Pilot of the storm

Lines from 'Kashmir', and they are interesting. The complete line is 'O pilot of the storm that leaves no trace/ Like thoughts inside a dream'. Though I understand the imagery well enough, I do however remember my thoughts at least during some memorable dreams.

The point however is exactly that, none of us would like to be like the aforementioned pilot, or aforementioned dreams - evanescent. Most would like to have impact. That's about all I'll say on these lines.

I had a lot to write, I'll not do so. I end up making fun of people who are sincere about opening up their souls on the net, I don't think I'll stop doing that any time soon. Imagine me going around seeing things other people don't and finally whispering - "I see lame people", that's how I feel, and I don't want to hurt their feelings.

In local news, there was much fun to be had, and many sweets to be partaken of, during the 12th to 14th Feb period. I had been volunteerd for a workshop, and basically did work, so I got to eat dessert, and only dessert for dinner - if I so chose. I was not shameless enough, I ate a little salad as well sadly.

In world news now, Sweden reports trial results on 'The Pirate's Bay' which seems to be going well for the defendants, when asked to comment they said - "We've never read you're blog or met you, we're not going to comment", despite declining to comment they still have my support. The prosecution seems to have been making a fool of themselves, to quite an extent, which is totally awesome. Ploys such as the 'KingKong' defense, 'Twinkie' defence and the 'Chewabacca' defence are being used by both parties - the 'KingKong' variety being an invention of the current defence attorney, used first for this trial. By the by, I kid you not, those are actual names, you can check them up on wikipedia.

For those in the dark, there was an EPIC EPOCH moment in *nix, it had been 1234567890 seconds since *nix was first made, this happened a couple of days back. Many people celeberated, I slept, I like *nix, but come on seriously ? Geek much ? (nothing wrong with being a geek, by the way but celeberate awesomeness not this !).

Went shopping, got my luck back, being as superstitious as I am etc. The important thing here is the placebos effect, and that only. I also happened to have dreamt about this particular shopping trip about a couple of years ago, Vu jàDé any one ? (that was Déjà vu - messed up, for the exceptionally order loving).

In one of his recent comics, XKCD posed a question, a dilema if you will. How do you use emotes within paranthesis, my solution has always been to either ignore it (how inelegant of me) or to use {} and [], instead of paranthesis. Square brackets seems to be better - from an aesthetic view point, and easily replace the parenthesis. However in case there is a convention that is being followed and they cannot - I have no solution, I suggest you speak about it during the next "World Meet on Important Matters(tm)".

Work on genetic algorithms was fun while it lasted, though it sounds cool, it was not. It was however easy to work with, and slightly messed up in terms of the terminology. In the initial variants I had gotten it to not work, but it was 'not working' so well that I didn't have the heart to debug. I had to however, I did, Vini, Vidi, Computer-Break-i, those in the know, know of my 5 years of latin studies, (I did in fact use textbooks, for those interested in learning - I'd suggest "Astrix the Gaul" as your starting point).

I have also noticed at times, 5 rats running around in my floor of the building where I stay. They aren't blind and all seem to not be tailless. I cannot imagine a sight scarier, if three blind mice can cause a ruckus, I don't want to be around for when these 5 sighted set decide to have their revenge. Others in the same floor, also had a similar idea(wrt being scared of the rats of course), being engineers, the lazy set - they caught a cat off the street and brought it up to the floor. I've never seen chain staring to this depth before, it happens in movies girl staring at a guy who is staring at a different girl etc. etc. ? But in real life ? Person 1 staring at person 2, who is staring at the cat who is staring intently at rat 1 who is staring at rat 2, ..., rat 5.

Now most of you would look at the above statement and say, "Hey what the hell - indexing from 1 ? Have I turned into a sellout ?". The answer is no, I've always loved C, and will never sell out to fortran or pascal or whatever, once a zero indexer always a zero indexer. However, I've never labeled variables starting from zero, I've used it mostly for array indices, no matter what the language( Except for SciLab/MATlab), and hence I've remained true to the language I started out with.

Back to the question of rats ? Well I got no clue what happened to the cat, or the rats, a set of 5 rats still run around, still not sightless or tailless. We cannot verify if these are indeed the same rats, zombie rats, or a set of replacement rats sent by the dogfather, that chin scratching mongrel. The cat is nowhere to be seen. Lots of us would of course venture on to ask the question, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Those of us without the required year 1 reading in "Astrix", would ask who gaurds the gaurds. The answer is surprisingly obvious. Math will gaurd the gaurds, we use math to check if the gaurds are slacking off and what the probability of said slacker type behaviour is. Error Correcting Codes for those of you who might be interested, would be one such mathematical technique. CRC is the simplest of such techniques and LDPC (something I've worked on) one of the most effective.

That's about all, we'll be skipping the weather report(the convo that is) for this session, next up the news at 0.

Jesus Doesn't want Me for a Sunbeam Lyrics

Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam. 'Cause sunbeams are not made like me.
Don't expect me to cry for all the reasons you had to die. Don't ever ask your
love of me.

Don't expect me to cry.
Don't expect me to lie.
Don't expect me to die for thee.

Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam. 'Cause sunbeams are not made like me.
Don't expect me to cry for all the reasons you had to die. Don't ever ask your
love of me.

Don't expect me to cry.
Don't expect me to lie.
Don't expect me to die for thee.

Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam. 'Cause sunbeams are not made like me.
Don't expect me to cry for all the reasons you had to die. Don't ever ask your
love of me.

Don't expect me to cry.
Don't expect me to lie.
Don't expect me to die.
Don't expect me to cry.
Don't expect me to lie.
Don't expect me to die for thee.

