Stack dump

1. I think I know who I am; I don't know who I should be. I don't care who I am supposed to be.

2. Living with a 30-things-before-30 list is a waste of time. I know people who think this is ambitious/adventurous/aspirational/purposeful. They are wrong.

3. We aren't quitters, are we?

[Citation needed]

I think the Wikipedia should start a section to submit [orginal research]. All we need to add is an author line to the page. Should be easy. And the advantages merit a Wikipage of their own!

Really, I haven't seen a more hard-working bunch of drones reviewers. These guys tear everything down to its very atoms. Do you need a citation? Or maybe you are using a weasel word somewhere; or maybe, you used the wrong notation for a logarithm (log, vs lg vs ln vs...)

[PS: everything in this pargraph is true]

These dudes even change your submission if it's not up-to-the-mark. 

And the best part: a wiki is editable! So, the next time you read a page/paper on an algorithm you wish you had invented, act: edit the author name to reflect your rising research career. In addition to giving a few thousand researchers hope again, we will also rid ourselves of lame names like the "Pigeon-Hole Principle" (Note to brainiac who figured it out: not an iota of credit: what were you thinking?)

Green Jacket

A green jacket. A recycled-paper LUSH bag. Oversized black buttons playing hide-and-seek with white iPod headphone wires. Oblivious to the Metro and its noisy occupants, she is lost in a world of her own music. 

Perhaps that is why she didn't notice me looking at her. No, make that staring at her. It's her eyes which got me first. Or that green jacket hugging her perfectly proportioned body. Or maybe her quiet, reserved demeanour. 

Udki continues to regale me with some pet exploit of his. Udki always gets animated when speaking about his buddies. What a contrast to the quiet green jacket in the opposite seat. "And then," he says, "we went to this awesome place called Purple Haze". 

She presses the Next button on her iPod Shuffle. What slender fingers!

A sudden movement of the environmentally-friendly recycled paper bag on her lap. Will she drop it? Perhaps I can pick it up and we could have a conversation.  Or maybe she'll notice that I have eyes like her. Not the beautiful hazel she possesses; but a close enough shade of green. 

No. The bag refuses to cooperate. 

"We just told the waiter to get the two best curries he had!" Udki continues. Sometimes I'm amazed by how people miss the obvious beauty of the moment. Her hand brushes away the wisp of dark brown hair that has fallen across her face. Natural, I notice. A beautiful hue. Why don't I know Spanish? 

Poble Sec. Don't get off now! She doesn't. 

A quick look at a tiny wristwatch. No emotion. No hurry. The same calm, beautiful, patient face looking out of a Metro window. What do people see on those dark tracks out there? I never realized why they put windows on subway trains. To me, it just drives home the fact how trapped and helpless I am, down there in the underground. Her face reflects on the window. A perfectly shaped nose. Smooth, olive skin. 

We are at Espanya. "Let's go!", says Udki. What's the hurry, I wonder? But the green jacket gets off too. And off we shoot through the door. I have to confess to Udki: "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention to what you said".  Udki repeats something. She's leaving for the escalators! 

Ah. I wiggle my way just behind her. There. 20 seconds. Got to do something. 

But I know I won't. All I do is look. Just look. Suddenly, I'm disappointed with myself. 10 seconds. 

Oops. I almost step on her foot. A quick "pérdon". She looks around. Notices my mistake. A nod of acknowledgement. And we've reached the top. I know I'll never see her again.

30 seconds later, a green jacket, a pink iPod shuffle and white headphones will step out of the underground. At another exit, a couple of guys, one animated, one dumbstruck, will step out of the underground. 

The pink iPod and the white headphones will, perhaps, continue to entertain their owner as she jostles with the crowds of Barcelona. 

The dumbstruck guy will blog about it. 

What makes us tick?

While on a shopping voyage today, I couldn't help but reflect what a fabulous place India is. I don't mean the democracy, or about the inalienable rights it guarantees us. Governments and rights don't define a country anyway. Other factors, such as natural resources or domestic markets might, but I don't mean those either.

I'm talking the untamed, wild nature of our problems and about the large number of intelligent people who I see are being denied (so called) basic facilities. 

This may sound contradictory: what great country denies its intelligent populace access to the best amenities?  But think about it awhile, and possibly it will make sense to you too.

One oft-claimed factor for our current technological growth is that India has none of the outdated technology that other countries today need to replace. As a result, technological advances can often be accomplished faster and at a lower cost. 

