Chickin’ about with Chickpeas

So, after a long time, I am back to blogging!

Since my latest encounter with demons of the past *wink wink*, nearly ruining my life and escaping at the last instant, partly due to a pretty rash demon that decided to run over me and dive off the deep end, I have been looking at things to do other than battling said demons. Since I haven’t cooked in ages, relying on the great delis around office to sate my hunger, I have decided to take up cooking as my new passion, among others.

So, to start off with this recipe, nothing fancy, a little bit of Channa Masala (spicy Chickpea curry, for those Indic-challenged). Given that my cooking skills were as rusty as the skillet I was going to use (ahem), I didn’t have much hope. Yet, I pushed on: took two handfuls of dry chickpeas, let them soak overnight. Once the chickpeas were fairly swollen, I put them into a medium-sized pyrex bowl, and into the microwave, where they cooked for about twenty minutes. While they were cooking, I cut onions, tomatoes and set other needed spices ready. Once all was set, I started following the instructions in the recipe to make my great Channa Masala.

But I was in for a suprise.

For I had *not* been using any quantity of measure to control the amount of channa masala I was making, having been brought up with the engineer’s mentality that following an instruction manual to the letter was against the spirit of the tinkerer-engineer. So, off I went, cooking, adding this spice and that spice, like a Walt-Disney alchemist; the only effects missing were the colorful puffs of smoke that comes up in the cartoons. In the end, I tasted my concoction.

Tears started streaming from my eyes.

I hastily added a boatload of lemon juice to tune down the spiciness.

And tasted it again.

Now, the channa masala wasn’t spicy at all. It was bland, and *lemony*. I had ended up making my Channa Masala a Lemon Masala, with Channa here and there.

But it was way more bearable than the incredibly hot Channa Masala that existed a few moments ago.

Anyway I guess the lesson here is to stick to the books until I master the art of cooking. So much for claiming to throw away the manual

HD-DVD Key on Digg :)

As usual when I opened digg the first thing in the morning today, a strange sight greeted me: All the posts on the first page were the Serial Key for cracking the HD-DVD! Talk about pissed off people!!!

Since digg is a dynamic site, I’m posting an image here:

Edit:
So, How did this happen? I did a bit of scouring, and found this out:
The HD-DVD processing keys had been cracked by some 1337-d00d and posted on some forum, known as the Doom 9 forum. Cory Doctorow (You’ll know if you read /. ) had posted this key on his blog and promptly received the attention of the AACS -LA(aka. shove-it-down-your-throat group) and received a cease and desist letter for the same. As with bloggers, corporations and cease and desist letters, this has caused an instant uproar, with almost the likes of an internet revolution taking off, with hordes of bloggers posting the keys on their blogs in an act of defiance. I guess this can be counted as a revolution – what the so-called authority tried to do was to silence one voice; ironically they ended up freeing a million other voices. That’s what happens in a revolution, isn’t it?
Then came the digg and wiki bans. People started posting this on digg – the key, in various formats ( In images, as text, as an MD5 hash, as IP addresses, as folder names, as subdomains, as comments, as HTML colors) And these stories got dugg so fast that the latest news section was just full of them. And then digg started banning users and stories and resetting diggs for all posts related to the HD-DVD key. Talk about outrage: the entire digg user community turned against them. Wikipedia had already sold out, its notorious admin policies well known. It banned editing the HD-DVD entry so that people should not post the key on the entry. That was OK, understandable. But when they banned another fresh article on the ongoing party, the community gave up on Wikipedia. But digg got the worst of the lot – It is being accused from all sides. So much for democratic acts.
If all goes well, and the AACS-LA bow down to the pressure, it might as well be the first successful internet revolution. This might as well be the fall of the Bastille. Viva la Revolucion! We shall see what happens…

Images of Prophet Mohammed?

I just might be wrong about this. I was watching Southpark today ( Season 5 – Super Best Friends ), and guess what – Prophet Mohammed was a character in it! Now this was waaay before the Danish cartoon controversy ( which, as far as I remember was first criticized for having depicted Prophet Mohammed, followed by the way in which he was portrayed). The issue caused so much debate that Southpark actually had another episode where Prophet Mohammed’s image is supposed to appear, but is replaced by narrative cards, like in those old silent movies. Now what I don’t get is, how did Southpark and comedy central managed to get beneath the radar, if this issue was so huge – how come they didn’t get noticed earlier? Either I am really mistaken, or there’s some case of overlooking going on here. Anyone reading this, please watch the above episode to see for yourself ( That is, if at all you watch Southpark ). Do tell me if I am mistaken.

