market.

While walking through the markets and shopping around, we came across this man selling Sahlep (a sweet milky drink with a couple of spices, served hot) to all the shopkeepers. We bought a glassful, and enjoyed it in the somewhat cool evening air. "This is what the Ottoman troops drank for energy back in the days of the empire", he said.

Another beautifully lit-up mosque.

Having spent the rest of the evening in bazaars, we slowly made our way back to our hotel in the Sultanahmet area and decided to call it a day. Early morning the next day, we decided to cross the Golden Horn and go over to Galata. In the middle ages, the area was home to some traders from the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice. Today, it's one of the several districts comprising Istanbul. We took a tram over to the other side, and started walking up the slope to get to Taksim square. If you find the slope too much, you can also take a funicular.

Ramya in front of one of the mosques on the "Galata side".

Istanbul's seemingly omnipresent, very well-fed stray dogs enjoying
a bit of sun on a somewhat nippy morning.

The "Monument of the Republic" (1928) at Taksim Square.

Taksim Square seemed like a very upmarket area with a lot of trendy office buildings, lots of coffee shops, and smartly dressed people walking about in a hurry. Leading off from Taksim square is Istiklal Avenue, a really long street lined with shops, restaurants, and all sorts of interesting buildings.

"A History of Cyprus" is an interesting title to find in a bookshop
in a country that doesn't entirely recognize Cyprus as a nation.

The Church St. Anthony of Padua, built by the Italian residents of Istanbul in the 18th century.

A shop full of guitars on a street full of shops full of guitars near the Galata tower.

The Galata tower, built by the Genoese inhabitants of Galata in the 14th century.

Having made our way from Taksim square through Istiklal Avenue all the way back to the waterfront, we were feeling a bit peckish. And we treated ourselves to a fish grill right next to the fish market right next to the water near Galata Bridge. I'm pretty sure that the grilled fish that ended up in our sandwiches were swimming in the sea no more than an hour ago. We settled down on the bridge to eat our snack, watching people have a go with their fishing rods towards noon. Incidentally, the underside of Galata Bridge has a huge assortment of shops stocking walkie-talkies, phones, exotic watches and clocks, and handguns(!?). Folks from Mumbai will find it very similar to some parts of CST and Lamington Road.

Fish grilled sandwich, while-you-wait (for about 30 seconds).

Ta-dah! A freshly grilled fish with onions and veggies in a
freshly baked piece of bread, 5 Turkish Lira. YUM!

One of the biggest attractions in Istanbul, at least for me, was the Theodosian walls. These walls, first built in the 6th century, kept invaders out of Byzantine Constantinople for about a thousand years. The first time that the city walls fell was when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. One could say that these walls were the state-of-the-art in the keep-invaders-out business for about ten centuries, which makes them a heck of an engineering marvel. So after devouring our snack, we took a tram over to the western part of the city, where the old city ended.

Getting off at the "Topkapi" tram stop (do not confuse this with the "Topkapi Palace" stop at the other side of the city!), we came to the surface and saw the same sight that must have crushed the hearts of many an invading army - the double-layered walls of Constantinople. The two-meter thick outer walls in front of the 12-meter high inner walls, or what's left of them, are still an imposing sight. I can imagine that before the use of gunpowder warfare in this part of the world, they must have been virtually impenetrable. For more insight into how the Ottomans attacked the wall in the battle of 1453,read Roger Crowley's gripping book, "Constantinople: The Last Great Siege".

The Theodosian walls from about 200m away.

Alternate layers of brick helped hold together
the mortar better, offering better earthquake-proofing.

Ramya on the inner wall.

Having spent an hour near the walls and just trying to imagine what we would have done if were were heading an attack on Constantinople, we started making our way back to Sultanahmet, to visit Hagia Sophia, the iconic mosque/church.

It's hard to tell if Hagia Sophia is more fascinating from the inside or the outside.

The church/mosque has a fascinating history. Initially it started out as a Byzantine church, but was then converted to a mosque by Sultan Mehmet II, the conqueror. When the Turkish Republic was formed, a decision was made to make it a place of worship for both faiths. What we found particularly interesting was how they reconciled the Muslim taboo against graven images and the Christian practice of lavishing their churches with beautiful imagery, mostly of characters from the Bible.

Pop-quiz: What are the photographers here taking pictures of in
a 1500-year-old, twice-rebuilt mosque+church? A cat.

Big enough to park and turn a 747 in.

A view from the first floor balcony.

Gilded paintings of Jesus, St. John the Baptist, and one other person
on the walls at Hagia Sophia.

Having sufficiently recovered from the dazzling experience of visiting Hagia Sophia, we walked around town a bit and found tucked away in an inconspicuous, decidedly un-touristy street, a small shop that called itself an "Art Cafe". True to its name, the owner stocked lots of paintings, rugs, and painted fabrics in the shop in addition to selling coffee and shisha. The place had amazing local charm. Ramya and I spent a good deal of time there, enjoying the warm tea, watching the locals come in and play chess, and just looking around. It was a terrific place to relax and unwind, and a very memorable part of an amazing 5 days in Turkey.

The Art Cafe towards the southern part of Sultanahmet and its
very friendly and courteous proprietor.

The Hippodrome, an Byzantine arena for racing horses.
Home to two very fine Egyptian obelisks.

Our room at the Arden City Hotel, just before we left it.

Kaş

2011-11-23T13:05:00.001-08:00

Turkey is amazing in many ways, as we found out on a short four-day trip to the country. We took the evening Turkish Air flight out of Zurich, ended up in Istanbul at night, and took another plane a couple of hours later to Antalya in the south of Turkey. We checked in to a hotel and fell asleep. In the morning, a fantastic view of the Mediterranean greeted us.

The amazingly clean and sparkly-shiny Antalya airport.

The view from our hotel room in Antalya.

Just as we were wondering how wise it was to leave this spectacular room with a view and go somewhere else, our pick-up vehicle arrived as arranged. It costed about 50 CHF for a plane ticket from Istanbul to Antalya, and this car ride from Antalya to Kas would cost us about 100 CHF. Yay. It was a nice but mostly uneventful ride along the Mediterranean coast.

One thing we did notice was the number of greenhouses. Practically every village we passed, no matter how small, had half its area covered by greenhouses growing tomatoes. Orange trees grew everywhere; even the trees on the paved sidewalks were orange trees.

After about 2 hours, we finally arrived in Kaş.

The little "cedilla" on the "s" in "Kaş" turns the "s" into a "sh" sound (as in "sheep"). The same cedilla on a "c" turns it into a "ch" sound (as in "chocolate"). The Turkish language is a very interesting one for many reasons, not the least of which is their use of the Latin alphabet to form a purely phonetic script. In the late 1920s, a language reform replaced the old Ottoman Script, which looks a lot like Arabic to the untrained reader, with an extended Latin alphabet. We could read and pronounce most Turkish words (street signs, names of places, etc.) that we needed within a day of arriving, at least to the extent that the locals would know what we were talking about.

