Height of Ignorance

As per reports hundreds of lives were lost in recent Mumbai attacks and this act of blasphemy has been happening there for the Nth time. Some of our leaders have stepped down claiming moral responsibility... quite interesting at least now they are talking of morality. May be they are just trying to shield themselves from polemic issues and not wanting to subject themselves to lampooning and the agonies of the affected persons still remains unattended. This has been a wake-up call for the foreign ministry of both the countries. Instead of addressing the subtle issue, they are busy libeling against each other and our neighbour is thinking of diverting its troops towards Indian border. Its utterly crazy and such crappy ideas cannot be expected from a democratic government. In a way they are nurturing this ravenous beast and have turned a blind eye to recent bombings in Islamabad,Peshawar and blood shed in Baluchistan. Certainly in the days to come history will repeat and this government will be a mere puppet in the hands of this faceless creature.

Life's Lessons

A forwarded ppt worth sharing and hopefully will help us in preserving some of the idealities in a highly non-ideal world...

My Integrity Shakened

Working on Sundays has a different charm simply because with no enough homo-sapiens around i have all time and concentration of the world to focus on my TFT monitor. More importantly you have some recipes cooked up to tackle your Monday phobias and your week has got started ahead of others. Yesterday in between work i went to a small canteen inside a hospital premises to have food and i was the lone customer at that time. A man in his fifties with a broom appeared and he too sat down with me after discharging his duties for his tea. Out of curiosity he asks me "are you a student here?" A slight altruism and mistrust creeped in me and i didn't bother to tell him about my whereabouts, so i nodded back with a "yes". " First year?" Another big "yes" supported by again a big lie "got admitted this July " ....."which college?" Least expecting this one i took some time to spell out a name and luckily it matched with the one where he was working before taking up a job in the hospital. He went on explaining me about those days on how he had build up reputation there and his rappo with the student and tips good enough for procuring his bidis for the day and many more on faculties, politics etc. In between any question put to me, my answer was in terms of yes or no. In course of time i started to enjoy his talks and asked for more clarifications whenever i felt like. While we parted he gave me a piece of fatherly advice "do read well to live up to your parent's expectations". I was dumb struck and felt heavily embarrassed to see his innocent assumptions built on my blatant lies. My integrity was completely lost at that moment and i could feel the fervency of the just had discussion fading away with a weakness engulfing me. We often tend to go by our instincts and they can be misleading at times. Nevertheless i hope to bump into him some other day and assuming he still remembers my face i will have to gather courage to spill the truth...

Quite Unreasonable but True

You dont have to find reasons to be happy. This was a good revelation from my genesis mates. We need not be happy always though we seek for it all the time. we dont have to be successful all the time in our attempts, though the learnings from it are to be preserved. To come out of vicious loop of reasons and justifications, one has to unreasonable and then only one can attain bliss. Else it gets quite tough to come out of one's own internal rebellion for striving. Haven't thought about it before and will like to add more on this one...

Limits of Analogy

Today while taking the morning shower i was recollecting about my recent trips to Mathura. The cramped lanes and houses made me draw an analogy with transistor scaling.Whenever i come across a unbalanced person, my mind seeks to compare it with a under damped system and peeps into associated instabilities. If you come across blogs of any circuit designer,you will find most of time he ends up teaching you circuit design rather than explaining his thought! i read blogs of people from different fields and most of them possess this noble virtue. They are too much into their daily dosage and sub-consciously have their own way of looking at things.But i wonder how much of these metaphors adds relevance for a common man, given that a post gets successful if it attracts non-voracious readers from all corners of the planet. And by no means the post are meant to be people specific who share a common latitude. Irrespective of the various analogies cited, they tend to converge at some point while trying to address the core. Continuing on the 2nd example cited, a software developer may try to map the mental picture of an unbalanced person with a complicated algorithm involving a descent hierarchy of data structure. A market guy may talk in language of economics whereas a biologist will possibly use Darwin's theory for a lucid analogy. But the bottom line is that these multi-faceted analogies do indeed have the same soul and are in perfect harmony with each other as they share the same seed of thought.

Cold War 2

This morning i read a statement which goes like this: "There exists never a good enough reason to cause a fight between two entities no matter how close or opposing they are. ...Justice should be granted such that both parties should be satisfied at the end." I have been following the RG conflict. I call Russia Georgia tussle a kind of recombination-generation mechanism. Georgia is a tiny democracy a spin off from soviet and is under US shield. Russia is adopting a rationale of protecting the small states to kill Georgia's dominance. The world saviour US is poking fingers over the issue to ensure smooth passage of oil from Caspian to west. The missile shield from US to be implemented in Poland is a plagiarized version of star wars and is yet too far from implementation. The world is again heading for the Cold war era and this time the situation is more perilous. The non-US forces may come together and given that all are potential nuclear players, the I-day will not be too far.

a slice of Cynism

Myriads of problems to look into and striving for something more is what drives people to get cynical. The rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer and the divide gets broadening. Somehow i am getting a feeling that the world is heading for a famine looking at the example of Zimbabwe.(as per reports a sandwich sells there for 30 million Zimbabwe dollars) Same is the case with Afghanistan where you have to shell out approx. 400L local currency for having food in a good restaurant. The fossil fuels are depleting and prices soaring every other day. What will be the fate of oil stacked nations after their reserves gets depleted? Given all these will be there until the dooms day, how are we going to cope with it. Most of my concerns are for the generations to come...