GMail Paper

On Suzanne Shell and her war against the iGeeks*

Of course, this is about the latest controversy that’s doing the rounds on the net. About how the Internet Archive had infringed upon the copyright of the website she owns and maintains, one profane-justice.org. I’m just adding my two cents worth to the general hoopla that’s going around.

Of course, Mrs. Shell is correct in her observation, and I presume she knows her law when she claims “By entering this site you agree to the terms and conditions of the copyright” ( The text may not exactly be accurate since it appears as if a whole barrage of the iGeeks have bombarded her site with requests – the provider now says that the site has exceeded the allotted traffic usage.) That when a computer enters into a transaction of information, it is true that the computer is bound by whatever agreements that govern the information – in this particular case, copyright law. I claim no expertise in law, but one curious fact remains pretty unanswered to me: one regarding the language in which the copyright agreement is penned down. Any agreement, as far as common sense goes, must be in a language that both the parties can understand – there is no point in me signing, or agreeing to an agreement in Bahasa, if I don’t know that language, since I do not know what the provisions of the agreement are. However, if I were to really come across a notice in Bahasa Inggris on the front page, in an English novel, that says that I agree to turn in all of my assets by purchasing this novel ( exaggerated claim, but serves the purpose of illustration ) Even though it is full of English characters, it is most probable that I do not really give a damn about the content of the particular passage – even though it actually means a lot, atleast to the writer. In fact, unless I had prior information, I will have really no way to know that there actually exist terms and conditions related to the purchase of that particular novel.

Now translate this directly into this case, since Mrs. Shell claims her copyright was violated, in this case by the culprit, a computer program, and the backers behind it, The Internet Archive. An isomorphism of this kind is indeed possible, wait a second, lawyertypes. Now, as far as human knowledge goes, computers haven’t really had the abilities to ‘understand’: they can process something mechanically, without understand anything in whatever is being processed. And as far as the languages that they know, the spread is quite limited compared to the spread of human language. Now, Mrs. Shell’s site put the copyright in plain view on her site – hardly her fault. But expecting the computer program that was accessing her site, with the aim of storing a copy for posterity, is like making me, someone who knows only English, to buy a book that contains terms and conditions in Bahasa governing the purchase of the book to hand over my entire belongings to the publisher or the author. Look at the isomorphism – I do not know Bahasa, and so doesn’t the computer program know English. If Mrs. Shell had indeed found a way to make sure that the spiders were able to ‘understand’ and ‘abide by’ her terms and conditions of copyright, in a way that would have been acceptable to both the computer and herself, then her claim would have been completely agreeable. However, putting myself in the shoes of the computer program, all of her copyright just seemed to some more of zeros and ones, so I did not really care what they were, and rather went on ahead doing what I had been intended to automate: spider the internet and store it for posterity. If Mrs. Shell had indeed put it up in a way that I could understand, maybe a particular sequence of zeros and ones telling me that her site was copyrighted, and if I were to copy it I must pay up $5000 every page ( which, given the amount of unwanted ads and other stuf in the pages of the site, I’d rather spend buying truckloads of used toilet paper and sending it across), I would indeed have stopped in my tracks and notified my superiors. Surely, the administration of the Internet Archive cannot be blamed for not being able to write a computer program that can read a web page, scrutinize it carefully for any copyright statements, ‘understand’ it, and avoid doing anything explicitly and implicitly banned by them, since such a program has never been invented and indeed can never be done so for a long long time. However, if she really wants to go ahead and sue the Internet Archive people for violation of copyright, I guess it would be enough to show, with expert justification that such interpretation and understanding is a long way to come. Indeed, it is like suing me for not turning in my wealth according to the agreement in the book. Would you, really, Mrs. Shell?

Child abuse is a really thorny topic – and I really appreciate Mrs. Shell for boldly putting forth her views on that. But when it comes to computers, her online presence since ’92, does not mean a thing, since computers are machines and there are limitations to what machines can do, and she does not know that. I really expected that someone with that much of internet exposure would know quite a bit or two about computers, and what they can do and what they cannot, but it seems my expectations were belied. And the iGeeks, as she loves to call them, even though they would have been toddlers when she began dabbling in the internet, have learnt quite a lot about the real world too – most of them aren’t some lame losers having nothing life to do except sit staring at a computer screen as she claims – but are quite brilliant and possibly the harbingers of the modern technology that she’s currently enjoying. Fox News isn’t my exact favorite news station, but as they asked in the case of Michael Crook, the question still lingers: Would she call your iGeeks as a bunch of lame losers if she had known that her website runs on a server written by a bunch of the same, even that the internet was built up, bit by bit, by the same, and given her the voice- the digital freedom of speech – to express and spread her own opinions and do what she wants to do? Would she call the hundreds working in Google, and the thousands working in Microsoft, the same bunch of old lame losers? They are also a part of the iGeek squad, as you like to call them. In the end, this only seems to be a sad attempt at a misinterpretation. I hope the courts hold up what is sense and what isn’t.