The words themselves are quite interesting. There are several words that one can easily recognize as being from Persian or Arabic. For example, we found some Arabic and Persian words in Turkish that made their way into Hindi as well such as, "Hava" = air, "diwan" = sofa, "Gül" = a rose, "Zamani" = an era or a period, "şehir" (pronounced exactly as in Urdu/Hindi, as "sheher") = a city, "Duniya" = the world, "Dikkat" = trouble/danger. At the same time, they have a lot of words from French. For example, "coiffeur" for a hairdresser's saloon, "guichet" for a counter, "jeton" for a token, and they say "pardon" for "excuse me". However, instead of spelling them like in French, they use the Turkish script to create the same effective pronunciations, thus ensuring that no matter what the origin of the loan word, you always pronounce a word the way it's spelled.

Having finally arrived at Kaş, we found ourselves in a deserted hotel in a deserted part of town, with a spectacular view and an empty beach all to ourselves. Turns out that Europeans don't much like water that is less than 25 degrees, so nobody comes to Kaş after October. This had us a bit worried - what if the water was too cold for diving?

The omnipresent "Nazar" symbol. In this
case, this was embedded in the concrete
at the entrance to our hotel.

Kaş was one of several nearby towns that were considered part of the region of Lycia as far back as the Bronze Age (~1200 B.C.). There are several easily accessible tombs, sarcophagi, and ruins from back then. So in the town of Kaş itself, we found a few Lycian structures. In the neighbouring town of Xanthos, supposedly once the administrative capital of the region of Lycia, we found an impressive complex of ruins including a temple, a court, an amphitheatre, rock-cut tombs, and sarcophagi. The town itself is a lovely little town with a cozy center, a town square by the docks, and a couple of lovely mosques built in characteristic Turkish style.

This lovely view of the town of Kaş is from one of the Lycian
rock-cut tombs on the rocky hills next to the town,
Lycian

Our hotel in the Çukurbağ peninsula.

Houses near the town center of Kaş.

Ramya in the town square, a large pedestrian-only paved area.

A Greek amphitheater built into the rock slope in Kaş.

A Lycian monument, cut from a single rock.
This one is a very high sarcophagus with a
stone lid, and two lion heads on one side.

A Lycian rock-cut tomb. Also in the town of Kas.

A lovely archway near the town of Xantos.
Xantos was apparently the administrative
and legal capital of the Lycians.

The entrance to the ruins of an amphitheatre. The two famous
Lycian tombs (the Harpy Tomb and the Pillar Tomb) are
visible in the distance.

Ramya walking into the amphitheatre.

The Harpy Tomb (background) and the Pillar
Tomb (foreground). They're huge, at about 6.5m
in height. The Harpy Tomb has bas-reliefs that
look a bit out of place because they're replicas
that were made in recent times to replace the originals
that the Brits took away in the mid 1800s. The Elgin
Marbles aren't the only ones, apparently.

This was another site in Xanthos, supposedly a temple dedicated
to Artemis. There was still-intact mosaic flooring on the ground, so
the floor was covered with thick sheets and smooth pebbles were spread
over the sheets.

If you lifted up the sheets under the pebbles, you could still see
~2000-year-old mosaic flooring.

This pillar contains the longest surviving inscription
in the Lycian language, at 200+ lines

We got around quite conveniently. Somehow, my Indian motorcycle license was good enough for a local vehicle rental shop to give us a Yamaha scooter. It was an ungeared scooter, but powerful enough to handle the tricky climbs in and around the area. We were in the Çukurbağ peninsula, and it was quite easy for us to use the scooter to the town. To go between towns, we used a "Dolmuş". These are small privately owned mini vans that ply between small towns in the region. They're very similar to the "tuktuks" in Egypt, and "tumtums" in Maharashtra in India, and are effectively shared taxis that will depart when somewhat full.

Ramya and I scooting about on the scooter.

We took the Dolmuş to get to Xanthos and then tried to get to the nearby town of Patara, known to be a nesting site for turtles. The beach was too far and we were a bit tired, so we ended up abandoning the trip to the beach.

An awesome signboard on a shop in Patara.

Ramya waiting at a crossroads for a Dolmuş van to show up.

Kaş is best known outside of Turkey for being a fantastic diving destination offering very clear waters and varied marine life. The biggest attraction, at least for us, was the possibility of diving at one of several wrecks in the area. However, the diving season was all but over, and most dive schools had shut shop for the winter. We found one dive school that was willing to take us out on a huge 50-person boat which we had all to ourselves. Wasteful, I know. Our dive guide told us that that since the water was very cold (18 C), nobody wants to dive any more. Ramya and I stared blankly at her wondering if we even needed wetsuits at that temperature.

We ended up having a fascinating dive (and regretted not having an underwater camera) into the wreck of a C-47 plane. At 20m under the surface, in perfect visibility (~40m), we went into the plane, looked around, peeped into the cockpit, and swam around it a bit before surfacing. We went with Dragoman Adventures (http://www.dragoman-turkey.com/t/12/). Five stars, highly recommended!

About 20m down from here there's a huge plane with a 15m
wingspan. All you have to do is put on a dive mask or swim
goggles and you'll see it from the surface through the
cystal-clear water.

The Dragoman dive crew and us. The two cats in the picture are
part of the crew, and eagerly await the boat's return to the dock.

The Dragoman dive boat was a self-contained dive center

Having spent two days in the region, we got on a plane that took us to Istanbul in the middle of the night. I'm still not done writing about that part of the trip.

Diving in Lake Zurich, October Edition

2011-10-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, you can dive in Lake Zurich in October. Yes, it is cold. No, there's not a whole lot to see down there. Surprisingly, it's only about 15 Celsius (all year round, apparently), and a 3mm wetsuit with a hood kept us warm enough for two back-to-back 30-minute+ dives at about ~5m. So why were we doing this, in October, on a cloudy day with < 3m visibility underwater?

With today's dives, Ramya and I finally managed to get the PADI OWD certification out of the way, and can now just go somewhere, rent gear and dive without needing to arrange for a special instructor for ourselves. After 7 dives in different countries, it was about time.

So what's under the surface in the Zurisee? Aside from tyres and old shoes, you mean? There are _really_ old trees still rooted in the ground, back from the day when some parts of the lake were above the surface of the water. And a _lot_ of plants. Here's a nice article on the kinds of underwater plants one can find in the Zurisee: http://www.psteinmann.net/bio_wasserpfl.html And of course, there are tons of European Perch ("Egli" in Swiss-German) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_perch swimming around. It's not an orgy of psychedelic colours like a coral reef, but like with most places (even those not underwater), there are interesting things everywhere if you go look for them.

