Reflections and Reverberations

It's time to look ahead. It's time to look back. It's time.

Nobody knows what 2008 has in store. Will it be different? Will it bring all the bads to an end in your life? Would it make this life a little bit more lively, if not filled with celebrations day in and out. I don't know.

The calenders are turned in and people look at months ahead and make tentative plans. Some people keep them. Most forget and get busy with mundane schedules of life in which this new year's celebration adds nothing but hope. Is it all in vain? I am not sure.

So, should I be celebrating still when all these questions remain unanswered? I thought I had a good appetite for them. I am contemplating now on things. I am nobody.

As I deliberate more, I fall into these loops and I can see that I get swamped into the fake patterns which life shows. The more I try to understand them, the more it intrigues me. Sadness and Happiness over long terms share common proportions. But can I amortize them over any period of my life? I have no answers.

So, how does it matter if it is 2008? This time next year, I may be sipping margaritas somewhere or will be drinking my sorrows away. But both of them would have started well before the new year giving it no due significance. Do we need a new year to drink? Aha! No, Not at all.

2008, 2008, 2008 ...... Reverberating everywhere. Hope it goes on for sometime for the people who dreamed to see this day. Let them have their share of joy. And then, lets get back to where we started. The mundane circles of life awaits our presence.

If you really want to remember it, do something new. Even if it is a small thing not worth of any significance, do it for yourself - probably it may turn out to be a reason for you to remember new years. If not that, perhaps your life may not remain mundane after all. Little works of pleasure build an empire of happiness.

Supreme Beings of Leisure

I am no connoisseur. But the taste is far too difficult to forget because the ecstasy seconds to none. And well for that matter, the pleasure is Never the Same.

For few days the Johnnie Walker Black Label Advertisement was airing and I liked the jingle a lot. Being all ears to good music (what I think is Good Music) I tried to get the source (if any). Needless to say - the names are perhaps aptly given.

I got a lazy lounge version of the song - soothing and flowing as slowly as possible. The Details:

Track Name: Never the Same Album: Supreme Beings of Leisure.

Classy, ain't it? Well for that matter, Johnnie Walker is meant for such a coterie. Cheers.

A Math Riddle

This is a twisted version of a simple thing. I bumped up to this while trying to come up with the formula for summation of squares of natural numbers and if they could be derived as a factor of sum of natural numbers. But, I went down and down into the whirlpool. Finally with some online help, I could find my way out. Do post your comments about whatever you could come up with.

Do you think the approach is wrong? Why?

MiKTeX

{/begin}
My First academic semester at UF just ended yesterday. And I was so happy that I did not sleep yesterday night. Weirdo am I?

I would like to pass on some information about useful stuffs one should know if you have something to do with Computer Science in general. Perhaps this is pretty vague and may be redundant - but still you can take it as a preaching hah :)
{/end}

MiKTeX - Let me take this first. Well, in case you have not heard yet about LaTeX, its high time you get to know what it is about. If you write long documents, have a knack for preparing them beautifully and could not quench your thirst with popular word processing tools available - go for it.

Well, just for the fact to get the dates straight - TeX was written in late 70's and is much popular in the academia domain. The typesetting system was developed by Donald Knuth and many others contributed to it along with support for all major operating systems.

The TeX file looks kind of a html file but is strongly typed. Most of the commands start with a backslash. The file (usually stored in .tex format) gets compiled into a DVI format (DeVice Independent). The DVI file can be sent as input to printer drivers or converted to pdf or postscript formats.

All these formats are standard formats which can be used without explicitly obtaining any licenses from any proprietary sources - This is the best part.

Sadly for novice users, afaIk TeX does not support WYSIWUG formats. So there are two options - one can take existing pre-written files and change stuffs as per one's requirements. Take a smaller version - there are plenty available, all you have to do is forget being lazy and google for .tex files. Of course any worthwhile task consumes time before giving results.

Or, you may write down from scratch. Remember to make a lot of tex files for specific purpose - which will prove to very useful for future modification. Its very tedious to read 1000 lines of tex code as it is to interpret a 1000 lines of html spaghetti.

You can include these smaller tex files into a single tex file. This file can actually contain only 10 lines and these lines are nothing but inclusions of 10 specific tex files. Remember, the order is important as in any C program.

It is not just about mathematics - why one should use tex. The problem is with over repeating things. You always wanted to do things once and use shortcuts the next time. Word Processing offers so many shortcuts - that they literally abuse it. You struggle with things which should have been simple. They break that rule that things should be simple, but no simpler - and I just abused Occam's Razor.