On Eventuality, Emotion and Desire

People, in general, seem to love predicting what will happen in the distant future. One often hears a lot of statements about what happens, or what will happen, to anything or anyone, eventually. Eventually, you will get a girl. Eventually, you will be happily employed. Eventually, India will become a superpower. Eventually the US will go to the dogs. Eventually there will be a war. Eventually, the bad guy will get punished. Eventually, that girl’s gonna get screwed. Many of such eventualities are comforting – that one would eventually gain employment; some of them give food for thought, intellectual junk – like about an eventual nuclear war. Some others aren’t really that palatable. But what is conveniently forgotten is this – all opinions of eventuality is in the face of some assumptions. However, there is no real reason why these assumptions should turn out to be true. Sure, I’ll get an employment somewhere. But, it is really my – or rather human – nature to expect something more. Of course I’ll be employed happily in some company. But really, is that what I want? Human desire in general is such that it is always a step ahead of your current abilities. That, in itself is good – without that we would not even have bothered to leave our neanderthal caves and invent the wheel. That is what is called as ‘drive’ as long as it doesn’t mutate into fanaticism, extreme expectations or desperation. But when such reasonable desires and expectations fail to get fulfilled, it is understandable that one gets dejected, and depressed. However, the last thing that the person would like to be reminded is that he or she would still get the most basic requirement of all those desires, one that can be taken as granted, as a given. He or she wouldn’t really want to know that, even though they did not get that job at Lucent Technologies, it is ok, you’ll get a job anyway. That, even though meant to be comforting, is like saying to the person that your desired too much, you cannot really go beyond your current abilities. Is that what the person would like to know? Is that what you want the person to realise? That eventually he’ll get something, but not in the way he desired, and not what he desired? This might seem really rude to the person who’s telling the words of comfort, but put yourself in the person’s shoes and see – you have your desires, the very fulfilment of which only can give you the joy you are looking for. And someone comes along and says that your desires will not be fulfilled because you do not qualify for such desires to be fulfiled, but something at your level will surely happen. Just how much of a comfort will it be? Eventuality is a vaguely defined term, something like the mathematical infinity. You can claim a lot of things can happen eventually – not everyone would care to verify that your claims are true. Also consider a similar case in Computer Science – the one of asymptotic analysis. This says that eventually, a program will run in some time, whether exponential or linear or something. How the program runs asymptotically is one thing. But it is a totally different thing when an algorithm is taking a second or more in a critical application. In such a case, saying that asymptotically it will run within five seconds doesn’t make any sense. Just similarly, saying to a person that he will eventually gets what he desires or something like that doesn’t make any sense – it does nothing to satisfy his desire, to soothe his ego, or to bolster his pride. The more worrying effect of this is for the person to slip into even more depression, or to do something totally out of the way, or abnormal, in the hope that the abnormality would distract people enough so that, in that small length of time, they may lick their proverbial wounded paws and proceed as if nothing ever happened. Sure, the latter is way better compared to the former, but it doesn’t really give any satisfation to the wounded. Worse, if the claims of eventual happiness are really taken seriously, the same desires can give rise to the same dejection, and this time, the probability of slipping into depression is even greater. Spurned emotions, belied expectations and unfulfiled desires can kill a man. It should be noted that this entire thought process is in the context of the everyday man – so claiming that satisfaction can be achieved through reducing desires cannot be applied here. Desires, as told before, are important. Only, excessive desire can be harmful, and should be avoided at all costs. Moreover, telling a man to reduce his desires when it is reasonable is only to remind him, in another way, albeit a bit cruelly, that he is not really capable of attaining what he expected out of himself, and that he should really lower his own bar. Both of them are not the best of soothing balms to an injured heart; one can lead either to more desire or abnormality, while other can lead to self pity – all of them not the best of conditions you’d want the affected to be in, if you are really thinking in the best of his or her interests. Instead, to the best of your abilities, try to explain to the affected, what are the real requirements to achieve the desire, and tell him or her, how to achieve the requirements first. Had they really known what are the real qualities required and how to go about achieving their desire, they wouldn’t be in such a situation in the first place, and they wouldn’t be coming to you for comfort and advice. What they need to know is not that they’ll be getting something that they know a priori that they’ll anyway get; they need to know how to go about getting what they desire. A concerned person is as much as interested in getting my desires fulfilled for my satisfaction, as I am in his or hers. That is why it is called concern – if he or she is not, I wouldn’t be going to him or her anyway. Also, the fact that one has really come to that person for advice signifies that they have missed something, and have done some sort of analysis as to what they have missed, and why they’ve missed it, came up with no answer, and have come to you with the hope that, since that person has already achieved what he or she desires, he or she will be able to answer the affected’s queries. And that’s what I believe, is the real expectation on the part of the affected from that person. Solace is not something that would remind a person that his desires and ambitions would not be fulfilled; it is rather a way to reorient and guide a disoriented soul.It is only natural that it would make more sense to reorient than confuse even more.

