Categorically Imperative

Tired

2006-06-27T07:09:00.001-05:00

Tired offers an inquisitive ear to anyone willing to complain. The design is non-existent and the
interface (if you can call it that) is inviting. There's a lovely article on how it was conceived and why it works.

It's a lens, baby!

2006-06-05T04:07:00.000-05:00

This looks like a really cool lens ; and it's pretty cheap too.

Macroscopic

2006-04-13T09:48:00.000-05:00

The power of emacs macros.

eMax

2006-03-30T07:15:00.000-05:00

I've been struggling to cope up with the emacs learning curve for quite some time now. It is certainly very different from vi and not at all intuitive for the enthusiastic beginner. I even started learning elisp a bit, but then time and effort were not on my side. I'm still using emacs, but not as effectively as I would want to.Maybe this will help.

WAF

2006-03-30T07:11:00.000-05:00

Are you sure you got this covered before buying that next 51" HDTV for the apartment?

Droste Effect

2006-02-21T08:16:00.000-05:00

The Dutch chocolate maker Droste has a unique and appealing image on all its chocolate boxes. The image shows a nurse carrying a plate on which there is a box with the same picture on a smaller scale. This is known as the Droste Effect.

A compromise

2006-02-21T05:29:00.000-05:00

Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.

S. Kelly-Bootle

Programming - A Life Form

2006-02-21T05:24:00.000-05:00

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be. ... The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

F. Brooks

[courtesy reddit]

Diving In Salty Waters

2006-02-20T04:16:00.000-05:00

After a long time of swinging back & forth over whether to use the Blogger plugin for Word, I finally took the plunge in the hope that I won’t waste too much time over posting. After having recently started using FeedDemon for all my RSS subscriptions, I realized how efficient well-designed software can be ; it drastically reduced the time I was spending on switching between many feeds. My only regret is that it uses IE as the default browser framework, instead of Opera or Firefox. Anyway, just glad that I found an aggregator of my taste, after a long time of searching around the web.

Trepanation

2006-02-08T03:06:00.000-05:00

The practice of making a hole in the skull using an instrument called a trepan, to get more blood flowing in the vessels . Can it get more wierd than this?
[link]

Miura

2006-01-08T14:42:00.000-05:00

Celebrated as one of the most beautiful cars to have ever been created, the Miura lasted a mere 7 years (1966-72), before production stopped. Now, in 2006, on its 40th anniversary, its creator Lamborghini, parented by Audi, will once again try to revive the masterpiece and hopefully unleash this beast upon us. The new Miura is still a concept though and looks as good a super-car as any. Either way, Enzo better be on the lookout for another Lamborghini rampage on the streets.
[picture: courtesy AutoWeek]

Pi

2006-01-08T14:30:00.000-05:00

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
[1 Kings 7:23]

This apparently harmless statement from the Bible suggests that the value of pi is not 3.14..., but infact a whole number 3. Probably one of the most celebrated and hoaxed pranks in the field of science was the bill to change the value of pi from an irrational constant to the more religiously-inclined number "3", which created a ruckus in the community at the time.

Hilbert's Hotel

2005-12-31T05:44:00.000-05:00

David Hilbert was an eminent mathematical personality of the 19th century, who put forward this paradox to better illustrate the intricacies of infinity.

My Dream

2005-12-26T10:01:00.000-05:00

The Paranoid Webpage

2005-12-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

This is a hilarious 404 page, modelled on Marvin, the Paranoid Android.
I could'nt keep myself from rolling on the floor after reading it. Really good.
Keep it up guys.

The Danger Triangle Of The Face

2005-12-21T01:57:00.000-05:00

Due to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area, it is possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain. For this reason, the area from the corners of the mouth to the bridge of the nose, including the nose and maxilla, is known to doctors as the danger triangle of the face.
[Wikipedia].

The Global Consciousness Project

2005-12-13T08:28:00.000-05:00

The Global Consciousness Project(EGG) is one of the most significant of current research projects into parapsychology. Based at Princeton, it researches into the theory that the human consciousness may create an external field which is not detectable via conventional means. Involving, is'nt it??
Princeton
Wikipedia
(through Damn Interesting)

inotify

2005-12-08T05:02:00.000-05:00

inotify is a replacement for dnotify that overcomes the latter's limitations, such as the inability to unmount the file-system on which we are dnotifying on, the requirement of opening a file-descriptor for every directory we want to be informed, the shortage of the number & type of events and not getting to know the exact file/directory that has changed on disk. inotify overcomes all this by providing a much cleaner interface and is a part of the 2.6.13 kernel. The kernel Documentation is at Documentation/file-systems/inotify.txt.
[Article].

