Silent Appreciation of Beauty

Some people like me think that giving too much attention to girls is not good, unlikely for a Geek. If a Geek is involved in observing a woman, how can he get on getting time for one of his megaprojects. This seems to be a very plausible explanation why Geeks shouldn’t fall in Love with manly beauty.

But what if a Geek doesn’t have a Megaproject in mind, like me?

Yeah! Then the woman becomes the megaMegaMEGAproject! Actually I ‘fell in love’ (Hypothetically), crushed (According to semi urban/urban lexicon) on a woman, who according to the ‘previous’ me is the most unique and woman I ever met. She has a subtle beauty.

I have been unknowingly becoming a kinda Study Man, who likes to study a lot! But with that, I was having a growing sense of a void. When I saw that little woman in ‘Saree’ yesterday, the void suddenly filled with strange  happiness, or it was numbness, I don’t know.

Yesterday was a fresher welcome party. She was there, directly involved in the event, wandering here and there on the stage, with some gifts and other stuff. Some white Saree she was wearing, which made her … (I don’t think my words are good enough to describe how she was yesterday). She also sang a song, in which she is really good at. It was a chorus unfortunately, and I strained my ears to almost it’s limits, to isolate her voice from the whole. But they were so perfectly synchronized I couldn’t really isolate them. I loved that she sang, I saw her singing in mild colourful light on stage. I missed a solo song she sang on our ‘Teacher’s Day’ last year. I regret that!

Later when the program was over, I wanted to meet her to make an appreciation of her beauty. But I didn’t… I silently appreciated her beauty.

All these good times!

The recent fever is actually helped me. It gave me some time in bed, alone with me, awake.

Most of the time I though about women, two in particular. I found something new…

When I was younger, I tried to use Bayesian probability theories to predict if some girl would like me or not. Ironically probability was never 1, and no Girl ever thought that I was cool enough to hang out with. Most of the prediction models were based on very simple logic that is sometimes used by ‘Love Guru’s, which I listened to carefully, just to make up some mathematical probability model for Hooking up. It makes me laugh these days, although I did get a pretty good understanding of probability and statistical data visualization.

I have had enough crushes, not enough for making a mathematical model, but still enough to predict time evolution of the next one.

I have had enough crushes, not enough for making a mathematical model, but still enough to predict time evolution of the next one.

During the fever I had a very very different kind of model to make. I never thought I gad to face such a thing. It is the most strangest model I ever had to try to build. I crushed to two, they overlapped on time frame. Though my ‘exceptional’ previous experience say that none of them likes me; That’s 100% sure (Deep inside my heart, I do hope for the opposite… XD). But what should what would I do if I had to choose between them. That was my latest brush with probability, after all the probability studies in college.

But is has a flip side, just as we don’t have such an advanced alien mathematics, I can have a good time, dreaming great dreams and live a life so thrilling!

My recent studies about human evolution and how can it explain our choice or partners were not really helpful at all. I cannot blame the scientists for that. The society is too much complex for traditional logical and reasoning techniques. I think we need some new more efficient mathematics for this. But is has a flip side, just as we don’t have such an advanced alien mathematics, I can have a good time, dreaming great dreams and live a life so thrilling!

The Zen

Bayesian probability is pretty darn good. And where the probability density, probability mass and probability distribution functions comes in, it is pretty AWESOME! I kinda starting to like it really well….

The recent tour made me pretty a bit more grown up.

Strangely engineering graduation is beginning to be enjoyable, regularity is beginning to build up!

Some Emotional Garbage is actually getting to disturb my mental equilibrium and apparent peace.  Some illusion of control…. XD!

My photography didn’t progress a bit as I see it, though I managed to get some shots…

More at www.flickr.com/photos/xenoargento

Hope you will like them. I am posting after a lot of days. I will try to post regularly from now on.

Sometimes I wish I could be like ‘Jason Bourne’. LOL!

Back on Track!

http://mangosave.blogspot.com/2009/06/back-on-track.html

New and free!

She was asking her name, the name of the girl I liked. But I didn’t have the courage to tell her that it was she. When we both were running out of time, and our keyboards were becoming tired, I threw out something. I told that it was she. I could see her uneasiness flowing through some intricate keystrokes to my PC monitor. The Google Talk terminal made me feel that I didn’t make a good impression on her. And last night I too felt uneasy that I told her something that was a kind of social stigma. But after three years, I shot in a fragile moment.

But I never thought that the single confession would make me so light. I felt like new, like reinstalling my mind. I felt so much confidence today that I wanted to struggle in local trains to go to college, then I did all the physics stuff in college, so easily that it felt God, and even when returning to home, I felt so much energy that I could play a game of football. This is time I should return to science.

I know with such a confession, there is also a faint probability that she might not talk to me anymore, or she might take it lightly (as I expect). But it is now out of my hands. I know society itself is a so complex system that these light stuff can become complex. And that really makes me interested in such sciences a lot.

After three years of silence, I am finally free.

She told me that I was a fantasy dweller, and now I know that she was right. In my eighteen years of life, I never felt so light, so free. All that fantasy I had, was all an indulgence of pseudo happiness. Now I am happy that I have that rare non-physical energy, that would make me follow my passion and that energy is making me a man by the moment.