Pinout of Sure Electronics 8x8 Bicolour LED

2011-07-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

If you're an amateur electronics enthusiast who happened to purchase a Sure Electronics 1088DEG-B 8x8 bicolour LED and are wondering what the pinout is, look no further. Their user's guide clearly tells you what the pin-number-to-LED-and-colour mapping is, but doesn't tell you what the pin numbers are. This can be quite confusing if you're a complete n00b like me (I'm sure more experienced folks find it obvious). Please have a look at the drawing below for a clear pinout of this component.

From what I've tried so far, if you're trying to wire this directly into an Arduino Uno, you'll run out of pins if you want to do two colours. So unless you get some more components, this will remain a single-colour display for your Uno.

Converting Half-Stereo to Mono

2010-11-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

I was stuck trying to edit a number of video files which had stereo audio, but only the left channel had any sound; the right channel was completely silent. I was using kdenlive (excellent tool) for non-linear editing, but the "mono-to-stereo" didn't work at all there. The documentation says it should copy the left channel to the right one. Or the problem could have had something to do with my audio not really being mono, but "half-stereo".

So here's how you convert m2t left-channel-only audio files to m2t files with the left channel copied over to the right channel.

SRC_VID is your source m2t file, DEST_MONO is where you want the mono audio track to be temporarily stored, and DEST_VID is where you want the final m2t video to be stored.


ffmpeg -i ${SRC_VID} -vn -ac 1 -acodec ac3   -f mp3 ${DEST_MONO}
ffmpeg -i ${SRC_VID} -i ${DEST_MONO} -map 0:0 -map 1:0 -vcodec copy -acodec copy ${DEST_VID}
rm -f ${DEST_MONO}

2012

2009-11-16T00:20:00.001-08:00

"2012": One of the most hilarious movies in recent times. Things to check for:

1. The part where they say Neutrinos have started interacting "a lot more" with the earth's core.

2. The part where an "Indian" "scientist" dude says something in "Hindi" that sounds worse than my Dutch colleagues attempting to pronounce my last name.

3. The part where they try to fly a plane through a maze of collapsing buildings through Los Angeles. And then Vegas.

4. The part where the Yellowstone Park super-volcano goes from complete tranquil to infernal hell in 5 seconds.

5. The part where they use cargo helicopters to carry animals through the Himalayas. The animals are suspended from the helicopters, not in them (because that would . . . look stupid, I guess).

6. The part where the Earth's curst completely shifts positions and Wisconsin becomes the new south pole in about 24 hours. They had to stick in a Biblical reference there, so they put in giant ships called Arks ("and the Oscar for most creative naming goes to . . .") which they built next to mount Everest so there's something to collide with when the flood eventually shows up and named one of the minor characters in the movie "Noah". Loved it. I'd put it somewhere between "Hitch" and the Austin Powers movies.

Flea Markets and Aneroid Barometers

2009-10-25T02:58:00.000-07:00

Ramya and I went over to the flea market in Burkliplatz yesterday. The market is heaven for anyone with the slightest interest in antiques, art, or old machines. You find all sorts of people giving away/selling all sorts of interesting things. I've seen matchlocks, snow axes, gas masks, French and English army helmets, accordions, sextants, and several other things you can't imagine buying at the local supermarket.

One of the things we bought yesterday was an aneroid barometer, our second (the long one with the thermometer above it). This one has a hand-carved wood base, is about 60 years old, and was made in Zurich by an optician named Schulthess (couldn't Google them, no idea if they exist any more). It has a thermometer on it as well. When I was looking at it, the kindly old gentleman at the shop asked me if I understood any Swiss dialects. When I said I barely understand the language proper, he proceeded to explain to me that
thermometers which have a tiny spiral vial containing the mercury at the bottom have a name in Swiitzerduutsch which means something like "the rear end of a pig", possibly because to some, it looks like the curled tail of a pig.

The other barometer we bought a few months ago is just a barometer, is about 70 years old, and was made by an optician in Frankfurt.

It serves as a better example for demonstrating how an aneroid barometer works. See the corrugated circle somewhere near the centre, on the inside? That's an evacuated container. It has a spring on the inside that prevents atmospheric pressure from causing it to collapse. However, the spring gets extended or compressed based on how much pressure the atmosphere exerts on the evacuated container (needless to say, this is a very sensitive spring). The movement of the spring is translated by a system of cogs to movement of an arm over a dial. This arm is the blue arm in the "Frankfurt barometer", indicating atmospheric pressure on one side, and its effect on the weather on the other side. "Veränderlich", "schön" and "trocken" respectively mean "changeable", "beautiful", and "dry" in German. There's another arm that can be manually moved, which is useful for marking measurements and observing relative changes to a certain reading.

Bush's Comment on Food Prices

2008-05-09T13:36:00.001-07:00

It's amazing how big a deal it is. President Bush said something that is inaccurate, insensitive, and not very diplomatic. Understandably, we Indians are outraged. The papers in India are screaming for Bush's head. I've been reading about accusations, insults, and statistics flying about in all directions, and thought I'd verify a few of them (and as usual, digress on the way).

Are BioFuels an Obvious Good?
Pick up the English edition of the National Geographic Magazine, October 2007 (cover story "Growing Fuel - The Wrong Way, The Right Way"). This is a rather thorough article which discusses what different nations are doing with biofuels. It says that ethanol plants burn natural gas or coal to create steam that drives the fractional distillation needed to produce ethanol. Based on which studies you refer to, ethanol requires nearly as much to more carbon-emitting fossil fuel than it displaces. The article also states that ethanol distilleries are competing for corn with meat producers. Of course, this competition drives up prices.

That doesn't mean that biofuels are a bad idea. It's just which biofuel you choose. For example, let's compare ethanol produced from corn in the US to ethanol produced from sugarcane in Brazil. I've tried to draw some charts to help understand this better.

Let's compare the total amount of fossil fuel energy required to produce ethanol.
In case of corn, it looks like this:

The Indians are Eating Up All the Food!
Indian foodgrain consumption, in spite of the growth of the burgeoning Great Indian Middle Class, has fallen by about 10 kilos per capita over the last 5 years. As it stands now, it's about a fifth or a fourth of the American per capita food consumption. Blaming rising food prices on the growth of the Indian Middle Class is a little like the American reaction to the Tata Nano - "Oh my God, there will now be a billion Indians in cars polluting our dear planet". Lest you forget, a Tata Nano is _not_ a 1-mile-per-gallon SUV (and at any rate, there will certainly not be a billion of them anytime soon).

There's another statement I read in a newspaper, that the "US should not be diverting crops for fuel when many children in India are starving". In spite of this comment coming from my camp, the second part of the statement is not entirely accurate, at least from the Indian perspective. In case you didn't know, India produces more than enough foodgrains to be _completely_ self-sufficient. The problem, of course, is distribution. Our public food distribution system is anything but complete, and _that_ is why people starve or don't get enough food. Bush isn't always correct, but to blame starvation in India on him isn't really fair.

Short version of the story : Bush has had another attack of foot-in-mouth. Why is this even news?