Paradox

2005-12-05T12:29:00.000-05:00

This is a quote from E.R.S. (Eric.S.Raymond) in his famous "The Cathedral And The Bazaar" that was on my blackboard for quite some time.
"Egoism itself is a form of self-satisfaction for the egoist".

Hollow Earth

2005-12-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

Well, the past week was kinda hectic for me. Let's see, first I attended FOSS.in, visited a coupla places in TN, watched quite a bit of movies & finally started on 2 books; a Virginia Woolf novel & a Physics book. This one's really good....I mean really. Anyway, I'm at a loss for words today. Hopefully, I'll be writing a lot about this book later. Let's kickstart with the Hollow Earth Theory. An excerpt from the book -
"Space and straightness pose subtle challenges. Some strange people maintain that all humans
live on the inside of a sphere; they (usually) call this the hollow Earth theory. They claim that the Moon, the Sun and the stars are all near the centre of the hollow sphere. They also explain that light follows curved paths in the sky and that when usual physicists talk about a distance r from the centre of the Earth, the real hollow Earth distance is: R_hollow_earth = Square(R_real_earth)/r."
Wikipedia Entry.

Mamihlapinatapai

2005-11-28T03:53:00.000-05:00

A condition where two people look at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do.

The Escherization Problem

2005-11-25T03:03:00.000-05:00

The Escherization problem is stated as follows:
"Given a closed figure in a plane, find a new closed figure that most resembles the given figure and which tiles the entire plane."
Escher was a dutch artist who created a large number of tesselations by hand.

The French Paradox

2005-11-22T00:42:00.000-05:00

The paradox that French people remain slimmer and healthier than the Americans, even though their consumption of fat is higher. Noted by physician Samuel Black.

Social Genetics

2005-11-18T09:27:00.000-05:00

Dendrochronology

2005-11-16T09:37:00.000-05:00

Simply put, dendrochronology is the dating of past events like climatic changes through study of tree ring growth. Botanists, foresters and archaeologists began using this technique during the early part of the 20th century, when it was discovered that the wide rings of certain species of trees were produced during wet years and, inversely, narrow rings during dry seasons. Each year, the tree adds a new layer of wood to its trunk, thus creating these annual rings. Hmm, do I remember reading all this in college?
[Link]

Fractals

2005-11-15T08:27:00.000-05:00

A lovely picture of the Mandelbrot Fractal.
This reminds me of my college project, although mine was just half this good.

The A-List

2005-11-14T03:30:00.000-05:00

The following is a consolidated list of the people who have suffered from Bipolar Disorder. The sheer talent of these people is amazing. This is definitely an illness some people would "die for" (pun intended).

Virginia Woolf
Vincent Van Gogh
Marilyn Monroe
Edvard Munch
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Carrie Fisher ( Princess Leia from Star Wars )
Trent Reznor ( Nine Inch Nails )
Kurt Cobain
Ernest Hemingway
John Keats

Coprolalia

2005-11-10T14:29:00.000-05:00

Coprolalia is involuntary swearing that is an occasional but rare characteristic of Tourette syndrome patients. Coprolalia encompasses all words and phrases that are culturally taboo or generally unsuitable for acceptable social use.

Fentanyl

2005-11-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

Fentanyl - An opiod analgesic, about 80 times more potent than morphine. Domino Harvey, the bounty hunter, on whom the movie "Domino" is based upon, died from an O.D. of this drug just this year.

Randomized Algorithms

2005-11-08T07:03:00.000-05:00

1. The Monte-Carlo Algorithm - Algorithms that might give incorrect results, but they have
a fixed bound on the probability of failure.
2. The Las-Vegas Algorithm - Algorithms that always give correct results, but the only variation is the running time.

The Raven Paradox

2005-11-06T05:39:00.000-05:00

If all ravens are black, aren't all non-black things non-raven?

Ball Lightning

2005-11-05T05:09:00.000-05:00

I remember watching a show on Discovery about "Ball Lightning" some years back. Had quite forgotten what it was about. This is a nice article on it. And some pictures too. Looks good, but is it just a figment of our imagination or an actual phenomenon?

Synth Pop

2005-11-02T03:35:00.000-05:00

I did'nt know this until recently, but one of my favourite bands Depeche Mode does'nt actually play pop, but something called Synth Pop. Synth Pop is a variation of pop, where the music is not produced by traditional acoustic or percussion instruments, but rather is synthesized or digitized, usually from a computer or maybe a micro-chip. Oh, and it sounds good too, I must admit.