How many Earths do you need?

The last time I ever thought about ecological footprints and other assorted stuff was during ID110 and ID120 where scores of professors were trying in vain to infuse a sense of environmental awareness to three full(or should I say empty? ) lecture halls of students. Though I did understand the full import of the concept, I did not heed that much to it, mainly because, back home, ecological awareness, though not visible in an explicit fashion, has been a key factor in our attitude and outlook towards life. Many things – such as consumption of freshly prepared food in place of packaged and processed food, and a high incidence of vegetarianism( I’m not saying non-vegetarians are ruining the planet; the processes involved in making meat palatable are. You can an example here ) So much so that, given our impressive population, we would drain all resources of the planet in no time if we were to be living like the Americans. So I was partly confident that there wasn’t much fault on the part of our people in the overall ruining of the world.

To see how far my convictions are true, I checked the Earth day Footprint Quiz – as how I used to be, when I was back home at Chennai. This quiz gives a short summary of the ecological footprint taken up by every one of your activities, and also tells you how many earths would we need if people were to live like what you’ve just described. And here are the results:

As I was back in Chennai:

	CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES FOOD 0.3 MOBILITY 0.8 SHELTER 0.4 GOODS/SERVICES 0.6 TOTAL FOOTPRINT 2.1
	IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 0.8 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
	IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.2 PLANETS.

Just feels good to see that if people lived like me, a little more than our planet’s capabilities are enough to sustain us. You can take this quiz here.

Note: As I copy-pasted the results into the block quote, I realised this: THE RESULTS ARE FULL OF SPACER GIFS! And this showed up as little boxes wherever the images were not found. I had to remove them by hand – teaches me not to copy anything directly over from a website ever again.

My first Web 2.0 ish Logo

After having installed Photoshop CS2 with the aim of learning some good graphics techniques, I perused my first tutorial today. The end product is here for all to see. Of course, I did ape the method, but not the colors and the text. The Web2.0 ish name is from here .
Do post your comments. I hope to get better as time goes by.

Wish me luck!