P.S.: Part of me thinks that Bush is trying to get the American public off his back, and media attention off the fact that several states in the US are already feeling the pinch of increase in meat prices (fodder costs more now) and foodgrain prices due to large numbers of ethanol plants coming up in the Mid-West and surrounding regions. As I've said before - he's not as stupid as most of the people who call him stupid. :-)

Book and Movie Reviews

2008-02-29T13:12:00.000-08:00

Over the past month, I've spent a good deal of time on Swiss trains. They're an absolute pleasure to travel in (at a non-negligible expense, mind you) and are a great place to catch up on your reading. So in these trips, I did a bit of reading. Mostly low-grade paperback fiction, but let me do a quick recap of everything.

i. "The Afghan" - Frederick Forsyth's latest work is very contemporary, just like all of his works over the years. Everything is well-researched and the details and tidbits of information are fun to read. The plot revolves around a former British Secret Services man with some Indian ancestry (and consequently, some middle-eastern features) and combat experience in the middle east who tries to impersonate a high-ranking Al-Qaeda leader held captive in Guantanamo. It's an intriguing plot and a very interesting read. Frederick Forsyth includes a lot of information on the political background and history of the Al-Qaeda and it makes for a very realistic story. There are a couple of extremely improbable (where improbable tends towards impossible) coincidences in the plot which sound somewhat amateurish. But that apart, it's an interesting read. Pick it up if you have some train/plane rides coming up!

ii. "The Day of the Jackal" - Having read his latest work, "The Afghan", I was curious enough to read his most famous (or second-most-famous, based on what you think of "The Odessa File"). "The Day of the Jackal" was a fantastic movie starring Edward Fox (who played a very convincing cameo of an unremorseful General Dyer in "Gandhi") as the Jackal. There's another extremely poor adaptation of this book named "Jackal" starring Bruce Willis as the Jackal. The story is set in France of the sixties, when Algeria was granted independence from France, and there were circles where Charles de Gaulle, the then President of France became highly unpopular for this move. The Jackal is a top assassin for hire who has been contracted by one such organisation, the OAS, to murder Charles de Gaulle. This book is about 10X more convincing than "The Afghan" and makes for a fascinating read. Not only is the narrative very engaging, but the methods that the Jackal uses to carry out his assassination are downright ingenous, and at the same time, realistic. Advice: Read the book first, and then watch the movie. The movie of course loses some detail when compared to the book, but is still very faithful to it.

iii. "The Alexandria Link" - Ever since "The Da Vinci Code" was written, I have run into tons of paperbacks written by people trying to dig out controversy from pseudohistory and make a fortune. In my opinion, what differentiates Dan Brown is his thriller-style writing - the controversy only helped his cause. The Alexandria Link, by Steve Berry, is built on the controversial premise that the land that is the country of Israel today was not the promised land in the Old Testament, and that the "real" Israel was in fact in Saudi Arabia. He has a very nice method of building and introducing characters and describing action. But the premise is so unconvincing that by the time the body count goes over ten, one wonders what the big deal is.

Movies:

i. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2006). I just ordered this DVD a few days back. I'm a HHGG fan, and I know practically every one of the radio episodes by heart. If you are a fan, and you like Peter Jones "as the book", and the jokes, witticisms, and top-quality voice acting that the radio series is so famous for, DO_NOT_WATCH_THIS_FILM. The point where Martin Freeman playing Arthur Dent tries to pull off the now-legendary "...counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying Vogonity..." is depressing, to say the least. If you're not a HHGG fan or have never seen a HHGG episode ever, DO_NOT_WATCH_THIS_FILM. If you do, you won't lose anything but you'll not tend to think very highly of HHGG fans.

लिनक्स पर हिन्दी

2007-10-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

मेरे कुछ चीनी दोस्तों को "Chinese Simplified Input" पर काम करते हुए देख़कर मॆंने सोचा कि चलो देखते हॆं कंप्युटर पर हिन्दी भाषा में काम करना कितना आसान (या मुश्किल‌ :-) हॆ | लिनक्स पर अप SCIM और ITRANS के जरिए अपने English (U.S.) QWERTY लेआउट पर बिना कोई नए लेआउट सीखे आसानी से हिन्दी में लिख सकते हॆं |

हालाकि हिन्दी में "वोइड मेन (‌)‌ { इंट आइ = १२३; } "‌लिखने में कुछ समय लग सकता हॆं, याहू मेसेंजर पर पुराने दोस्तों को शुद्ध हिन्दी में गालियाँ देने का मजा कुछ और ही हॆं | :-)

Christian the Lion- Reunion!

2007-09-16T02:59:00.001-07:00

A lovely video where a man is reunited with the lion that he raised as a cub. While it's amazingly cute, I can't help but wonder how disturbingly unnatural it is. On a lighter note, I have no idea how you stand your ground when a 200-kilo perfectly-designed-to-kill carnivore leaps at you, albeit with benign intentions. :-)

A Week in St. Nectaire - 1

2007-09-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

Last week was interesting in many ways. Despite living in France, albeit in a remote corner of the country, I have seen pretty much nothing of the country. Save for a sightseeing Saturday I spent in Lyon last winter, nothing (I'm saving Paris for an occassion). Last week, there was a collaboration meeting (I work in an experiment collaboration at CERN that involves institutes and researchers from all over the world, and we meet once a year off-site from CERN) in St. Nectaire, a really small village in France.

This is the route we took to St. Nectaire. It was a lovely route through the Jura mountains on to the other side, through and over villages located in and between the mountains.

	After a while, it got flatter, and pretty boring. :-)

We were put up in the most luxurious hotel in St. Nectaire. On arrival, we took a walk around the town. In a 45-minute walk, we met _one_ local inhabitant. This continued over the next few days, over which we met a handful of locals, and hardly any young people.

I read about rural depopulation in Europe before I came here. This is a phenomenon where the population of villages reduces because younger people apparently have no reason to stay back, since tourism and agriculture are not lucrative enough as careers. Lots of buildings were for sale, some sadly going into ruin.

The French food over the next few days was great overall. Apart from the one disappointment where they served the boiled remains of an animal massacre, the food was great - the French have learnt a thing or two about flavour and do a good job (between bouts of amnesia).

The area is full of volcanic craters and mountains. It doesn't concern people much because the latest eruption in the region was ~7000 years ago. However, the craters still look like craters (more pictures to follow). The mountains are also famous for an old Roman temple (~2000 years old) and as a popular paragliding site. After climbing one of the neighbouring summit, looking at the town of Clermont-Ferrand from a height of 1400 metres was . . . satisfying. Of course, this was also the site of Blaise Pascal's famous experiment where he measured the effect of altitude on a mercury column (to prove atmospheric pressure).

Here's the first batch of photos.