Foveon

2005-11-01T07:59:00.000-05:00

Traditional digital camera (is'nt this an oxymoron?) sensors were equipped with just one filter over each individual unit on the sensor; which means, that each pixel in the image would contain just one out of the 3 possible colors (Red, Green or Blue). I think this was because of the cost and technology required to implement 3 filters (R,G & B) over each pixel. The final image would then be obtained by passing the image through Bayer filters and then approximating the RGB values of each pixel. But then, Foveon came up with its range of X3 sensors (recently, I think), which have 3 filter icons over each possible unit of the sensor, thus eliminating the need for any such approximations in the final image. Even though I don't see this sensor being implemented in any of the current Canon or Nikon models (both Canon and Nikon manufacture their own sensors), I sincerely hope this technology gains some rapid momentum. Maybe then, we can compete with the image quality of traditional SLR's.

Travel-O-Mania

2005-11-01T02:14:00.000-05:00

Travel to anyplace in the world in exactly 42 minutes and 12 seconds???
The Gravity Train can accomplish that. The maximum speed reached by this hypothetical train is 7900 m/s, which is at the center of the earth. Lovely concept, this one!!!!

And Thus He Spake

2005-10-31T02:27:00.000-05:00

John Underkoffler is the man behind the technology that created a stir when it first appeared in a movie - "The Minority Report". The technology I'm talking about is the flashy & hyper-realistic interactive computer screens shown in the movie. Currently, Underkoffler and Raytheon are working on a project - gspeak - that hopes to bring this celluloid fantasy to life. As usual, the US Defence gets their first hands on it, before it hits the market. Bring on the goodness anyway, I say.

Fitt's Law

2005-10-28T09:42:00.000-05:00

In the era of creative and slick computer user-interfaces, the revolving factor that all UI designers must consider is the end user's comfort and ease-of-use with the design. The user must be an active and involved part of the interface, not just a hapless by-stander. Thus, Fitt's Law plays the central role in determining the quality of user interfaces ; such as OS X and Windows. Moreover, the law is also intuitive ; yet no successful renditions of it are prevalent. Maybe, we need to give it more time.

Crystal Clear

2005-10-28T02:55:00.000-05:00

The Crystallographic pattern of DNA by Rosalind Franklin.

X-Ray Crystallography:
1. http://www.stolaf.edu/people/hansonr/mo/x-ray.html
2. http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/experimental_methods.html

The ultimate GEEK phone

2005-10-26T07:06:00.000-05:00

Nokia sure knows how to rake in the moolah!!!! When the Nokia G33K hits the market, I'm pretty sure everyone's gonna go ga-ga over it ; And if looks can kill, then this is gonna cause a massacre. Sign me up for one of these bad boys.

Parrhesia

2005-10-26T02:58:00.000-05:00

Parrhesia - Free Speech
A verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.
(Wordsmith & Wikipedia)

Cry

2005-10-25T01:09:00.000-05:00

Vagitus - The cry of a newborn child.
A newborn child's cry is called vagitus. Babies' cries have been heard even before their births. It's rare but vagitus uterinus has been observed on occasions when the membranes rupture, allowing air to enter the uterine cavity. (via Wordsmith).

Chaos

2005-10-24T11:20:00.000-05:00

"Does order come out of chaos?"
When someone asked Feynman this question, he was stumped, unable to answer. But, there's this wonderful paper ( The Arnold Cat-Map ) that shows that order ( or more specifically, order that once was ) can be made chaotic and vice-versa. This paper applies only for images though. But, there's one thing bothering me. Since chaos derives from order itself, isn't it just order, but in a more abstract form? In this case, all that seperates chaos and order is a set of equations. It's exactly like saying energy equals c squared times mass. They're one and the same entity. Just different forms. Only here, c squared evaluates to the result of the matrix, that's all. So it's not exactly chaos if it comes out of order, is it? Which throws up another interesting question. Where does chaos originate? Who gives it birth, feeds electricity through its mangled brains and screams hysterically, "It's ALIVE!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!?" Definitely not order, I know that much.

intro(2)

2005-10-24T10:02:00.000-05:00

Although I hate to admit it, I suffer from acute short-term memory (STM) when it comes to remembering certain things; things such as names, places, facts or numbers indict the least amount of impact on me; and they’re washed away with the same amount of ferocity that water from the ocean recedes from a shore. I land into so many interesting things with each passing day that the only way to remember them, I figured, was to jot them down somewhere. Hence, this blog. A mathematically inclined reason for this blog would be

Purpose -> Action.
Purpose.
Action.
Modus Ponens.

Also, unlike my other blog, I intend to update this at least once or twice a day. So, hang around these pages once in a while. You just might find something interesting.