Lastly the thing I learned from this incident, I must note, is that we all have passions and remains a dream, but dreaming is nothing, will is everything. She was so right, I feel proud of her!

Fedora 8 to Hardy to Fedora 9 to Hardy again!

I used Fedora 6 then Fedora 7 then Fedora 8! And I awaited for Fedora 9. I had few problems with Fedora, it had a bug with Java, it didn’t work! Fedora 8 did not have a driver for my XEROX Phaser 3117 printer. All else was good for me. My work revolves around Python, PyGTK, GTK+, C++ etc. So, there was no problem for me. It was great. But I looked forward to Fedora 9, as it should have good support for my printer, Java etc. etc.

Then Canonical generously sent me a Hardy(Ubuntu 8.04) CD. I tried that our, and saw that it supports my printer and Java also. “Great”, I thought, I switched to Ubuntu for temporarily, while waiting for Fedora 9. Ubuntu has everything under control! But the lack of the root account was a bit of a trouble, but I soon got used to it. I enabled 3D Hardware rendering by installing the driver from ATI. And it was going great! I installed softwares I needed for my work, like Komodo Edit.

Then I got my hands on Fedora 9. Last week, I was really excited, that I had the new Fedora! I installed it, and I was disappointed. The distro felt incomplete. It didn’t have a good proprietary driver for my graphics card. It had bits of bugs. It was really not better than Ubuntu as I thought it would be. I didn’t even tried out Java on that distro.

I finally realised the difference between Ubuntu and Fedora. I always thought, that Fedora was no less than Ubuntu. I really could not understand why everyone keep saying that Ubuntu is better and popular than Fedora. Hey, Fedora! Don’t take me otherwise, there is no offence! It is just that one month using Ubuntu, and when I went back to Fedora, it really didn’t feel right! Fedora 8 was far more stable, robust! But Fedora 9 is not that good I think. Please don’t mind Fedora! I am still a big fan of Fedora as I am of Ubuntu! I would gladly use Fedora 8, only if it had a bit better out of the box hardware support.

Then, with sad heart I went back to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. I am blogging from that right now. I have already installed what I need, mp4 support, so that I can listen to Tiesto podcasts from Radio 538, I installed mp3 support for music, ATI Fire GL driver, gnuplot etc. etc. And for my works, I am using Komodo Edit, and NetBeans (the most sexiest IDE). Life is fun again, but I can see the unused Fedora 9 DVD lying on the table.

…l0v(e)^%v(r^me)

Love Reign Over Me!

Curse

Few members of my life, sometimes bug me with my inabilities, my failures, my fears. They think of me as an immature, a child who knows nothing about logic and calculation. I don’t mind them thinking like that. But, adults from my life are there to not to realize that, they have forgot the delicate process for learning, feeling, thinking and rethinking. Adults do not realize that they will not be able to do anything new, anything innovative, anything great, if they remain an adult. Adults from my societies constrain themselves inside some illogical reasons, which prevent them to think the other way, they lose the sense of thrill, they lose their imaginations, and worse, they lose their dreams. Their eyes are full of dead dreams, the reason, their previous generations murdered the dreams of next generation. And any young mind dreams of something (a bit big it may be), they say, “You are young, that is why you cannot fully understand what you are saying”.

Grown ups from my community thinks that they are experienced and seasoned, they knows many things better than the younger ones; they are not totally wrong in this, but they fail to accept that there are few things that they will never understand. Viz. electronic gaming, no grown up really enjoy computer games (they say, “it is bad for your health”), and the young still like it. And when it comes to the RTS genre, “Is it really a game?”, they say. What we can enjoy, they cannot! That’s the difference! And they think, what we are enjoying is bad for us, funny way they think! They always give great words of wisdom, but they should not try to break beliefs. To me, a child is the only person able to learn.

And one funny thing, I must share to the reader, is that, in my society, they are real slow to adapt with technology, slower than the fluctuation of cosmic microwave background radiation. And the reason is that they hate to do a bit more for their own facility. They like the way it is.

Erik Weinmeyer is blind , he climbed the third pole. Alexie Mareseyev was footless, but he did flew fighter without feet, Reinhold was illogical, but he still climbed everest without oxygen alone, Michal Faraday was a book binder, but he did something that runs civilization end etc. etc. etc.

And the ‘Curse’ of my society, is that it is afraid. And since the day I know that my society is afraid, I laugh at them, as they once said that I am afraid when I was kid. Maybe, when a grown up will read this post, he will say, that I am thinking like this because I am still young. But I cannot understand a very simple thing; I am a human being, with the most complex algorithm (the human mind), which can create more algorithms. Why we should constrain ourselves inside our own dead walls? Why do we not take risks? Why are we afraid of future? Why are we afraid of trying new things? Why are we afraid of walk unexplored paths? Why are we afraid of sorrow? Why cannot we embrace uncertainty? Why afraid of a few simple truths? Why we cannot be ruthless? There is only one life! Only one! And why we don’t understand this damn simple truth?

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.