St. Nectaire

Moore's Laws

2007-09-07T15:05:00.001-07:00

Michael Moore's films are great. Sure, some people could argue that the facts are not completely true, and that his films tend to be somewhat sensationalist. But one thing we can learn from the Americans (despite all their numerous flaws) is that an outspoken journalist like him can actually voice his opinions. He has lots of opponents, who have websites such as moorewatch.com. Without leaning one way or the other, I think that it's important that we have a healthy intellectual environment where free-thinking and free-speaking journalists can go head-to-head and provoke the masses into some thinking of their own.

I'm sure everyone's read something or the other about the RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America) and its move to combat file sharing. They've done things like sue a 6-year-old girl and her single mother, a little boy and his grandmother, campuses full of college students, and basically anybody who cannot afford a hotshot lawyer to defend themselves. To sum it up, these guys act like vultures preying on the weak. These guys don't really experience serious losses in any way, and if they were serious about pushing up their sales, they could drop prices and see the effect. Oh, just so you know, the RIAA is not some ghost organisation that does all these evil things - it's a consortium, whose members are Sony, EMI, Warner, and Universal. They would have you believe that for every movie you steal, another underpaid Hollywood star or impoverished Sony executive starves to death. The truth is somewhere in the middle - it's bad to steal movies, but they can fix it by a) getting rid of the obscenely high prices of media (movies/music), b) getting rid of region codes, proprietary media formats (I hate Sony), DRM, and c) basically try to not be the greedy bastards that they are.

How does Michael Moore fit in here? Well, I saw a two-minute snippet of an interview with him on file sharing and movie stealing. I'm not really pasting from a transcript, but he said something to this effect. "Movie sharing? Well, meaning what happens if you buy a DVD of my movie and give it to your friend, who sees it without me making any money from it? That's called sharing, and it's been happening for a long time now for lots of things, not just movies. I do quite well, and I don't think I'd mind that - it's just sharing, something we've been doing for a long time. So long as you don't sell my movie again for a profit, I don't think that's bad." He may be controversial, but there are things you gotta learn from the guy.

Earth Colours

2007-08-31T13:38:00.000-07:00

After browsing through blogs maintained by friends who take their blogging seriously, I thought I'd give mine a makeover. The header picture is something I clicked while hiking with colleagues at St. Cergue in the Jura mountains in Swtizerland. Remember the movie Jurassic Park? The "Jurassic" in "Jurassic Park" is the name of the period between 200 million years ago to 145 million years ago (at this point an idiot once asked me, "Is that BC, or just from today?"). The dinosaurs in the movie are from this era. And the name "Jurassic" comes from "Jura", which are the fold mountains that go through France and Switzerland, north of the alps. A lot of the limestone rock in the Jura mountains was formed during this period. Having digressed enough, here are some links to pictures from the Jura.

Hiking in the Jura - St. Cergue

These are fantastic hiking areas, especially in the summer. And from the bright blues and greens in these pictures comes my new colour scheme for this blog. Of course, I have to work with several limitations, such as a slight prejudice towards dull monochromatic schemes and a mild colour-blindness that the CERN medical service discovered in my first week here. Anyway, if you're a male, there's a 17% chance that you have some problem with colour identification. So when you get angry, do you see red? Or do you see a different shade of yellow?

Songs from the 90s

2007-08-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

I've been without TV since 2000 now. I have had a television set at home for about 2 years now, but I've never had cable. Basically, I don't believe in directionless viewing (or more likely, I don't want another bill that I can procrastinate over). There was a period when I did watch a decent amount of TV, between 1994, when we got cable at home, and 2000, when I left home. This is when I got my first taste of MTV. Of course, back then they really used to play music, instead of showing idiots doing idiotic things to other idiots (RE: Jackass).

So I tried to recollect what I remembered from back then, and tried to find good videos on YouTube to refresh my memory. Of course, this is a colossal waste of time, but hopefully it'll put me to sleep tonight.

1. There was this video I remember very vividly. A tall, dark lady walking and dancing in front of a white background. Very graceful movements and inspirational lyrics. A few searches later, I found "You Gotta Be" by Des'ree. This is a real mood-lifter.

2. Then there was another one I remember. Psychedelic, but there were these close-up shots of a woman with really lovely eyes, and "Crazy Cool" being repeated over and over and over. This was easy to find. The former LA Lakers' cheerleader, Paula Abdul. And I was right about her eyes. Check out the video, and you'll see what I mean.

3. A great Whitney Houston song with a nice tempo. It's the OST from "The Preacher's Wife", which isn't much of a movie, but this is one hell of a song. Wikipedia: This is a cover of an Annie Lennox song, and she has also sung background vocals to this song.

MTV was frowned upon as being a "western influence" back then. But there's no denying that they had great music. Today the music is mostly gone but if you see some of the movies that MTV produces today (Jackass is again a case in point - YES it is also a movie), and the shows that they do, I feel sorry for the poor brain dead idiots who actually enjoy this trash. Well, here's wishing them good luck (gratuitously assuming they can read).

(Wow, I'm ageing faster than I thought.)

"I Called Him a Bastard"

2007-07-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

"I made some passing references to his questionable parentage."
- Capt. Jean-Luc Picard

Easy, Mr. Stallman!

2007-06-18T13:58:00.000-07:00

Before I begin, let me explain - I love open source software. I have contributed to open source software, I have absolutely no Windows software anywhere on my laptop at home or on my workstation, and I don't remember the last time I worked with software that I didn't have access to the sources of (or maybe I do, but that's besides the point).

Richard Stallman showed up at CERN today. The talk was on the Ethics and Practice of Free Software. Mr. Stallman has often publicly lamented the apparent lack of knowledge that Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel alone do not comprise a Linux distribution, and justifiably so. There's no denying that the Kernel alone wouldn't be much fun in the absence of gcc, binutils, emacs (I worship vi vi vi, but I'm religiously tolerant), and countless other tools that we don't even notice when we use a GNU/Linux distribution. Credit be given where due, Richard Stallman is a highly respected man in these circles - not only for his technical contributions, but for spearheading the cause of open source software, and ensuring that thousands of people all over the world can use open source software without fear of being sued. With this background, I went to listen to _the_ man.

He's not a particularly charismatic speaker. The hippie-nerd look does him a world of good, but not nearly enough. Several times, justifications in his talk were given by statements such as "it is inherently evil", or "it is bad", or "it is your fundamental right". He said in today's talk, and I quote, "Never buy a DRM-enabled media that you are incapable of cracking yourself." Of course, he hates everything from gaming consoles to TiVo, and thinks we should not buy any of those things.

The worst line of his talk was somewhere around the 40-minute mark. "Why should you not use Windows?" Of course, he said the standard stuff, about it being "inherently evil", spying on you, and sending all searches to Microsoft.com (apparently, the fact that google.com does this as well is not a problem). Here comes the best one - "A couple of years ago, in India, two people from the Al Qaeda were working at Microsoft, and they were caught attempting to insert trojans and viruses into Windows. Fortunately, they were apprehended. Who knows how many such attempts go unnoticed?"

