Tuesday, April 15, 2014
The Special One (5 things - Year 1)
Friday, April 11, 2014
Hangover (5 things - Week 54)
So the absolute lack of research on my part was brought to the fore by last week's post. I had ended that one with a question "So, why is there no reservation or quotas in the selection procedure for the Lok Sabha elections?"
Well, apparently there is a reservation quota for the same. And it was to this information that I awoke to on the previous Saturday morning. For those among you interested in knowing the quota split up, more details can be found at this link.
Anyways, coming back to the present. I had been postponing the "special" edition of this post for some weeks now. I'll give you my word that it'll be on this site in 100 hours. And I'm not gonna break that promise, even though I wouldn't put it past you to doubt me, since I made a similar promise last week too.
Well, I'm at a loss of words right now. No, it's not writer's block like always. It's another peculiar phenomenon. I was finally able to carve out some time today to go watch a movie - "Ohm Shanthi Oshana". And this movie is the current cause for the lack of words.
I believe all humans have the tendency to view things from the most recently acquired perspectives. Let it be a book, a song or a movie - anything you've emotionally invested in. These make us take a partial view on all things. It's a kind of hangover, if you may allow me to call it so. And it is under this phenomenon that I'm right now.
I can't even remember the points that I had gathered to share with you for this week. So, I'm gonna go for a spontaneous combustion, with some quick fire points I've gathered off the net.
***
1. Some conterversial math problems can be found here.
Like how can you prove that 0.9999 = 1.
Let x = 0.9999...
10x = 9.9999...
10x - x = 9.9999... - 0.9999...
9x = 9
x =1.
Hence, we've proved that 0.9999... is equal to 1. If you are still not convinced, you are welcome to question the basics of mathematics.
2. "To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it is still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."
To get a comic book style representation of the above statement, visit this link.
3. 2048
If you ask me how I spend most of my time this week, it would on that site. A 19-year old developer, Gabriele Cirulli, made that game over a weekend. And it has got the world hooked on to it. The target is simple. The logic to solve it is simpler. The only constraint you've is the limit of your concentration. One slip up, and you've to start from the scratch. And I'm warning you - IT'S ADDICTIVE.
4. Z-Type
Not as addictive, because it's harder to execute, but still a damn good way to improve your typing speed.
5. A question for you.
Three of us went to have lunch. We all ordered the same thing, each Rs.25; and paid the same. But the owner decided to give us Rs.5 discount and sent Rs.5 back with the waiter. The waiter thought that it will be hard for us to split 5 into 3, and being a nice, straightforward, truthful person, pocketed Rs.2 for himself and returned Rs.3 to us, from which we took Re.1 each. This reduced the net share to Rs.24.
So that's Rs.24x3 = Rs.72 and there's Rs.2 with the waiter. Total is now Rs.74. But we gave Rs.75. Where did the one rupee go??
***
***
That's it for this week.
You all have a great weekend.
'til next week.
Friday, April 4, 2014
An informed decision (5 things - Week 53)
So, here we are. Hopefully, putting a strong foot forward as we enter the second year of this conversation.
And at the very outset of this blog, I had a decision to make. The counter that we have on this series was at "Week 52". By default, it increments by one. But, like any counter, it too has a maximum value that it can store, and 52 seemed to be the obvious choice since that's when you reach a year, and start something new. So, by that logic, this post should have been labelled "Year 1 Week 1". But I said "wateva" and went for "Week 53".
[Sorry if you get bored with the numerous programming analogies here. As you would have guessed, I'm being taught the same in my course right now]
That's how you make an impetuous decision. But in five days, I've to make an informed decision, as will most probably yourselves too. The elections for the 16th Lok Sabha members will be conducted next week at my place. And this week's post will have a look at some of the facts regarding the same.
***
[I am not aligned nor am I against any political party. I'm yet to convinced about the genuinity of any of them. Any pro-party or anti-party inferences you make from my statements are your own, because I've not consciously intended to make any here.]
1. Largest electoral strength in the world.
India has the largest electoral strength in the world. According to the Election Commision of India, it is estimated to be more than 81 crores. And the cost of conducting these elections (excluding security and individual candidate expenses) will consume about Rs.3500 crores of the tax payer's contribution.
2. 272 is the magic number.
There are 543 seats available to be contested in the Lok Sabha. And to form a government, you need to have at least 272 of the Lok Sabha members to support you.
3. Rs. 30,500 crores
That's the amount the candidates will be spending to get a ticket to the big league. No wonder there's corruption in this country. If an Indian spends 10 rupees, he expects to get back hundred. I guess the sum total of all the scams would hold that ratio.