Other examples where i find some similarity is economic bubbles in various markets. For instance the US housing bubble or the .com bubble in 90s. The control lied in the hands of few individuals and the whole system collapsed as soon as it was made generic. The steel industry now is going through a golden phase and thanks to 2008 Olympics. The whole supply chain is making good bucks out of this fiasco. But how long? After some years, there will not be any mountains, no forests, the rivers will change their path and many more turbulence to set in...

Winds of Change

From the presentation 'An Inconvenient Truth' a statement reverberates in mind most of the time: its easy and most obvious for people go from denial phase to a break down phase while forgetting to peep into the intermediate state which asks them to think differently. It long time since my last blog and now i understand how time can eat up one's enthusiasm unless you are not possessive about it. All these days i have scanned thoroughly all the FM channels getting myself goofed up with different flavors of music starting from Pink Floyd Linkin park Guns N roses to latest Hindi tracks and oldies as well. Man i curse myself for not being able to distinguish Kishore from Manna De and i was under a deep misconception. Now i have learnt to enjoy the voice of singers like Bhupinder and Manohar udhas. Good to see my Hindi dictionary piling up! My boss gives me a puzzled look whenever he finds me in office during late evenings. I succumbed to it after playing hide and seek with him for some time and this has resulted in a time table shift in my daily activities. The monsoons have set in, the grass is green, grasshopper chanting, and the daffodils swaying away in the cool breeze. All these along with a cup of tea makes a holistic view from my terrace and energizes me for the day.

Fourth One

The three passives Resistance Capacitance and the inductance forms the pillar of basic electrical circuits. With the discovery of Memristor the fourth one, the circuit basics has to be re understood. People say it can explain the broken link between electric charge and magnetic flux and have realized by introducing defects into the titanium dioxide crystal. To put it simply the titanium dioxide crystal lattice is very sensitive to the applied voltage which excites the dopants to move and thereby changing the resistance. (Dopants are basically impurities added to the insulator which alters their crystal structure and makes them suitable for conducting current). So when we use it next time, it will start with its previous crystal arrangement and thus has a memory feature. This is a good news both for memory and signal processing world. The circuit basics has to be revisited and the common man should be able to plug its properties into basic circuit theorems and be able to validate it. Till date nobody felt the need of such device except memory and thus it opens various area to explore. The challenging part would be to invent new application for this device which can reach out to people.We have to wait and watch how much of it is yield friendly and its appetite to shrink. Given all the things gets going as per predictions, the circuit design activities will see a new dawn and many more concepts will get invented.

Ack: News of Invention of a new device at HP labs in 2008
Initial findings of the same by L.O Chua at UCB way back in 1971

All time highs

Real life do go through a series of crest and trough. Now its already thirty past seven and i am applauding myself(perhaps this is my only business) for playing a blame game with my solaris machine for the whole day. My circuits are not that big, even then my simulations are taking hell lot of time and i am being accused of brutality. At the end of the day i find a few loyal aficionados waiting for my design to perform miracles. But had it not been the machine then it would certainly be the turn of my circuit to dump my intellect. My circuits are like pretty girls who are always in the process of eternal soul searching, and thus passing on their feasibility from one hands to another. Suddenly you find yourself in a deep shit and none of the worldly phenomenon do come to your rescue. This is where you start to believe in the concept of 'maya' as explained in Bhagwad Gita and you become a staunch Philosopher. Most of the time it helps but in some cases you have to resort to biology as the last option. You get to argue that metabolism has gone unstable and hormonal disorder has killed both your expertise and your circuit. The experts whose opinion were much awaited,too talk on the same wavelength and the good part of it is the dynamics flows on your side.

Green Dishes

Couple of days i was gifted with an opportunity to explore northern parts of the country. The place is green and hopefully will retain its colour till the real estate boom explodes. The roads are wider but i am quite nervous in riding as the public doesn't adhere to the rules. Forgot to mention that dishes served here are also in green(still i miss sambhar,idli and utthapam) and the motto being to keep the surroundings green. The day time has been a nightmare for me due to scorching heat. The common saying is Sun God adopts a Gaussian profile starting from April till July. So i am yet to face the peak. But then a cool breeze in the evening soothes my skin and a bruised heart.Needless to mention that the language in this region is like a fringed benefit and Eco-friendly buses make my transport more pleasurable.

