6 Billion++ and counting

How many times do you look at yourself in the mirror and ask the question: What am I here for? What is the point? What am I supposed to achieve?

Why are we here? Have you tried to answer that? Did you find an answer?

Truth is, my friend, consider yourself lucky to ask these questions and even contemplate answering them. Most people do not have the time to do that. Most people are busy, just busy.

If you are reading this, you are either thinking right now that either people are pointless, or I am just a crazy self-righteous person who has a lowly vision about humanity. You are wrong either way. What I mean is that most people in the world are struggling for survival, nothing more, and nothing less. Simply surviving.

You would have thought that by now, humans should have evolved enough to not worry about basic survival anymore. We are, except for a few "very few" trapped in the spiral of survival. If you pick random human being right now, he/she is most probably:

- living in some city slum
- working in a sweatshop
- Enslaved in one way or another in the so called modern world.
- working from dusk till dawn for a heartless organization to feed his/her family.

Tell me, how would the higher questions on existence matter to us? After all, we are just enslaved by the very systems that we have created and are part of.

They say you cannot think with an empty stomach. Yes ...Amen to that... And whoever is reading this. Count your blessings coz you really are blessed just by being able to read this.

I cannot pretend to know the answer to any of the existence questions, no one can, but what I know is that we should start helping our human race. And what better way to start than to better yourself and the family you have? It is no easy task.

New Hobby

Of late, I am taking a liking for golf. There is something so entertaining in this game that I cannot put my finger on. Well, thanks to the encouragement from my wife and the help of my friends, I have managed to get into the game.

Still in the learning phase though as it takes some time to get the correct swing and feel for the ball. Though it is an expensive undertaking, I am loving every minute spent on the green. Even managed to score some good points in a few "very few" holes. Soon, hopefully, I will do my handicap score.

INTJ

My personality test, again and again. Surprising though how negative this description is:

quote:

"loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, not very altruistic, not very complimentary, would rather be friendless than jobless, observer, values solitude, perfectionist, detached, private, not much fun, hidden, skeptical, does not tend to like most people, socially uncomfortable, not physically affectionate, unhappy, does not talk about feelings, hard to impress, analytical, likes esoteric things, tends to be pessimistic, not spontaneous, prone to discontentment, guarded, does not think they are weird but others do, responsible, can be insensitive or ambivalent to the misfortunes of others, orderly, clean, organized, familiar with darkside, tends not to value organized religion, suspicious of others, can be lonely, rarely shows anger, punctual, finisher, prepared"

Then again, it is true!

I am always the one who understands villain characters in movies, only to discover that most are INTJ. From mad scientists to dictators, all are INTJ. My favorite philosopher; yes!! You guessed it Nietzche

quote:

"Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!"

from: Zarathustra's Prologue

To All peeps I DO NOT CARE About

Pages of Time

Sitting, waiting, contemplating things past and things to come. I recall a phrase that I could not point my finger where I heard it from.

"What happened happened and could not have happened any other way"

So many trains of thought keep taking me back again to the age old debate of fate vs freewill. Are we all just a page in a story that is read over and over again, or do we have control over our destiny. Perhaps this is a paradox in our universe. A universe where we encounter infinities inside things finite.

Every once in a while, we are slapped with a deja-vu situation. Could it be an echo of fate? Or just The pages of the story leaking backwards.

I would like to believe there is reason to all this, at the same time I do believe that this reason cannot be found within this universe. How could a subject trapped in a box know what is on the outside? Perhaps he does not have to know? Maybe all he needs is just belief?

To me, the tug of fate is stronger than that of freewill. Freewill is fading away into an illusion, created to keep us from going insane.

Morons go Unpunished (spaghetti code)

What do you do with a colleague “programmer” who is just useless?

What do you do when you are asked to add a certain feature and stumble upon brilliant code like the above?

What do you do when people around you are totally blind to see such blaspheme?

What do you do when the alarms you raise go unheard because no one cares?

Bull Finish

Managed to do it a few times (today was one), but finishing a 501 with a bull is not easy. You get one and only one shot at it and it's gone if missed. The clip below shows one by Phil Taylor, with a twist. Watch and you will not be disappointed.

Recursive Creation

As a programmer, I often find myself creating recursive algorithms in order to achieve complex operations otherwise infinitely complex to solve. The beauty of recursion is the simplicity and brevity of the code needed to get a very complex result.

We often stand in awe and wonder before the life we see around us, how complex things are, how sophisticated and fine-tuned the universe and creation is. Mankind has been trying to make sense of it all postulating theories upon theories about life and creation. It is only recently, with the invention of computing, did we discover the power of recursion and the fractal nature of complex systems.