4. Youth and social networking
More than any other segment of the population, the youth has been targeted by the candidates for canvassing. For the sake of clarity, youth would include those in the age group of 18-40. I know, it's a stretch, but bear with me.
Anyways, the candidates have utilized the vast, penetrative interconnection called the social network to reach out to the said youth. The amount of pages, shares, +1s, whatsapp messages and the like is a definite indicator of the same.
5. The issues
According to the popular sources (read media and the candidates in the current opposition), the major issues in the country are "price rise, corruption, security, unemployment, shortage of basic amenities", in no specific order. I believe that the major issue is that these were banded out from the 1st election to the last one. No one has done anything other than remedial measures.
***
We normally don't have a post-script rant over here, but this post requires one. The spark for this post came from not the general election that's going to start on Monday, but the numerous mandates that have been found lying in my house's porch. There are (I think) 20 candidates vying to be the MP of Thiruvananthapuram. And so, I guess I'm not short of options for confirming my first vote. Coming back to the point, among the many color brochures was a black and white one - of Aam Aadmi Party.
If there was one party I chose to believe at some point of time, it was AAP. And they crushed it to pieces, when they took the help of Congress to get into power at Delhi. I'm currently waiting for them to come back to their originally determined path. If so, I'll have a party, I'll have an ideal to support again.
And another notion that came into my head was regarding reservations. Several politicians are going around saying that they'll force private companies to provide reservation systems just like in the public sector. To put that into practice would require a humongous effort, and would result in massive unemployment. That would be because most of the current international companies would wind up shop here, and move to China or elsewhere.
Coming back to my point, the Member of Parliament is a government job, right? It even has pension scheme. So, why is there no reservation or quotas in the selection procedure for the same? I'll take your leave with that question.
***
That's it for this week. Hopefully, that special post will be out next week.
You all have a great weekend.
'til next week.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Flashback!! (5 things - Week 52)
Sorry, but there will be no "special" post that was promised to you last week. Having been left terribly busy by circumstances, I've barely been able to make time to type this out. After all, you wouldn't want me to be late to publish the 52nd part of this series. Okay, in case you didn't get the significance of that, it means that this conversation between us has been going on for nearly a year now. (1 non-leap year of 2014 = 52 weeks and 1 day)
Even though this conversation has been severely limited to an one sided communication in the online world, your feedbacks and inputs in the real world have kept this counter ticking on. Thank you for that. And over the past year, I realized something. If you talk out loud in the real world, you'll called mad. If you do the same in the virtual world, you are called a blogger.
The first words between us were on the 5th of April, 2013. My life was in a rut, and I had this unbearable itch to change it. And that's how, on the advice of my friend Mahavir, I started writing these posts. Summing up whatever has happened in that week in my life, all the things that I learnt, things about something special day that falls in that week; all things under the sun and beyond this universe has been discussed here in these pages.
A fellow blogger recently wrote something about why we bloggers find it hard to push that publish button. Extrapolating her thoughts, I reached at the conclusion that we are actually scared of you, the readers. We subject our creations to unnecessary scrutiny so that they won't be a waste of your valuable time.
But like Rinz pointed out in her blog, we have reached the stage where we understand that the blog is for us to write. Whether it is being read or not doesn't matter. All that matters is that we satisfy our urge to express ourselves through words.
And I believe this holds true for all creative personnel. So, if you have the drive to do something, but are afraid to act on it because of the social reaction, please stop thinking so much. As long as your interest is not illegal, I would recommend you to go through with it, with no forethought on the response.
That's all for now. The lecture will be continued at a later post. We'll go on to the 5 things for this week.
***
1. Same wine, different bottles.
I had met a genius recently. For a project that we worked on recently, we needed to make a bike engine switch gears automatically as the speed increases. To make the gear shifting more visible, Midhunchettan sliced the engine; to make what you would call a sectional view of the engine, if it were to be on paper. And all this with the engine losing neither its working nor its stability.
And he gave us some gyan yesterday. He has performed similar operations on various bikes from Hero Honda and has found that most of the non-posh bikes use almost the same engine. Same engine, different exteriors.
2. Start from the beginning.
Consider you are working on a project. Consider that the day before its due it starts functioning weird. Consider that you are pulling off an all nighter to get it to work. Consider that even at 5am on the day of submission, it still doesn't work. In such a case, you should consider doing it from scratch. You have been looking at the same thing for hours that you are bound to skip noticing the error that's driving you crazy. This is NOT based on a real life incident that happened this week, especially within the past 24 hours. :D
3. "Man, I'm pretty."