Mr. Stallman, this is a piece of tabloid news. No respectable paper ever carried it in the form that you mentioned it. The company has denied it (well, that's obvious, I take it back). And the word was that the Al Qaeda claimed to have programmers working for them, not that anyone was apprehended. And to think, you quoted this specimen of cheap sensationalism as a reference in your talk, which you delivered at a prestigous location where many Nobel Laureates have addressed the same audience of distinguished physicists as you had the opportunity to. While I respect you and your contributions to open software, statements like these will only hurt your credibility.

Oh, and I'm sorry I walked out at that point.

Crying

2007-05-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

I was just watching my favourite movie, Rang de Basanti on DVD. Each time I watch it, I notice something new that I like. For instance, this time I noticed how Aamir Khan performs in scenes where he has to act like he's crying.

From some personal experience, I see it more or less like this : when you cry, it's not just loud noise and moist eyes. There's an emotion that surges up from deep inside, gradually taking over you. In a few seconds, you're completely overwhelmed, and you have no idea how to deal with the swell of feelings inside you. Before you know it, you are completely in its grip, and your face grimaces and feels like it's going to explode. Finally you give in and shut your eyes, and that's when you feel the warm trickles of your tears on your face. And it comes in surges. Every time you vent out a little, you relax a little till the next wave takes you down again. Once you've let out enough steam, you're feeling much better. It's awesome how he pulls it off; I'm always wondering if he's not really crying.

There's acting for you.

The Blue Man Group (or "I don't get American Humo[u]r")

2007-05-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

They had reviews in the New York Times and pretty much every other magazine you could think of, which said things like "I laughed so much I had to go to the doctor" or "Rip-roaring hilarious", "Funniest 100 minutes ever". My poor, gullible better half fell for it, and paid (through the nose) for tickets to see them perform at the Birar Street Theatre in downtown Chicago.

After a day full of staring up at T-Rex skeletons, peering at mummified mummies and daddies, looking at exhibits on Indians who aren't really Indians, and then watching Spiderman 3 (which has more animation than "Toy Story", and by no means more impressive), we left for the Blue Man Group show. A short walk, a taxicab ride, and two bean burritos later, we arrived at the Briar Street Theatre, in time for our show.

The decor is impressive. You have this pseudo-industrial-look paraphernalia everywhere. Everywhere you see, there's dim lighting, neon pipes, hoses and wires, and water-filled tubes. Essentially, you see a lot of things that set your expectations high.

Everything's dark. There are a set of red LED panels near the stage which prompt the audience to do things such as "sound like a cowboy", "make like that guy on some XYZ show" , "say happy birthday to Marge in the audience", or "say hello to Adam because he's just a normal guy so he'd like you to say something like that". The audience _loves_ this. There's a small room above the stage where you see a small band, dressed in fluorescent skeleton outfits to contrast with the dark background. Then three guys show up on a dark stage. They're dressed completely in black, except for their heads and hands, which are a bright shade of blue. Two of them start playing on drums, while one of them splashes neon paint on the drums. The drumming is nothing impressive - I've played with better.

Then comes the humour. They leave their drums, and then toss marshmallows into each other's mouths - no mean feat given that they're nearly 30 feet away from each other. Then one of them rubs corn flakes all over his face, and another tells him how to get them off his face. Throughout the show, every now and then, they just stand still, staring at each other's faces with blank expressions. At this point, the audience is laughing, and laughing hard. Ramya and I are also staring at each other with blank expressions, wondering what the hell the lady in our row found so funny that she was practically choking with laughter.

The humour continued, in the form of a long-drawn serenade of a random (pretty) girl chosen from the audience to have a rather awkward simulation of dinner on the stage. It's supposed to be funny, because there are squirts of neon paint shooting out of small nozzles on the Blue Men's chests. At this point, Ramya starts apologizing for buying the tickets for this show.

Then comes out a huge instrument made out of pipes, that the Blue Men bang on to play music. It's like a xylophone, except that it sounds very different. They play some music for a little while with minimal nonsense, and it pretty much peaks there.

The finale is something that my particularly eco-sensitive better half and I found ridiculous. The Blue Men run to the back of the stage, and open up some panels on the rear walls of the hall. There are tens of toilet paper rolls inside. They pull out several streams of this paper, and push it over the audience, all the way to the front. Then they turn on black lights, and the white paper shines up. Yay, yippee. At the end of the show, we see huge 4-feet piles of toilet paper on the front of the stage. I'd say it was about a sixty or seventy kilos of paper at least. That's quite some, given that they do a show every day.

100 minutes of extreme neon-paint-slapstick-humour gimmickery were finally over, and we happily concluded that we just don't understand American humo[u]r - neither the concept, nor the way they spell it. :-)

Great Expectations

2007-05-02T17:36:00.000-07:00

I am trying to hail a cab from Fermilab. I pick up a phone, call the toll-free number for the taxi service. A very sweet sounding lady picks up, and asks for the address. I half-jokingly imagine the lady on the other side of the phone as an accent-trained Indian lady somewhere in Pune or Bangalore. "Fermilab", I say to her. "F-E-R-M-I-L-A-B as in Enrico Fermi, the scientist"?

Gotta Love Skype

2007-04-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

I wonder how the previous generation of Indian students going abroad used to manage staying in touch with their families. I can't imagine it being easy, what with trunk call costs the way they were, and VoIP and internet access facilities in India pretty much non-existent. I can imagine students pinching pennies just to be able to talk a little more to folks back home, and people at home just waiting by the phone at pre-arranged times to make the most of those precious few minutes, if that.

Enter today. With a better-half-to-be in the US, mum + dad + sister + lifetime's worth of friends in India, and my sorry self in Europe, I don't think I can spread my family thinner on the globe if I tried. Five years ago, I would have used instant messaging, now I can use Skype. Wonderful voice quality, free of cost for PC-to-PC calls (Yahoo fans, please excuse yourselves and try out Skype - do yourself a favour by using by some quality software, instead of the trash that Yahoo tries to pass off as voice chat). However, with three timezones spread over 13 hours, it's not always convenient for me to be at a PC at the same time as everyone else. Enter SkypeOut. I use my PC to call a phone, and even calling to the most exotic locations on the globe costs ~ 0.18 Euro per minute. To the US, it's a pitiful 0.017 Euro per minute (that's right, there's a zero after the point). Beautiful. I can call my mum when she's at work, which is when I just wake up. I can call my significant-other-to-be after I get home from work, which is when she's on her way to work. All this, at really great rates.

_Now_ the world's really smaller.

OK, now I'm waiting for all those smartalecky idiots who'll say "Dude, you look like you're advertising for Skype" or "How much is Skype paying you?".

Bipedal Claw Robot

2007-02-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

My first biped. It's what started out as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but ended up becoming a blind, stupid claw that walks like it's had a drink too many.

Snow!

2007-01-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

This is a view of the football field from my apartment about five months ago.

