Imprisoned!

I thought undergraduate days would be the best time of my life! Meeting new talented people, having a lot of FUN, doing stuff, building stuff, designing stuff! It was my dream, it died hard!

I tried to make people understand what it is meant to be a undergraduate, having all the FUN! But I was wrong, I didn’t realise everyone have their own way to have fun. I don’t blame them a bit, I was wrong I did!

Even now when I think I would go Solo, and make some progress, to enrich myself as a man, as an engineer, as a street side philosopher, I face some strange difficulties, which apparently is insurmountable. My engineering school just put me into this test.

I love a Girl (I Love her like Hell), who apparently doesn’t like me (And I fiercely hope that she likes me)! It is just not fair, is it? I fell in Love with about 3 Girls, who rocked my life! (Other crushes were insignificant). Am I a incompetent specimen for natural selection? I might be appearing sarcastic, maybe I am becoming such a person. I smile a lot nowadays, just force wash every such weeds out of my mind, they do retard me!

Clearly, all these are making me stronger (“Anything that won’t kill you will makes you stronger”). Prison always changes a man…

Project Euler Problem 7

That is the problem I chose to start with, while participating in Project Euler. You can have a go at http://projecteuler.net

That is where I started to help me cure myseld of my ADHD (Recently I think I have ADHD). That stands for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. As I am seeing my life through my eyes, I find the symptoms inside me.

It happens when you switch very rapidly. And Wikipedia says that it also has a strong genetic component.

I switch subjects very rapidly. Like, few days, I am with micro controller programming, then few days with number theory and then few days with cryptography. This is not very healthy for our brain. I think I need to stop multitasking, and get things done one-by-one.

Or I might have more severe ADHD. Actually I came to know it, when I started reading The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke. Ranjit Subramanian had this disorder as his friend Gamini pointed out in the novel.

Anyway, I solved this problem 7; The 10001th prime number is 104743. I made a program to solve the problem. I really liked the nature of this problem.

I give the Python code below.

http://drop.io/byvmgs9

The code, a very simple one, suggested by Ranjit Subramanian in the novel.

It took a few minutes to find the 10001th prime on my PC. I am sure there are more less resource hungry algorithms, my next quest is to find another more efficient one.

The novel is bit unworthy for grown up readers I think; The plot is a bit childish. But it has a lot of talk inside, that is what I really liked about the novel. And for a layman, it is very healthy (For his/her brain of course).

Right now, I will be desiging a logo for my deviantART userpage.

Go visit: http://rivalslayer.deviantart.com

Thanks!

Feynman, tie and textbook

I was reading Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. I say, “If there is any undergraduate physics textbooks exists it is Feynman’s Lectures on Physics, others are mere references”. My beloved readers (if there is any reader as I get no more pageveiws than 16-17 avg.), you should read the books, your background doesn’t matter, least Algebra and Calculus required, but nothing more. You will be doing Physics in no time. If you ask me, “Why should we crack our nerves on something like Physics?”, because you will have to excercise your brain a little bit to learn Physics, I would promptly answer, “You will be missing somthing in your life! Guranteed!”. Reading popular science is great, but only to some certain extent. Beyond that, you must study the inner working of the science, and when you learn that, you will have better understanding on the thing that you are reading in some popular science article. I found thisout myself, I was reading a book, ‘Symmetry and the Monster’ by Mark Ronan. The book is just great, but it was not enough to understand group theory, upon which the latter chapters were dependent on. So, I downloaded these pages, http://members.tripod.com/~dogschool/ and studied group theory. In that way I was able to advance to the latter chapters of the book. I read a lot of popular articles about Quantum Mechanics, but I was never really did understand what is really was. After I learned the inner mathematical workings of QM, I became pretty much familliar in Quantum Mechanics.

Feynman made me a more serious student. I don’t know why, it may also have some different reasons, but I nonticed it. After reading a bits of Feynman, I am in love for other textbooks. I read more text books that I did before. This might seem to be  a strange phenomenon, but it happened.

Not only that, while I watching Naruto today, with Gaara fighting with Rock Lee(Outside: Joker, inside: Tiger), I was practiing how to tie a tie from the internet(http://www.neckties.com/content/howtotieatie.html), and finally managed to master the Winsdor knot. It is quite an achievment for me, withing half an hour, I really mastered the knot, while watching TV. I think Feynman was in this too…

Being Geek

Being a Technology Geek, and a serious physics-mathematics buff is really hard especially when you are in 18 yrs. of age, with your board exams very near. But as Geekdom is full of fun, you cannot ignore that, and thus you will fall in your career. This was my truth, until recently.