Art of Netting

A long vacation indeed and one of the many ways to beat out the heat is to mimic the aquatic life. Much of the inspiration was drawn from the adventures of Pi. The day started with the idea of hunting fish on stagnant waters and gathering a group of people to carry out the activity. I too joined them with a big fishing net made up of fine threads and decorated with wooden pulps and stones. The stones for keeping them in tact with ground and the pulps to give them a direction. The water channel was tapered and L shaped, it was quite difficult to maneuver the net in those topographies, and to add to it the ground beneath the water was uneven and rocky. Five of us got aligned on a straight line and i had to keep myself at one extreme so that i don't have to land into uneven surface and deep waters. We adjusted ourselves to cover the entire width of the water channel and we started to move towards the other end. The guys in the middle had to dive deep to ensure the stones at the bottom don't get stuck and has to be synchronous with the pulp movement. We could see small fishes escaping to the other sides as soon as they find a gap, but the bigger ones had to succumb to the fine net. Some where in the middle we found the water depth is more than the net height, where a large number of fish happily escaped through a good clearance.The adventure went on for three hours and finally we managed to reach the other end of the channel.

Sophomore Year

Virtually i am on a cusp of change and there is no scope for having a second thought on where i should land my foot. Theoritically i am falling from a cliff and yet to bang on the surface and the good part is still i am in mid air and waiting for some miracle to happen like a parachute coming to my rescue or earth losing it gravitation and i may move upward. A time ideal for freaking out the whole day and i am not missing a single ball of the Commonwealth series.

Territorial Ambush

Some days back i was watching an episode of Wild Africa on the perpetual clashes between the Elephants and Lions in Kalahari desert. They showed how the kid elephant was taken care of by the seniors in spite of a continuous threat from a equally competitive species. Survival of the fittest has been the basic law of universe. This very act has propelled the human beings to stand out at the edge of the cliff of evolution leaving behind others stranded at the bottom. It has been the brain over brawn game so far and it is likely to continue until some alien predators dethrones us or some super natural calamity takes the evolution engine further. Going by this ideology, all the lives on earth has a strong binding for their own territory. A stray dog barks at a stranger not to push him to trepidation but to keep it's territory under control. There had been calculations to prove that particular species can tolerate a certain amount of distance from their enemy, after which either they retaliate or they fleet. The notion behind this action is reoccupying the lost territory and hope for a better and a safer life. In the words of Pi Patel, to tame a lion one has to convince the creature about the area allocation and has to maintain a super-alpha personality before it. The moment you slip to to beta you can be a delicious prey. The same phenomenon can be found among the human species. The callisthenic activities of militants in various corners of the world,the war torn Afghanistan, the Jewish island fighting the enemies, the guns of Somalia etc are few of the obvious testimonials.At a personal level, a man can do wonders with his zested efforts as long as he hasn't stepped beyond his comfort zone. But the moment he is made to feel unsecure, it becomes absolutely imperative for him to change track and draw himself to a safer berth thereby resolidifying his stance.

Healthy Habbits

There is nothing like maintaining a healthy life even though filthy animals runs our brain machine. Below is a short summary for being a happier and a bulkier person we always wanted to be. The timings but not the recommendations are plagiarized from a forwarded mail chain. The blogger is not courageous enough to take up the responsibility for any suspicious behaviour of the body parts if any as a consequence of adhering to these points. Please read at your own risk:
Wake up in between 3AM -5AM to breathe sufficient fresh air,Complete your bath in cold water between 5AM-7AM to ensure that chilled water has made you robust enough for the day, have your breakfast by 9AM and get back to your daily dose of work and don't even bother about food for the next four hours. Lunch is ready and be done with it by 3PM. A small amount of sincere yawning is not a crime at this point of time.The afternoon session may demand some nicotinized beverages which one should succumb to for keeping the motivation at its peak. The next two hours are going to be relaxing moments of the day, when you are heading home after a hectic timetable. Make sure you don't miss the sun changing its colour and disappearing into caves on high hills. Have your supper and get yourself busy with your hobbies till 9PM. The much awaited moment comes where you have a moonlight walk with your loved ones or soft discussions on a terrace. Talk philosophy, talk religion,talk love , talk anything that will heal you for the day. Clock strikes 11 and time to sleep to energize you for the next day.

The assumptions are quite optimistic and i believe one will require no rocket science to evolve his daily habits.

Sacred Virgin

This new year i got to spend with a non-ephemeral beauty, the one who filled my emotional cavity and each moment was very satisfying.Yes i am talking about Aamir Khan's 'Taare Zameen Par' a movie of it's own kind and i couldn't stop my eyes from being wet and my emotions thralled.A common man may call them(master and disciple duo) desperadoes because he himself is limited by his parochial concerns and being not good enough to puzzle those idiosyncrasies in them. A Child's dream was about to be crushed by his family, his neighbours, and his teachers who keep on trying with their frantic efforts. But then the child's mentor comes and pulls him up from his wreckages and in due time becomes a sentinel for others.The scenes are very touchy indeed.

This movie will always remain fresh in my mind. To force something on child is no different from child abuse and the parental advices have taken a toll on the child's thinking.A part of it can be due to generation gap where the youth of today wants no boundaries and part of it due to parent's rational of making their child grow in their ways. This movie has been a new experiment to address the perennial problem and i am sure people who have watched it must have come up with some inchoate ideas to deal with it.