However, we are still only beginning to scratch the surface of this matter. One day we will be able to comprehend how it works and how it is all connected together. From how a mountain range or a cloud takes its shape to how a DNA molecule can unravel “recursively” to become a living being.

I believe that Mathematics is truly the programming language of creation, recursion being a tool to producing its infinite complexity and beauty.

Schrödinger equation and Freak Waves

Plato was the one who said that Necessity is the mother of invention. That held true at his time, and still holds true until today. It is also true that the general attitude of human beings is to believe and be happy with short term solutions to immediate problems, even if they actually cause more problems in the long run.

In this blog post, I will take a very unique example of this and how eventually we cracked a mystery. It is about the phenomena called: "Freak Waves".

For so long, sailors have spoken about waves as high as 30 meters destroying ships in the ocean. This was dismissed as being a myth. Even scientists were so believing in their theories, claiming that the probability of such waves occurring is almost zero. Eventually, and only when the shipping industry was being effected did scientists worked it out and discovered that their theory was wrong all along and that normal waves in the ocean follow the Schrödinger wave equation.

Schrodinger equation predicted the distribution of actual results. Below is a BBC documentary about Freak waves. If you have the time, please watch all 5 parts and discover this very interesting phenomena in nature.

Greed and ipad service plans

Today, I decided to cut my mini sim card to a micro sim card. The procedure is quite a simple one that involves a printed template and a scissor. Here is a link to the template I used. I am using this micro-sim for the ipad as it only accepts micro sim cards.

One might wonder why would anyone do this? why not change it or buy another micro sim subscription plan for the ipad. The answer, sadly, is that cell phone companies are so greedy that they charge at least triple the price for an ipad micro sim card subscription. Further research led me to conclude that the reason for this micro-sim card is not solely for saving space, but for having different subscription plans. AT&T had a hand in the decision that the ipad uses this new standard.

Thankfully, a simple search online led me to discover that the micro-sim card has exactly the same connectors as the normal mini-sim card. One has to only trim the edges a little for it to fit in the ipad/iphone tray. I guess greed has a way of turning back onto itself.

PEOPLE ARE NOT STUPID!!! HEAR THAT SERVICE PROVIDERS!!!

AC

Humans are so easily swayed. They tend to be subjective and view the world through their own narrow vision. It takes time for people to realize the true scope of things and the value of other people around them.

Do not put high hopes on getting instant reward, most probably; you would get your reward when it is too late. This entry is inspired by the genius of the past century who made it all possible. An eccentric visionary who saw it all, but was never understood. He died in his hotel apartment forgotten by the rest of the world, a world that owes him the very essence that makes it modern. His ideas and inventions were so revolutionary and ahead of his time that they are still being deciphered until this day and re-invented by others.

All respect and appreciation to the mighty genius who lit our world:
NOKOLA TESLA ( 1856 - 1943)

The Colors Of Infinity

In the world we are living in at the moment, with all the wars and misery, let us take a short timeout to appreciate the Elegance of creation. Take some time to reflect on the beauty of the things we see around us, and how we all are connected with simplicity beyond Imagination that can only be described as a miracle.

Journey of a snowflake

Sitting on my desk flicking Jango Fett’s wobbling head, a snowflake caught my attention and thoughts started rushing through my mind. Thoughts of how beautiful snow is falling from the a cloudy sky outside my window. How no two flakes are alike, how no two clouds are alike?

Memories of silence in the falling snow in the mountain interrupted by the sound of my shoes compressing the snow beneath. No smells, no stuffy air, just vapor fumes blowing out my mouth, the feel of the cold soft polished metal held in my hand. Scanning the serene landscape, I spot movement in the snow laden tree far ahead. My prey is going around its business unheeding calls of its impending doom; I crouch low to the ground, moving stealthily for optimal range.

Waiting as its hops around the branches, can only have one shot; one small air propelled lead pallet is all it takes. Silence... breathing slowly, feeling my heart beating in my chest. Taking aim.... hearing the soft flutter of its wings as it hops onto an exposed branch, following it with the scope waiting for that second ……

Jango’s wobbling head stopped; "back to reality", I am confronted with the code in front of me. In those few moments I was somewhere else, somewhere, away from the sound of the heater fans, away from the stench of the stagnant air. All because of a snowflake, that one unique snowflake that struck my double glazed static window.

Yes, no two flakes are alike, we are just like that: One unique snowflake on its way to meet its destiny. Enjoy the journey because that is all we have.

Life and Code

Digging through pages and pages of endless code is no different than going through life.

Sometimes those jumbled pieces of text make more sense to me than so many elements in real life.

In this blog, I will try to express my opinions and views in life, as well as experiences to be shared. I might not be a good writer but I will try my best to assemble my thoughts and ideas on paper just like I do in programming.