When I think I should talk about quantum mechanics with my friends, they literally scold me, as they don’t like it. Whenever I say, “Python is awesome, you should really try it out”, to my friends, they say, “I will think about that when I get time”. Whenever I talk about the OSS superstars, no one cares. When I talk about the GTK+ library, no one seem to try to know what I am talking about. When I try to think about tensors quietly, no one cares about my thoughts, they just come along and seduce me to play bridge, thus distracting me. When I try out apparently ridiculos things, no one supports me, even when I give them perfect logic, they just don’t care! But still I did those things, and screwed my exams, but still I am proud of my Geekdom.

Now, I know, that it is all about channelizing your geekiness through a proper channel. It is not that hard, I tried it out in some cases. I think everybody should be proud of their Geek status; Geek status is unique, and good as long as you don’t disturb others around you. A funny but very logical quote a friend of mine made, “A busy person finds time for everything.”. So you can be a geek a man, and a great student with great academics (I am definitely not a good academic).

I should share some of my cool geeky projects, all you geeks out there, try these out:->

1. Master Python, all by yourself, with the help of tutorials, books, and online references (Not so difficult, and very fun).
2. Find out the radius of a circular road or a curve, with the distortion of the oscillation of a hand made pendulum to one side while riding at the back of a bike, or a car (assuming the speedometer is fairly accurate)(Planning to do this).
3. Find long lengths in average by walking, and calculating the average length of every step (This wouldn’t be very accurate)(Done this many times).
4. Configure GRUB correctly, with Ubuntu, Fedora, and Windows installed, so that every one of them work correctly (Trying to do it).
5. Find the centre of gravity of any shapes that comes to mind, with the help of calculus and paper, or calculus and computer, and also Euclidian Geometry, trigonometry, symmetry arguments, and physics.
6. Get a fair grip on linear algebra (Only for 18 yrs. like me).
7. Configure a cellphone, so that you can access the internet connection of your PC from the cellphone using the bluetooth or USB (Needs a bit of programming I think, I will try it out, when I get my hands on a decent cellphone)(Found in DIGIT June 2008 issue).
8. Convince a female friend to listen to all your fantastic “Beauty of Science” lectures (Trying…).
9. Go to the carpenter to build a big cog wheel to find the velocity of light, how? You think/google it out (Planning to do).
10. If you use linux, forget GEdit, KEdit, Kate etc., go back to Vi, Emacs or Nano (Found in DIGIT June 2008 issue).
11. Build a model of Bucky Ball(C60) or a Dodecahedron from anything (Very bad one)!
12. Hack Ubuntu to enable the root account in GUI (Trying hard!).

Wrong dreams and the right ones

I always dream big. At least I did. I thought about getting some big A+, and some big stars and letters in exams, and ultimately in some great college. I was dreaming a wrong dream. And now at the edge of breaking myself, I realized that devotion, emotion and passion is all that matters in a dream, not the achievement. I lost some good marks in my +2 exams (I don’t know why, my exam was not that bad). Still I am getting angry with myself very frequently sometimes, just because I think I could run a bit more., I could out run a few more. I didn’t and that is the source of my frustration.

Achievement is just a consequence. A very wise man, a physicist recently told me about an interview of Sachin Tendulkar, while he was a high school batsman. The story goes like this: A journalist went to Tendulkar for an interview, the coach pointed to Tendulkar, who was practicing a square defensive shot. When the journalist asked for an interview, he asked the journalist to wait a bit, while his practice is over. The journalist sat near, watched Tendulkar, and soon got bored, as Tendulkar was practicing the same shot over and over again. After an hour, when the practice was over, Tendulkar came for the interview. After a few question, the journalist asked the question, “What’s your aim in life?”, and Tendulkar said, “To make that square defense shot perfect”, the journalist then asked, “Don’t you dream of leading the Indian team one day?”, and he said “It’s just a consequence of the perfection of my batting”

This particular story corrected me; all that matters is the reason you play.

There will always be some failures, there can always be some success and there will always be someone better that me. I now know, that hurting myself for a failure will take me to nowhere. All I can to do is to believe in what I my heart says, and that might take me to somewhere I need to go.

I am not here to write this post to describe something, to convey some message or to write some high quality blog. I just wanted to blow it out, like what Orhan Pamuk did.

Limit, challenge and the sun!