This is pretty much the same view (with a bit of zoom) last week. Enough said. :-)

Pristine white in the morning after the snow.

This is what I look at when I daydream at work. :-)

Los Angeles - VIII

2007-01-11T11:59:00.000-08:00

Ending the day at Universal Studios: (From top left) The Terminator (with crushed skulls at feet), the two of us standing in front of a gigantic less-evolved cousin, the inside of the Shrek Superstore (you can buy great-tasting, albeit horribly named treats called "eyeballs" and "snails" and "spleen" there), The Mummy (and not her mummy) returns and attacks Minnie Mouse, sitting awkwardly in front of the statue of a filmmaker's crew at the Universal entrance, the neon sign in all its glory, a drunk cowboy mannequin in front of a restaurant, the iconic Universal Studios globe captured in horrible light, and a better version with an admiring onlooker.

Looks Familiar?

2007-01-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

(Starting from top left:) The sign outside the Amity Island Beach from "Jaws", the plane crash scene from "War of the Worlds" (this is a real 747 that has been stripped to look like a crashed plane), the entrance to "Jurassic Park" (yes, there is a park, there is water, and there are 100-foot Brachiosauruses and menacing, attacking Tyrannosauruses, too), the captured great white shark from "Jaws", the house of Norman Bates' mother from "Psycho", a real-life Shrek walking the streets of Universal Studios, a passerby reading a sign offering a reward for an Ogre, the Incredible Hulk (and the incredible bulk), and the famous restaurant from the Flintstones.

How to Create a Flood

2007-01-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

A demo of a flood special effect at Universal Studios. First, we arrive at this deserted Mexican-looking town.

Then we just look around at the dilapidated houses and the quiet path leading up the hill.

Woah! Millions of litres of water come down the hill in a deafening gush!

And we have a flood! For what it looked like 10 seconds later, refer to picture no. 1.

Los Angeles - VI

2007-01-11T11:30:00.000-08:00

A spacesuit. It was actually used in missions, and is now kept at the California Science Center after restoration.

A used heat shield. That's what re-entry does to you. See the burn marks diverge away from a point? They're not diverging from the centre, which means that the module probably did not drop down with the shield perfectly perpendicular to the ground.

Thrusters of varying forces. The larger one exerts about 100 pounds of force. The tiniest one does exactly one pound. These are used for precise positioning of spacecraft.

Every man's dream vehicle - the Blackbird SR-71. This is a real plane, the only trainer ever built. For the uninitiated, this plane was built by Lockheed, is made almost completely of titanium, flies at Mach 3 at an altitude of ~29,000 m, and was used in reconnisance missions until its decommissioning in 1998. The best thing is it comes in black!

Los Angeles - V

2007-01-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

The Apollo command module that splashed down successfully in the Pacific after completing the Apollo Suyoz Test Project mission. You can see the partially charred heat shield at the bottom, and burn marks all over the module.

A (supposedly) real moon rock brought down by the Apollo 11 Mission. Disclaimer: If you don't believe that Apollo 11 landed, then the label should be "one of the props used in the most popular Stanley Kubrik film ever".

A one-man command module (don't remember which mission).

Cramped, isn't it?

Los Angeles - IV

2007-01-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

The Disney parade. Check out Santa's dancing reindeer, Ariel the Little Mermaid, Buzz Lightyear the toy astronaut, Santa Claus waving to me, Cinderella and her handsome prince, the walking Christmas tree, a dancing snowflake (watched eagerly by Minnie Mouse), and Snow White.

Los Angeles - III

2007-01-11T11:03:00.000-08:00

The legendary C-3PO at Star Tours. It's a real robot, not a guy in a gold suit!

Awww, isn't that cute? A robot repairing another robot.

Minnie Mouse, Mrs. Incredible (a.k.a. Elastigirl), and Mr. Hair.

R2D2 on one of the Spacecrafts at Star Tours. Beeps whistles and all.

Los Angeles - II

2007-01-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

They take a picture of you as you drop on almost all the rides. So you try to not look terrified while dropping 20 m almost vertically.

A Jedi master training some young Jedi knights in the ways of the force. . .

. . . when Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers pop up from the ground!

Darth Maul also wants to join the party (don't worry, the surprised-but-confident 6-year old Jedi Knights whup them all in the end).

Los Angeles - I

2007-01-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

Shouldn't Have. . .

2006-11-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

He shouldn't have loved her.
She shouldn't have betrayed him.
He shouldn't have said "Do I look like I care?".
They shouldn't have tortured him.
They shouldn't have given him a gun.
They shouldn't have made the damn movie.
They shouldn't have called it a Bond movie at all.
And I shouldn't have seen it.

Casino Royale sucks. Craig Daniel has to be the suckiest Bond ever. Not worth watching even just to verify if I'm right.

("Do I look like I care?" is Bond's reply to "Vodka Martini shaken or stirred, sir?" in the movie. That hurt.)

Scared Out Of My Wits

2006-11-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

Horror movies don't scare me. Neither the stupid ones like "The Evil Dead", nor the more sophisticated ones like "The Omen". Not any of the I-put-jelly-on-my-face-now-I'm-a-monster Ramsay Brothers movies from India. And definitely not the ones like "Saw". "Birds" gets the pulse moving somewhat, as does Urmila's "Kaun" (Hindi). But nothing in a horror movie _really_ scares me.

"Children of Men" - now there's a scary movie. It's about a period where the world hasn't had a childbirth for eighteen years, and because of this, societies have been falling apart all over the world. Britain claims to be "soldiering on", but has its fair share of problems. They show illegal immigrants being gathered together in cages to be eventually sent to concentration camps, where the scenes are disturbingly similar to some from "Schindler's List", impromptu executions included. There are billboards saying "Avoiding a Fertility Test is a Crime", and allusions to the government "handing out suicide kits". There are mobs running amok on the streets with guns like they were sold like cellphones, and the most startling, a mob of Jihadis marching across the streets in a refugee camp weilding machine guns, fighting a battle against a small army of British tanks.

Now that, if you didn't realise, is scary. I'll digress a bit away from the childbirth part. When sights of people being prosecuted and wars being fought on the streets become part of your daily routine, life must be a harrowing experience. Some people have this even today. Many have had it in the past. Makes me wonder what I'd do if I were in the middle of something like this. Makes me wonder what people must have done when they were in these situations. Do you think such situations are less than ideal? There's a word for it - dystopia (an antonym for 'utopia').

Watch the movie if you're in the mood for something unusual.

The Jura - Part II

2006-10-29T09:14:00.000-08:00

Now what? Higher up, or back home?

The view just kept getting better and better.

Something about a wind-bent artifical-bonsai berry tree standing alone on the slope.

The whole world at my feet.

Hiking Up the Jura

2006-10-29T09:08:00.000-08:00

A beautiful autumn sunset as seen from my apartment.

Left to Right - Me, Bin Bin, Radu, and Clark, somewhere halfway up the route under the telecabine.