After all; we didn't have the 99.9999% uptime guaranteed copper AT&T telephone lines to replace when India decided to invest in a fiber-optic backbone. Nor did we have 1924-laid rails to think of while building the Delhi Metro.

Note though, that simply the absence of prior technology doesn't mean newer technology will be adopted: if the people of Delhi hadn't been hungry for a better transport-system, Chandni Chowk would still be an hour away from New Delhi. 

However, even market-demand is sometimes not sufficient for technological evolution: take the case of open source technology. Before Firefox came along; the best open-source product invented is a text-editor called Emacs (some people will tell you it was vim-- ignore them ;) ). 

If you haven't heard about Emacs, don't fret- I'm sure none of the socially acceptable people (non-nerds) have either. Why did open-source nerds choose to develop Emacs? Why not, say, something like PowerPoint? Because, geeks use text-editors (and hate making presentations)!

And so, being the geeks that they are, they only develop technology they themselves use.

This isn't a trait peculiar to geeks. Empathy is a difficult emotion to muster. What really sets things rolling is a population hungry for change, combined with a bunch of intelligent souls familiar enough with the problem to solve it. 

So, while the Germans maybe great at engineering (I'm a fan, for one); they simply wouldn't be the best people to design the Delhi Metro. Can you imagine a German engineer reducing the gap between the platform and train so that women in sarees can get off the train more easily? (Was ist ein "sareé"?)

What you need are the sons-and-daughters-of-the-soil; those who recognize the problems India faces and have lived through them first hand. Such are the folks who will create the inventions that you and I love: the pressure cookers, the auto-rikshaws and the TV antaksharis. 

Which brings me back to the point I started with... would it help if we cuddle our best brains with the highest of material comforts? Would it smother their creativity and urge to better lives of others less fortunate? Or should we let them suffer the traffic jams so that they invent SMS traffic alerts?

Your comments solicited below.

Oh. The last post was so long ago. (When I was young, I once wanted to be a journalist-- it's a good thing that career aspiration failed. Regularity is definitely not my stronghold).

The last few days at home have been fabulous! Adding to the joy of being home are my grandparents, who are arriving tomorrow! :-D It is so different being at home; doing the things normal people do-- like waking up much before lunchtime; or actually bathing everyday. Or reading the newspaper.

On that last point; I'd like to share a strategy I found really useful: you only need to read a newspaper once a week or so. (I picked Thursday: the editorials are rather insightful then.) The signal-to-noise ratio in newspapers is unacceptably high, but is easily explained. After all, nothing exciting or urgent happens everyday. So, most of the "news" is simply noise; with at best a transitory importance.

If something important does happen some day, you can be sure it will live within the media spotlight till next Thursday. Or maybe some one will grab you and tell you the news.

In the best case, you save yourself from noise exposure for 6/7th of your life. Maybe if I follow through on this, I can get more Real Work done. If you have a better strategy, comment below!

PS: if you really want to get excited; follow Grassroutes. It's being run by a bunch of complete morons who think they can change the world. :)

There's got to be a better way

I'm ignoring some mails all the time (facebook, LinkedIn and other invitations to social networks, ``newsletters'' that I never signed for, sigh... the list is long). Still GMail doesn't know they're low priority. I don't even care if I don't read them.

Setting up special filters for each such mail is putting in way too much effort for mails I don't want to read in the first place.

Email has got to get more intelligent. If there's 578 emails in the inbox which I do not want to read and 2 which might interest me, the unread count ought to be 2, not 580.

Anyone have ideas on how to make Gmail behave?

We need a Dream

I must be the millionth guy on the planet who's been inspired by Obama's victory speech (as I know are so are many other BITSians who have an HD version of the video downloaded. Not the lame Youtube at BITS, mate).

However, this is a time I have also come to lament the lack of emphasis we as a country put on dreaming. Americans seem to have dreamed since their earliest history; and it seems to have done them a lot of good!

Living the Amercian Dream isn't just a metaphor, it is an idea that has brought together a country so many many times. 

Why don't we have an Indian Dream?

What are our ambitions? Is India a country where hard work pays off? Where people are judged by the honesty of their thoughts and actions? Where one's today drowns out the oppression history's dying ghosts?

Or are we just another place on this planet, where people live from hand-to-mouth, from depressing day to depressing day? Where ambitions are non-existent, and survival is the only truth? Where poverty has been more than 25% for the past 60 years?

I think this is a time to decide what our country should and will be. And given today's world, I think this decision does count.