I did not prepare for IITJEE; when I entered the gates of Hindu School, I was afraid. I saw the boys and girls talking, their eyes shone with great confidence. As a village boy, rarely in a city, I am always dazzled by attitudes the city boys has. I was thinking aloud, “Oh Man! I will be a sitting duck in the exam hall.” When I entered the exam hall, everyone looked at me. “Ok”, I said to myself, “let’s look for my alloted seat”. I found an old friend there, at the hall. He smiled at me, I returned. When I got my question paper, I ran my eyes through all the questions, and started to etch the ORS with my HB pencil. The questions were challenging. And my preparation was so bad that I couldn’t even understand all the algebraic notations.

They say, IITJEE is somewhat very difficult exam, and as a village boy like me, I can never crack it. One day, a guy in chat told me that IITs contain uber intelligent people. I just couldn’t convince myself that I was not an uber like them, in IIT. I know that am a bit stubborn: I don’t consider anything as difficult and I don’t believe in anything such as talent.

I never had an exam like IITJEE before, it felt good after the exam. The whole experience was very remarkable, enjoyable. I never enjoyed a challenge like this before, and I never licked my wounds so nicely after a big defeat. It was a new beginning, it was like a dream of utopia, where I can show my mettle. In a town, where I live, not many actually push to chase off the limits, they just say what they have to. Yesterday I touched my limits, and wounded myself hard. And now I know my wounds, I will treat them well. I now know what it means to be pushing the limits.

I heard the sun, bright over my head cheering me up.

resurrecting… a pen

It was a German pen, somebody sent it to my father as gift. I had a boyish fantasy for that pen, it was a roller-ball, with a special ink cartridge tube over the nib and a special mechanism to attach the cartridge. Overall, that pen was special, and unlike any pen I had seen before. It was a marvel.

It was six and a half years ago. I forgot about it. A few days ago, I recalled. Where is the pen, that beautiful pen?! I asked my mother. She was able to give me the location. I found it, and scratched a paper with the pen. Oh man, out of fuel. I opened the silvery cover and found the cartridge attached to the black complex machinery inside the orange case. I had to refill the cartridge. I took a injection syringe and pushed ink through the small hole of the cartridge, as I saw the ink flying out of the capillary needle, I felt happy about the pen, I was going to write with a marvel. I put the cartrdige back again, turned the anterior part of the pen towards a paper, scratched the surface, but still no avail. No ink ran over the fine ball that crowned the nib. I was discouraged. This pen is really dead? Oh Man!

I went to my father, “Can you fix it?”. My father told me that the ink tube is clogged with the dried out ink that was in it before. Now, how would I fixed it? Some solvent maybe, but which one. Father said “Isopropyl alcohol, that’s readily available in the shops”. Okay, I took my syringe again, got some alcohol in it, and pushed it through the duct of the pen’s anterior part. Hmm, that should work. Replacing the cartridge, it still didn’t work well, but a faint line appeared when I scratched the surface of a paper. Well, that’s a good sign. Father noticed it, and said, “You just have to scratch it patiently, it will work” I didn’t have to do that myself, my father just took a piece of paper, and started to draw. The next day, I saw the pen on my table, I wrote with it, and it was fine. It was a rare pleasure; to find the whole thing back in action again. It was good at writing, and I was impressed with the pen.

I am not saying that the pen meant much to me, but it is a different kind of feeling you have when you find a so rare pen not working. You feel, that you really need to write with that pen.