Hope you get it. Perhaps on a Sunday, when you feel like trying out some good stuff, give this a try. I installed it on MS Windows. Go to MiKTeX Home Page. Lots of Documentation is available. Read the Installation properly because you would not like to mess it up. I downloaded the complete installation from a local mirror available with UF. A recommended editor from this website is WinEdt. Try it out. You may go for other installations of LaTeX. Tell me about it if you know something is really good.

Next Blog would be on few video lecture courses in Computer Science - highly recommended for students in the bachelors' program. I am currently viewing the course lectures. Once completed I would post complete information about it.

Rendezvous with Life

Today I was not in that great mood. I don't know what happened. Is it something which happened today? Or is it something I have been putting off for long?

I was feeling sick - perhaps a bit homesick. This is not what I am usually. Even I did not buy that myself. But I was down and low.

Couple of hours and I am back. Back to normal. I have a test, an assignment, a presentation as well as a demo lined up in the next 5 days. And I watched "Bend it Like Beckham" for the past two hours. The movie was more than a distraction.

Suddenly I realized something. And it is what will take me through these five days and more.

There is always more to life. I wrote my last post, but at times I fail to believe in it. It is the persistence which I lack. The ability to stand for that extra second. Why did I always fail?

I have my answers to find. If you can, help me - in the right way.

Om Shanti Om

for once I can say ...... bas deewangi hi deewangi hai.

I watched the movie yesterday. It was the second hindi movie I have seen after coming to florida. The first one was "Chak De India". Both were SRK starrers and have completely different flavor.

I must admit that since I saw the movie late yesterday, I have been on youtube watching all clips related to Om Shanti Om. And nonetheless I can't stop smiling and laughing. It is a hilarious movie and believe me - if you miss this one, you are missing a bollywood heartbeat. On Diwali, every year there is a clash between two big banners and mostly people get a good movie to watch. I don't know about Saawariya, but I can vouch for Om Shanti Om.

Forget Karan Johar, forget SRK stereotyped Rahul - you get something fresh here. A different SRK. Roles which the public would love to watch.

Yes, I agree that comedy sells these days and for that matter even cheap ones have made their way into the market. But, you don't expect such things from a 34 Crore Investment. Om Shanti Om has been made meticulously keeping in mind what people want to see. And when you want to beat someone as big as SLB, you better have something to show.

Om shanti Om uses many of the old known jokes and few sequences which have been reproduced as-is from other movies. When you watch it, you would tend to feel that you have heard those jokes somewhere earlier. But the energy and enthusiasm in the movie makes it all the more enjoyable. There is a hidden flow somewhere which keeps you glued to the movie. Frankly speaking, I even did not care to put in thoughts if it was half as comparable to Karz - a classic in hindi cinema.

This movie can be classified as the first spoof in modern times (barring Ghoom launched by MTV) which has been accepted and enjoyed by the Indian mass so well. I bet you won't complain that you wasted your time watching it.

Also it sends a reply back to the media who have made fun of SRK umpteen times. SRK has proved it once again that it is not Karan Johar or Farhan Akhtar on whom his success depends. He knows exactly what he wants and spreads a strong message that "There is no replacement to hard work".

So, I would suggest you to call for a time-out from your busy schedule and go and watch this movie (anyway you can). It would relax you and it is fun. No doubt about it.

Lastly, here is one of the dialog from the movie and perhaps its the original source:

Itni siddat se maine tumhe..... paane ki koshish ki hai,
ki har jarre ne mujhe tumse milane ki...... saazis ki hai

(the symphony starts)

kehte hain,
agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho,
to poori kayanat usse tumse milane ki koshish me lag jaati hai

aaj aap sabne mujhe meri chahat se milaya.
Thank you. Thank you very much.

main aap sabka sukra guzaar hoon ki aapne mere khwabon ko yakeen me badal diya....
itna,
itna ki I feel like the king of the world.

aur aaj... is baat ka bhi yakeen ho gaya,
ki hamari filmon ki tarah hamari jindagi me bhi ....
end me ... sab thik ho jaata hai,
haapys endings
aur agar, aur agar thik na ho
to woh The End nahin hai doston....
picture abhi baaki hai

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

“When you want something, all the world conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Sweet November

Yes, I know thats a good movie - the inset of fall sets a whole new view of Gainesville. I just wished somebody could lend me a digicam for couple of months.

The temperature has fallen down. I have stayed in Delhi for a year and I know I used to freeze at 4 degrees. The huge fur jackets, probably heavier than me at that time, had to be used to keep you warm. But still it was just four degrees.

The fall in Gainesville is beautiful. Imagine being in a hill station - only thing missing is the mountains and the deep mist. But the serenity and breeze would sweep your minds. At nights, the mist would escape as you start talking. The cool breeze would make you long for warmth. But, it is not all jittery. If you stay for sometime out there, you would start enjoying it. Well, fortunately or unfortunately it never snows in Gainesville. So, I do not know how wonderful it would be. But yes, yesterday the temperature was -1 degree celsius. And the night was worth roaming around.

