Happy New Year!

I know its a bit late to say Happy new year, but there you have it.
A(nother) year has passed by. A new set of sheets on the wall.
What have we achieved over the past 365 days, what we vow to achieve over the next, resolutions, commitments, dreams what not. We feel quite a lot has happened over the past 'year' and some sigh there are more of them to come.

You'd have read about how insignificant we are in this vast universe. How we are a tiny speck in the starry chaos of space. Everything is relative. So if a multi story building appears so large to us but our Earth itself is a dot in space, what about a 'year' long year? It is.

Brahma, the Creator according to Hinduism lives a 100 years of His own time. And He is the 1st Day of his 51st year. His daily routine? Create the world at dawn. Destroy it at night. Pretty boring uh? Not that we know how to 'create' things. I guess विरिन्चि amuses Himself watching us go about our years as His time passes in trutis.

Lets have a closer look at His 'day', known as a Kalpa.
A kalpa is 4.32 billion years. It consists of 1000 mahayugas.
A kalpa is followed by a pralaya or the Night of Brahma which is of equal length.
A mahayuga consists of the four yugas as many of us have learnt; The Kreta (or Satya), Treta, Dwapara and the Kali. The naming is quite meaningful in that the first syllable in them are from the main syllable of Chatur, Threya, Dwa and Eka. The ratios of the yugas are also 4:3:2:1. This ration denotes the length of the yugas in charanas.; i.e Kali is 1 charana long and Satya is 4 charanas long. These yugas are like seasons, where the mix of good and evil changes as time passes. One way to look at it is to say, in the earliest time people are either 100% good or 100% bad, as time progresses you get a mix! Also, people or earlier times are said to be so close to God that they didn't need temples.

A Day of Brahma is also divided into 14 manvantare or manvantaras. In all there are 14*71 (=994) mahayugas in a Day. Each of this 14 is followed by a Sandhi Kala, and the Day starts with a Adi Sandhi, both of which are equal in length to the length of 4 charanas. Hence, 4*15 charanas = 60 = 6*10 = 6 mahayugas. Thus, a Kalpa is 10,000 charanas!

Each manvantara has a designated Manu king (his lifetime is equal to the length of this period); he is also responsible in writing the laws thus applicable called Manu Smriti. the Saptarishis, Indra. As always the case with Hinduism, these Days and 1/14s have names too! We are currenly in the Svetavaraha Kalpa and the Vaivaswatha Manu (7th) and the 28th mahayuga of the current manu. The lifetime of Brahma is 100 years (365 kalpas). Since half of it has gone by, the second half is called Dvitheeya parardha.

The purpose of the manu rajas is to sustain the cycle of creation (Srishti). Time, according to Hindu philosophy is an endless cycle of creation and destruction. Why? Nobody knows. Perhaps there is no destination. As they say, the journey is the reward. Is this true? Could be. Often has Hinduism surprised the scientific world. Does the 100 years of Brahma denote his lifetime or his service time, is not clear. However, after 100 years of His, there is a period of identical length where nothing exists! What a life! I guess this cycle is the bigger version of our own lives where we see quite a lot of cycles both in nature and in the artificial world.

We can continue to wish Brahma "belated happy birthday" everyday and we will be just a 'day' late. I think we should be excused given the fact we weren't there on his last birthday.

Happy living!

PS: I wonder what He had for breakfast...
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A Tribute to Daffy Duck

I've always liked cartoons that were on TV when I was a kid. Today's kids are unlucky in my opinion. The ones during our (assuming you are the same group as mine) times were a real treat. Tom & Jerry, Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner Show, Sylvester and Tweety, Dexter's Laboratory, Daffy Duck and so many more. How do Kim Possible, Ben 10, Naruto or Pokeman compare to them?

Even though they were toons, they were closer to reality. With a tad of impossibility for humour and themes you could relate to. Overall a great way to pass time and relax.

Over the past few months, I've been getting nostalgic with the cartoons of our age.They would appear on my desktop background or IM display image. I've been stuck with Daffy for a long time now.

The thing that stuck me about Daffy, is his character; the way he always tries to control things to his advantage and ends up making a fool of himself. The way he is cunning, eccentric, self-centred and a bit vile sometimes. Managing to goof up everything he plans, never learning from his clumsy work and yet being comical will forever be etched in my mind. Perhaps, he was a success (as a cartoon character that sold) because people were able to relate to his demeanour and less because of his rant and the insolent laughter.

Later on in Daffy's career, he was placed along with Bugs Bunny. The cartoon was now more enticing than ever. Daffy's greedy, aggressive manner was a stark contrast to Bugs' thinking, cool disposition. I simply love the combination. One episode with "Duck season! (R)Wabbit season!" is quite unforgettable for me.