Hunt for 80 cents

A new place, a whole new world waiting to be explored. However, after some of the exploration is done, and you are quite intoxicated by the very ‘newness’ of the place, things tend to fall into place, back into routine. It is as if you wake up to a horrible hangover after last night’s partying. And it was quite something like that when I realised I had a lot of chores to do, after a week of roaming about in the streets of Singapore.
Now, had it been back at IIT, I’d have just quoted Shoban, “Packitz”, and gone along on my merry way, leaving the laundry and stuff to be done by a particularly overworked washing machine at home. Once in a while, when it comes to the dangerous situation of not having a ‘clean’ T Shirt ( note: ‘clean’ includes T Shirts which have been worn repeatedly atleast thrice in a week), I pack up my bags, and leave for home to finish off my laundry. And I didn’t really have to do it; everything was pretty much taken care of.
Sadly, things weren’t quite the same here. The general IITian kuntryness wouldn’t work out here; carrying the institute’s reputation on our shoulders, I had to be a bit more conscious about myself ( Or so I told myself). So, doing the laundry was a must. Since home was not a twist of the accelerator away, I also had to do the laundry myself. Every bit of it. From the Detergent to the Dryer.
So began my woes regarding laundry. After dillydallying the whole of a week as to when to do the laundry, I finally got around at it on a Sunday. I packed a bag full of the smelly stuff, and headed to the laundry.
At the laundry was a girl, a lone girl, at a machine, taking out her clothes. Pretty much not wanting to scare her off staring at empty space, I went forward and started inspecting the machines like a washing machine repairman. Halfway through my inspection, I was rudely interrupted by a very enlightening thought: I had forgotten my detergent in my room. Cursing under my breath(the girl was still there), I trundled back along a flight of stairs, carrying a bag loaded with dirty clothes, straight to the elevators(cos I live in the seventh floor). The elevator arrived, and I went in, only to surprisingly find myself staring face to face with the same girl in the laundry. I must have looked a real clown, gauging from the look she had on her face, for me having climbed up a flight of stairs to catch an elevator when I could have done that from the laundry level itself.
Anyway, after having taken my brand new box of Fab detergent, I went back to the laundry room, and selected a machine which chose my fancy. That was when I noted a curious thing. None of the machines had plugs; they were just wired inside some box. Not wanting to guess what was inside, I looked around for an instruction manual. Sure enough, one was pasted on the wall. Seemed, I had to put in 40 cents for a wash, and 40 cents for a dry. Worse, the only denomination accepted were 20 cent coins. I fished around in my wallet for 20 cent coins: nope, there were none, me having gallantly given them all to a shopkeeper in exchange for a neat one dollar coin. As it can be understood, I trundled back to my room, vowing to find 20 cent coins before the day ended. And immediately walked down to the cafeteria, to order tea, and to get some change.
At the cafeteria, more ill luck awaited me. As I took my cup of tea, and handed him a two dollar note, I was feeling jubilant about my commonsense. Imagine my horror when the shopkeeper returned back the change, all in 10 and 5 cents!I was mortified. I asked him for 20 cent denominations, but no, he didn’t have them. In fact, he didn’t even have 1 $ denominations; and he had just pooled all the coins he had, and dumped them to me. Having made my wallet heavier by a few hundred grams, I came back to my room, defeated. The day went by soon.
Today I finally managed to make 4 20 cent coins. That makes 80 cents. I have vowed to save a 20 cent coin everytime I get 4 of them; that way I’ll have a constant supply of them. And now, finally, I can do my laundry.
Please don’t be pained if this is a crappy post. I just felt bored to continue, so ended it up abruptly. But will definitely not continue this post

Liberation’s Sweet…

I feel liberated.

I am liberated.

It is one of the most pleasant sensations that you are an island in the middle of nowhere, and you are connected to a more complete whole, at home with everything you’d taken for granted.

Ok, enough fart for the day. So the big deal is, I got a laptop. With a Wifi card built in. And that I am in NUS. And that the whole place is Wifi enabled ( with the exception of my own room ) So right now I’m here, at the Engineering Block, with no wire jutting out of my laptop, and yet connected to the net. OK, may not be a big deal for some, but it is a major deal for me. It is indeed wonderful to be able to access the internet without wires; it is like showing a 8-course buffet to a concentration camp victim. All right, my case was not so bad the last few years, but still, it is a refreshing change. And here are some of the other firsts that I have accomplished after coming here:
1. Tried out Root beer and Ginger beer finally. For the record, the first tastes like Iodex dissolved in water, and the second is like Ginger water in carbonated water.
2. Stayed for a night at the 21st floor of a 5 star hotel in the middle of Singapore.
3. Visited sentosa and watched the Sharks. They are funny, man!
4. Ended up using toilet paper. No questions about that.
5. Learnt that I can use my laptop, bring a cup of coffee, eat a sandwich, go to the lavatory, sleep, wake up, listen to music, play bingo with myself, all while being in a lecture.
6. Found that you can bring traffic to a screeching halt by putting your left foot forward on to a zebra crossing. Didn’t try holding for long though; I remembered someone telling me that traffic is like ,um, urine. Better not hold it for long.
7. Went on the Cable car to the Sentosa island. Took a lot of pictures.
8. Saw Jelly fishes, Deep Sea fishes and a million other beautiful creatures at the Sea World.
9. Visited Mustafa.
10. Travelled up and down the North South MRT line 5 times.
11. Tasted vegetarian Chicken and Mutton.
12. Went shopping and bought enough stuff to start a household.
13. Checked mail sitting in a bus stop.

I suppose this list will grow even longer. But the best part is that, every item in this list, was a great experience. Of course, the crowning one was this – the Wifi internet access. Nothing can beat that. Nothing ever.

All hail the electrical Engineers.

PS: I heard, after Bangalore, Chennai’s gonna be WiMax’d. I’m looking forward to the day I can access the net sitting in Saravana Stores. I’d be in Seventh heaven then.

Ever heard of a digital orgasm?