Well, for that matter my roommate returned home at four o'clock in the night, after watching his first movie in an american movie theatre. And of course, he had dinner at 2 am in a bustling restaurant nearby. Eight dollars for the movie. Seven dollars was the dinner. Roaming around the town in the night with friends in a ca-ar, priceless for a desi "graduate" student.

The day sets in pretty early. I usually take the bus from a nearby bus stand to go to college. The bus stop is around 300 metres from my place. The walk is pretty relaxing. The cool breeze fills you in waking you up for the day. The picture perfect trees and signboards just catch your breath. The best thing out here is the nature. Its all calm and quite - what you would desire when you try to take a break from the city life. No wonder this place has been voted as the best place to live in US for some time.

This is perhaps the best time around the year to be at Gainesville. Its not too cold, but you feel the chill. And the time of the year when you enjoy the sun. Sweet November ain't it?

FogBugz 6.0 - Devs' envy Testers' Pride

Well it is 02:02 at night and I am not in a mood to write something long here. So, would point you guys to a good demo of FogBugz. Seemed pretty awesome to me and I hope you would like it too. Believe me developers, you would strictly say a big NO to this software getting in the hands of the QA folks. Coz, it hits where it matters most - your performance and consistency.

The software keeps track of timelines you have skipped and other small stuffs which impact your consistency and reliability in solving bugs/issues. It is perhaps a thousand times better than Clarify which I have seen people using.

If something appeals to me most, it is the usage of Thin Client (of course something which works on Firefox without giving JavaScript issues and which uses Web 2.0 features). You have collaborative tools which spurs free interaction between Dev and QA.

I have only seen the demo, so I am not sure if this feature is present in 6.0 - I would have liked to see a quick draft form of a bug saved to a QA profile without getting filed right away. Many a times, the tester keeps a bug for further verification after he has encountered it for the first time. This feature should be included - though there are both pros and cons attached to it for the obvious reasons - the management (you figure it out yourself why).

The Demo URL is here

Just to add more interest - fogcreek is the one associated with Joel Spolsky who writes the famous blog http://joelonsoftware.com/.

This is part of an effort am putting in now-a-days to correct the process of writing code and implementing projects/designs efficiently. Good process comes through practice and awareness. In the beginning I used to always skip it. But slowly as I built the framework, it does not take much time of mine. Using open source software frameworks is the first step in this direction ( ! FogBugz ). Gone are those times when we had time to rewrite something twice. You write something today - and that remains forever!

There are some steps one should use before writing even a single line of code. Along with OO design, keep in mind Version Control, Memory Management, Code Profiling, Code Documentation etc. I would write an article when I get some more time highlighting these aspects and how they help you to bring clarity and integrity to the overall project. You may not configure them right away, but keeping space for them in your overall project design helps in the long run.

And remember - never reinvent the wheel unless you have been asked to do so. Always build on the top of existing blocks (reusing efficiently) until : you hit the Great Wall of Performance Issues.

hmmm ... the glass finally goes empty ... sadly it was cranberry juice all the way.

A thousand thoughts

Codes, thoughts, ideas - those have been the diet on which I survived for so long. And yes, for some time now, the burritos.

So to start with - choosing the name for this blog took me some time. I must confess that it took more than two hours. Well, whats in a name? But sometimes a lot of factors external to you affect you more than you thought they would. And that is exactly what I mean. I was supposed to name it Fork(ing)Threads. But searching for definitions could bring in more clarity to the first word. So, a better vocabulary could have helped. Still, one should always check before letting it out! And I checked it because I am not a novice if not an expert :)

So here we are again - back where we started (Train - Free).

I started writing this blog because when I get my hands full, I just drop everything blindly and tend to do something which is not at all related. Its a distraction for a good cause. Being a master's student, you will have your To-Do lists all filled up and popping in at every glance you take. Deluge of mails reminding of the pending assignments and projects which lack clarity and need substantial effort than they were intended for. Whatever happened to Proof of Concepts, it is very much alive and takes precedence over modeling solutions when it comes to deadlines. Hours of efforts flow in. Who said going back to school was cool?

But thats what we are here for. To apply what we have learned. And to re-learn again, what we use to apply, in a new way. To find better ways to the mistakes we have been doing. To take a break from the mundane codes which had become our only friend. To simplify our thoughts, our designs and the way we visualize. To bring us back when we are long lost in the forest.

So whats next? I want to write on some of the tools which I recently picked up and have been using since. Valgrind, Doxygen and Rational Rose would figure out in next couple of blogs along with other potpourri of rants on life, thoughts and revelations.