"If you are kid from the 90s", you'll remember all these awesome cartoons. Even after all these years, they bring a smile to your face when you watch 'em. And you guessed it right. There will be a post exclusively for those cartoons - Dexter, Dee Dee, Centurions, Swat Kats, Powerpuff girls, et al will make an appearence soon.
4. Just $5995
I read somewhere that they sent men to the moon using a processor that was far more slow that those that we have on our phones these days. (It would be very helpful, if someone can send me a link to that) Anyways, the processing power at our fingertips is beyond most of our abilities. After all we use them to Whatsapp and play addictive games, instead of sending men to Mars. :P
5. google and the dot
This week, I met a friend of Midhunchettan too - Renju. And this information comes from him. There is a bug in Gmail. Try logging in with your username and password, but with any number of dots in the username. It'll still login. This is an issue, as if in an unfortunate twist of coincidence, if two people with the same username, bar a dot here or there, set the same password for their account, they could access each other's mails. Not so secure a connection after all, huh.
***
That's it for this week.
You all have a great weekend.
'til next week.
Friday, March 21, 2014
En iniye pon nilave (5 things - Week 51)
To say that it came as a breath of fresh air in our college lives would be a lie to say the least. The freshest of airs were provided much earlier by the on screen campus lives of a group of friends in 'Happy Days'. What 'Vaaranam Aayiram' brought to us non-level headed souls was the dream.
Watching the actor Surya live out three awesome, completely different love stories in a span of under three hours was the most enthralling experience of our lifetime. It still is for me. The way the whole movie was crafted by GVM, the controlled acting by Surya, the music by Harris, each and every frame and note in that movie inspires a feeling in your heart.
And it is those high points in this movie that we are going to look at, for this week's post. It might be the effect of having just finished watching the movie, but this post on THAT movie was long overdue. Let's not make it wait any longer.
***
1. At first sight
Whenever a guy hears this movie being mentioned, he'll first remember this scene.
As Surya takes his seat on the train, he takes a casual glance across and sees Meghna for the first time. What follows is a frame by frame representation of what goes on in most guy's heads. Instead of reading me describing that scene to you, you should be spending your hoarded MBs of internet data on that 11 minute video. It's that good.
P.S. One of the best bits in that scene is when the Ticket Inspector asks from Surya, his ticket and the ensuing 10 seconds of expressions. We've all been there.
P.P.S. In case you think that the behaviour of the character is stretched for effect, I would like to tell you that I know someone who would behave in the exact same way (including the air guitar part). I'm looking at Mr.ShivJ. :P
2. The songs
Talking of Mr.ShivJ, I think he was the one who started the trend of having the songs from the movie as the hellotune. There are eight songs in this movie, each brilliant in its own sense. But three songs caught the imagination of the youth - Nenjukkul Peidhidum, Mundhinam and Ava Enna. Of the three, I have lost count of the number of phones I've heard ringing to the tune of Nenjukkul Peidhidum. In case you were wondering, yours truly had Mundhinam as his ringtone for a long time.
3. Three types of love
In the movie, GVM depicts three different types of love.
The Krishna-Malini love is the purest form there is. Falling in love at first sight, and then living together happily for many years.
The Surya-Meghan love is the perfect love, expect that it doesn't have a happy ending. No matter how hard the two souls try to make it work, something or the other crops up to quash it out. If it was a terrorist attack in the movie, it's arranged marriages in real life. ;) :D
The love between Surya and Priya is what you can call real love. One friend of mine put it elegantly as, "Even if you don't get to live with the person you loved, live with the person who loves you."
4. Six pack
I guess this was the movie which brought the six pack phenomenon. Surya worked hard and showed off his six pack in the movie. And it became a trend through out the nation, with other leading stars putting in the effort for the same.
5. This song
Did you really think that I would do a post on this movie without giving due space for this song?? It will always be one of the most romantic songs.
***
This must have been the fifth time that I watched this movie, but it still sets bells ringing. I don't have words to describe this feeling. You need to watch this movie to get that. So I suggest you get yourself an original DVD of the movie (with english sub titles, if required) and watch it.
***
That's it for this week. Next week marks the 52nd part in this weekly series. That's one whole year that we've dragged this through. I hope that I get enought time to do the special thing that I've planned on doing. And I hope I haven't jinxed it by saying that.
You all have a great weekend.
'til next week.
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