Sometimes a great notion

Yes it's true I made a scary reference in the title itself. 'Sometimes a Great Notion' is a novel by Ken Kesey, the same guy who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Now the scary part of the reference is that it refers to an american folk song “Goodnight, Irene” which has a line in it that goes -

Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town
Sometimes I get a great notion
To jump into the river an’ drown

However, just to be on the safe side - no, I'm not contemplating suicide nor am I going all goth and emo on you. I just liked the name. Sometimes I' get a great notion. I forget it immediately scared of its significance.

Any ways I'd spent the whole of last month doing nothing. Went home, had an awesome time, home is always awesome and I guess it ranks above just about everything else so it's off the scale as well. Got back in touch with people I hadn't seen in a long time - another really wonderful thing. Went to visit friends on new years, well okay, not exactly. I'd gone for work - presenting stuff, getting money from the powers that be, conning the corporates into doing the boring bits ... the usual. The December trips were rather nice - a change from the usual grind.

Went to the crosswords there, while being corporate, it turned out to be totally useless. Spent four days in an office in T-shirt and Jeans while every one else was in relatively more formal clothes, 'twas silly of them to be like that. Spent new years with friends, which was a lot more fun than it would have been back here. The best part was being with Asthana, Karry, Neta - I've not felt so free and able to be me in a long time, it was like being back in college or home or something. I was me again, no superficial veneer, to be me in person and to be able to talk the way I do naturally and not have to 'tone myself down' for the benefit of people. It was liberating.

Then within a couple of days I went home again, the conference was there - and that was one of the best experiences I've had this year. Seeing as how the year just started, I'd be surprised to see you raise your eyebrow at that statement, but it's true. In fact since my last to last post in Nov. 2008, it would have been the best experience (notice the whole disregard all trips to home clarifier made earlier). That, that post was prompted by something that made me feel good for a day and this made me feel good for about three days, should give an example of how much fun it was. I did in fact hog my self on dessert, I did in fact ingnore the very pained look that the people who were serving us gave me, and their raised eyebrows. I realised that being shameless has it's advantages in highbrow places - you get to have more fun. The presentation went of rather well, I missed out on some serious drama cause I was rehearsing for my presentation but I got to hear all about it later on. I guess I should clarify, I'm not sure that my presentation went off well because I was on autopilot. I switched off, started talking and only regained consciousness around the end when some one asked me a couple of questions in that wonderfully incredulous voice. The questions were flattering along the lines of - "You did WHAT ?", "You seriously expect us to believe you did THAT ?", and "What in your opinion allowed you to do THAT ?". This coupled with getting to be home for three days made it all worth the travel.

Coming back was irritating, the train was four hours late. A friend of mine, a medico friend of mine to be more precise had asked me once - why and engineer ?. I guess saying something like I get to have fun works with most people, but those who end up doing the whole medicine line ? I guess they need a higher calling. "Doctors save lives, what on earth good does an engineer do ?", Now a question like that can only be answered with wit, intelligence and awesome. Not being all that of any - I just said something lame like you save lives, but we make lives worth saving and went off to sleep. However, recently I guess the fun just wasn't there any more, I couldn't sustain my self only on my work. That was scary. I had a fun weekend however, which seems to have taken care of whatever - mini-burnout, I'd suffered. One of the best weekends of the past three months. Yes, January seems to have been not only eventful but also rather awesome. I read these lines recently, it's a poem by tennyson it's called ulysses and these are the last six lines in it. I guess I can relate at times, feeling old and weary and tired does seem to be a positive feedback type situation.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

As for new music, nothing that I would jump up and down at. So I leave you with Coheed and Cambria, 'Welcom Home', for those who don't get it when they listen to it - the song has been inspired by Led Zep's 'Kashmir', the riffs follow. I wish this was the one song I can play on the guitar rather than the Nirvana one I've posted below. I get the feeling that if I try now I'll fail miserably at playing any song at all.

Also I just got the collection of Harry Belafonte, tears of joy/sorrow, thy name is nostalgia. So a bonus lyrics post of 'Mama Look a Booboo'

Led Zepplin - Kashmir


Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed

Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear
Oh, oh.

Oh, I been flying... mama, there aint no denyin
Ive been flying, aint no denyin, no denyin

All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where Ive been.

Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My shangri-la beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high and true, when movin through kashmir.

Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
Ohh.

When Im on, when Im on my way, yeah
When I see, when I see the way, you stay-yeah

Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, when Im down...
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well Im down, so down
Ooh, my baby, oooh, my baby, let me take you there

Let me take you there. let me take you there


---------------------------------------------------------------

Harry Belafonte - 'Mama Look a BooBoo'

I wonder why nobody don' like me?
Or is it de fact dat I'm ugly?
I wonder why nobody don' like me?
Or is it de fact dat I'm ugly?
     I leave my own-a house and go
     My children don't want me no mo'
     Bad talk inside de house dey bring
     And when I talk dey start to sing

cho: "Mama, look-a boo boo," dey shout;
     Dem mama tell dem, "Shut up you mout',
     Dat is you daddy." "Oh, no!
     My daddy can't be ugly so!"
     "Shut you mout', go away." "Mama look-a boo-boo dey."
     Ugh!
     "Shut you mout', go away."
     "Mama look-a boo-boo dey."

I couldn't even digest me supper
Due to de children's behavior
"John!" "Yes, pa!" "Come here for a moment,
Bring de belt, you're much too impudent."
     John says it's James who started first
     James tells the story in reverse
     I drag me belt from off me waist
     You should hear dem screaming all round de place

So I began to question de motha'
"Dese children ain't got no behavior!"
So I began to question de motha'
"Dese children ain't got no behavior!"
     "Dey're playin' wit' you," my wife declare
     "You should be proud of dem, my dear"
     Dese children were taught too bloomin' slack
     Dat ain't no kind of joke to crack