Nobody said "don't look down".

We passed like 15 of these on the way up.

Exercises in Triviality

2006-10-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

An amusing anecdote from today's Wikipedia session:

"A well known incident occurred in March 11, 2003 when the cafeteria menus in the three United States House of Representatives office buildings changed the name of french fries to freedom fries. The renaming had started in a private restaurant and had caught on after being reported in the press. French toast was also changed to freedom toast. (This echoed moves during World War I to replace the word sauerkraut with liberty cabbage and hamburger with Liberty Sandwich.) Most Europeans, and a sizable number of Americans, dismissed these name changes as "gimmickry" and "totally ridiculous".^{[citation needed]} The French embassy made no comment, except to note that French fries come from Belgium. "We are at a very serious moment dealing with very serious issues and we are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes," said Nathalie Loisau, an embassy spokeswoman. The term "French Fries" is not used in French - "Pommes Frites" is translated as "Fried Potatoes" - as "French" fries are credited to Belgium. In August 2006, the menus reverted to their original names."

My All-Time Hero!

2006-10-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I saw Rambo movies. I don't recall seeing one since I "grew up". Is it any wonder why Rambo had me fascinated for so long? For the Martians and Jupterians who don't know Rambo, to sum up, this is about a badass ex-soldier who has long hair which he ties with a headband, has muscles like a comic book hero, walks right into trouble with a huge gun, blows everything to bits, and jumps away the last moment before almost being overrun by huge flaming explosions. To top it all off, he pulls out sharpenel from his abdomen, and closes the wound by putting gunpowder on it and setting it ablaze. The best scene has got to be the one where he puts together his do-it-yourself bow-and-arrow set in a few seconds, walks the last few paces onto the top of a mountain right into the view of a gunship, and shoots the damn thing down with an explosive-tipped arrow. By this time I am so giddy I want to buy toy guns again. Come to think of it, I'm almost there with the hair. Now for the muscles. . .

What you find very interesting is how the movie reflects the US view at that time, where the Russians are the baddies. Just before the credits roll, you see "This Film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan." That alone makes this movie seem like something from a distant past to me. :-)

Awesome line from Rambo III:

The colonel(after Rambo runs through a wall of flame and meets the colonel) :"How are ya, John?"
Rambo: "Well done."

The Ultimate Truth of Life

2006-10-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

There. That's the ultimate truth of life. (Not to be confused with the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, which is "42".)

24 Nights

2006-10-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

I just got the "24 Nights" DVD, and it's an awesome performance. The only Eric Clapton videos I had seen were from the "Unplugged" performance, which is also a fantastic DVD if you're into such things. He plays all songs on his acoustic and slide guitars in a very bluesy style (including a totally different, but still amazing version of "Layla") in the Unplugged DVD.

The 24 Nights performance is much earlier, but a lot of the performers are the same. The percussion guys Steve Ferroni and Ray Cooper, as well as bassist Nathan East and (Rolling Stones) keyboardist Chuck Leavell (in just one song) are the performers repeated in Unplugged.

What's cool is that Eric clapton actually plays some songs with a lit cigarette attached to his Fender "Fat Strat". Seeing how he plays the song "Sunshine of your Love", I'm really curious about what he's smoking. You also have "White Room", "Running on Faith", and some other Clapton greats in this performance. "White Room", I found out, was written by Cream songwriter Pete Brown and consists of phrases describing a train station through the eyes of someone who's reeeeally high. And I'm not talking about altitude. As if it's not obvious from the lyrics of the song.

If you're an electric fan, pick this up. If you're an acoustic guitar fan or a Blues fan, pick up the Unplugged DVD instead. I have to get the Crossroads DVD next.

CERN and Angels and Demons

2006-10-15T03:06:00.001-07:00

For a lot of people out there, CERN is just a backdrop for the Dan Brown book "Angels and Demons". If you've not read it yet, leave this page, read the book, and come back. The book is about an ancient brotherhood called the Illuminati which plants an antimatter bomb (stolen from CERN) in the Vatican, and about a Harvard professor who plays detective. If you try not to think too much about what you're reading, you'll love the book. It's almost screenplay for a Hollywood movie. It'd be fun to see Tom Hanks running around Rome, and I have to see how they show the recreational vertical wind tunnel at CERN. Maybe we'll end up getting one after all! :-)

CERN maintains a fact-and-fiction page on Angels and Demons. This is of course, almost necessary. I can imagine lots of ignorant and/or uninformed people thinking of CERN as a place that has antimatter bombs lying around just for assassins from secret brotherhoods to come by and pick up. However, after being at CERN as an insider for a few months, some of Dan Brown's stuff seems hilarious; some just ridiculous.

Check out the fact-or-fiction page at CERN.
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

2006-10-15T03:06:00.000-07:00

(Wikipedia)
Aedes Aegypti - this is the mosquito responsible for the spread of dengue fever. 98 deaths in India this monsoon, with 28 of them in the capital alone. Every year there's a monsoon, every year there's flooding, and every year there's some epidemic or the other. Anyone who has lived in Bombay will know precisely what I'm talking about. One wonders if these things can't be anticipated and pre-empted.

Star Trek Voyager

2006-10-14T14:32:00.000-07:00

Three false starts, and I hope this time I will sustain interest in maintaining a blog. As with the last three times, I spent quite some time thinking "who on earth will actually read it?". Hopefully I'll stay blogging long enough to find an answer this time!

Saturdays for me are periods of vegetative existence. For some reason, I _cannot_ get myself to work on Saturdays. This Saturday, I had Niko lend me his "Star Trek Voyager" series. This is quite something. The special effects, the decor of the spaceship, and the overall visual experience is really fantastic. The stories are absolutely top-class, with the customary Star Trek-style metaphorical allusions to real-life situations.

I've been through Star Trek season I and II, and a few episodes of "Next Generation". "Voyager" looks and feels altogether different. First and most noticeable difference, they have a female captain commanding the Voyager (the name of the spaceship). Captain Kathryn Janeway ('Ma'am' is preferable, I personally prefer 'Captain'.") is amazing as the captain. She's got a strong presence, portrayed as being more human, and Kate Mugrew's acting is indubitably much more solid.

I have some traces of a male chauvanist in me (_ONLY_ affects my choice of captains for starships, agents in Her Majesty's secret service, and nothing else), so I was a bit skeptical about someone saying "Captain's log Star Date xxx.yyy." in a female voice. Trust me, it works with this lady.

I've been through a few episodes so far, which have involved getting thrown off course by 70,000 light years thorugh a time-space continuum distortion, injuring (and then suturing) a gigantic living organism of nebula-like proportions, an encounter with a civilisation that believes in an afterlife, and enough pseudoscience to fill Wikipedia several times over. Gotta love lines like "The Plasma Metafold is getting unstable. The antineutrinos must be the catalysts responsible for the space folding process!" :-)

Check it out if you're a Star Trek fan!