paragraphs

I sometimes over convince myself a little. Sometimes I have some jobs due, I always keep them for the next day. And sadly most of the time, I cannot get the job done in time. But still I do. After having lots of dead deadlines, I still keep them for next day. I keep pushing the of tension. And when there is only ten minutes left, I scream, leave everything behind, make two or three mistakes, and ultimately, fail to complete the job. I be lazy all the time. I laugh when the deadline is over, and tell myself, next time, it won’t be like this. In my seventeen years of life, I have always been like this.
—
Comet Holmes is here, since October. Suddenly I discovered it near Perseus. I mean, I did not know it was there. The Perseus constellation have lots of stars in it. I plugged the binocular to my eyes, and started to observe them. Suddenly a white patch caught my attention. I showed it to my father, he told, that that might be Perseus. The joy of discovery surged in me as discovered it; I didn’t know it was there.
—
“That’s not C Hash, that is called C Sharp, I looked up in Wikipedia”, I said to my cousin. “Well, you know C Hash, I mean C sharp?”. “Ya, a bit”, I replied, “but I know C++ well” “Hmm, that’s great”, said my cousin. “What other languages you do know?” I answered, “Java, VB, etc. etc., but none is complete, I know a bit of every language” He exclaimed, “That’s great!” I felt proud at that exclamation, at last someone appreciated my knowledge of programming languages. I was happy because I learned all those languages all by myself.
—
There was a time when I used to be scared to death by ghosts. My nephews aggravated my for that. They made me sick, It seemed that they the like the way I get afraid. Time flies by, always making us more mature than before. Nowadays, I don’t get afraid very easily, I try to keep calm all the time. Few days ago, I got a notebook, a dairy my 12th year. I used to keep diary, I still do. I surfed the pages, one page caught my attention. I recalled the night, the sleepless night. I watched the movie ‘ALIEN’ that day, and I could not sleep in fear. I wrote that incident in my diary. It makes me laugh when I recall myself few years ago.
—
My tutor once said, “My father was a great student, I have his politeness, but not his brilliance in studies” He jerks my greatest pain out of myself, he exposes my, he makes me ashamed of myself. Thanks to him, I have learned to tackle conditions, deadlines, threats, humiliations, aggravations. I have learned, my ego won’t help me, it can only will take me down. My tears doesn’t come out easily nowadays.
—
The paragraphs are pretty much different, having no continuity in them. I wrote shards of my life, those I could recollect at the time of writing. I cannot make out the beauty out of poems, but I can see the beauty in algebra. At some nights, when I am evaluating myself, I really get happy. There are many, who doesn’t make mistakes much, who doesn’t fail often. I made a lot of mistakes, I had lot of failures; I am learned, skilled, experienced.

Dismantled failures

When you fail every time you try, what do you do? You cry, you jump onto the bed, bury your face in the pillow, and make it wet with you tears. You promise your self that the next time, you will not fail; You assure yourself again and again, that you will not lose again to the same thing. And when the ‘next time’ comes, you fail again, between the first and the second try, months or years have passed. Again, you come to the bed, and talk with the air, express your failure, and again make a promise, to make the next try successful.

What if you really don’t want to fail, but a few distractions are making you fail. You come to you bed, crying, you express your feelings to the air. The fan hanging from ceiling makes the air answer to your thoughts. You cry, your mouth gets full of whispering sounds of promise, your eyes burst out with tears. You hate the game you play much, you hate the girl you love; Whose thoughts occupy your mind all day long. You hate the guy who comes your house for a chat, for he wastes much of your time. You hate the spoiled friend, whom you helped much during the hard times, wasting your time. But still your failure doesn’t transform into success. You clench you teeth for another try, you make everything around you forget about you. You start to hate yourself. You kick the fluffy teddy bear your Mother made for you. You hate the advices they give to you. You ignore the comments others made about you. You make your fist with your hands, hard enough breakthrough steel.

That’s how I feel when I return home with failures. And the sorrow provides fuel for the zeal, the zeal to make a future with which I will be able to forget my past.

Tenacity & audacity

He was an average student. He had his secondary board exams. But he didn’t expect his result to be bad. He didn’t make a result good enough for science education in higher secondary. He was really sad. He searched for a school to get appoint him as a student of science in higher secondary. But no school was willing to do so. After a long search, he got his school. He started to study science in higher secondary. Two years passed away. He had his higher secondary exam. He got lower than 65%. He wanted to be a physics graduate. But whenever he asked someone to advice, about colleges, everyone frowned at him and said, “How can you think of yourself as a physics graduate, with this marks in higher secondary?” He was almost broken. What else he could do? No college would give him honors in Physics while he got such poor marks in higher secondary. One college did give him at last. He started to study physics.

When the result of the graduation was out, he stood second in the whole university. Now, he is doing some research on semiconductors in Germany.

I think he had a heavy dream, and I still don’t know his name.

-

He crash landed behind enemy line. His feet got shattered. He crawled through snow and ice, for eighteen days. He survived, and rescued by some villagers nearby. He stayed with the villagers a few days and fed by them he recovered a bit, but his feet got worse. After a few days, his fellow airmen took him from the villagers, sent him to Moscow for some better treatment. He was a fighter pilot.

Both his feet ware amputated. The doctor advised him to walk with wooden stumps. But how can he fly again with his wooden stumps? He broke. He didn’t even dared to write the news of his amputation to his lover. Would she be able to love him in such condition? But something made him stronger. He doggedly trained himself to walk again, he even learned to dance (can you imagine dancing with wooden feet). While everyone was assured that he won’t be able to fly and fight again, he went to the flight school to train himself. He became a pilot again. He truly belonged to the sky.

He was a soviet airman. His name is Alexei Petrovich Maresiev.

-

They both are very different men, and they are two among many, who define tencity and audacity.