Yet, beyond all this, it was one particular picture of Daffy that makes me so attached to it. It has been my profile pic on orkut (ya, I know that's violating rules!) and my desktop background on my system at work. It is very true that a picture speaks a thousand words; this one tells everything about Daffy. Everything I've said above, and more. Here it is:

you're despicable!

This pic has been a morale booster, kind of an inspiration. I love you Daffy! You shall remain my 'avatar' forever! (Hope Warner Bros Looney Toons don't sue me).


PS: This is totally irrelevant to the post, but I just added some fish to my blog. Please feed them! :)

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Glitch or gibberish?

Here's an interesting case of how iPhone can jeopardize marriages. A friend forwarded this in a mail. Its a case of how a husband took a "raunchy" picture of himself and mailed it to some female. While his 'Sent Items' claims this, the guy claims it is an iPhone bug! So the wife, who doesn't want to believe him, but still is open to it being iPhone's fault, got onto Apple discussion forums and decided to ask people. This is what followed.

I do wonder what happened to the couple and feel sorry for that female. Personally, I don't think this is a real iPhone bug, however, I did notice something very similar can be done with Thunderbird (my favourite mail client). Similar in the sense of getting a mail in your Sent folder or (Inbox itself) that you never sent! See screencast below: Sorry folks, I couldn't embed the screencast here, If you're interested, you can see here (SWF).

Here's what I did. I have two mail accounts set up on TBird, Gmail and my work email. Now, I select some random mail from one of the accounts (say gmail) and drag-drop it inside my work email's inbox. Now, my gmail (webmail) account shows the same mail as if it was sent to the account. Of course, the 'To' address field hasn't been modified, but it looks identical to case of being in 'Bcc' when the mail was sent.

I don't think this feature can affect businesses (though it is quite easy to modify the 'To' etc fields using some software) however, it can be used as jokes on your friends or if you want to cut out someone from your life....

Coming back to the troubled lady's case, I have shown that these things can be made to happen but I do not know what the chances of all these happening on its own are. But its not impossible; improbable but not impossible.

Update: The husband seems to have gone as far as creating a new account on Apple Discussions to reply to his 'wife' that he (ie some 3rd person) has also experienced similar problems :P
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Education!

Arun, I disagree with you! You can tell your cop about it and make him happy!

The Indian education system rocks! The purpose of education is to get one geared up to face the problems of day-to-day life!

I realized this today after I fixed my wardrobe. Since the recent rains, the drawers in them had gone a bit moist (No. My house ain't leaking, it was general moisture in the corner of my room) and the screws came loose. I had to spend more time pushing the drawer back in the right direction than doing what it was opened for! This is when my carpentry skills kicked in!! Thanks to the esteemed Anna University and its prescribed syllabus for the first semester, I could easily wield the hammer, nails, screws and screwdrivers!

The thought that my education had helped me had come afterwards. Immediately after this, I had visual recollections of my first semester Workshop lab viva voce. Mr.Muniraj (name changed for my privacy), gently took the steel ruler from my hands and checked if I had ever bothered reading the backside. He asked me, "How many centimetres to an inch?" "2.54 sir" "sure? 2.54 or 2.5400?" (because that how it was printed on the ruler) "they're the same sir (smile)" "good good. tell me, why are you doing carpentry and welding? you are a computer science student no?" "[er because AU made my dad spend so that I could make a living] because, sir, I am an engineer and an engineer should have knowledge of everything [,even clean drainages perhaps?]" "ver-ry good!! you can go".

Now I regret having had thoughts like that. Atleast I didn't speak them...
Now that carpentry proved useful, how else was education useful?
Back in school, my cousin was taught how to use Star Office. Now, he's using the skills he developed from school, to help his professor type of lectures, documents etc and he's making a living! (I guess many of the MS in US people are doing much the same)

And then, it was at school where we learnt to do C++ program for Fibonacci series program, it helped me clear my job interview!
Happy learning!

PS: Do share any such experiences in the comments!
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Intrepid Ibex

in·trep·id ɪnˈtrɛpɪd/ - [in-trep-id] :

–adjective
resolutely fearless; dauntless: an intrepid explorer.

-synonyms
brave, courageous, bold.

i·bex [ahy-beks]:

–noun, plural i·bex·es, ib·i·ces [ib-uh-seez, ahy-buh-]
any of several wild goats of the genus Capra, inhabiting mountainous regions of Eurasia and North Africa, having long, recurved horns.

Ubuntu has always followed this naming scheme; adjective followed by some animal. The past releases, in reverse order, were Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gibbon, Feisty Fawn, Edgy Eft, Dapper Drake. Each release has a gap of approximately 6 months between them. The version numbers are, derived from the year and the month of release. For example, Ibex will be 2008.10.30.


Intrepid is officially releasing on 30th Oct 2008. Below is a count(down)er (and the primary purpose of this post)



I've been using Ubuntu since Dapper and have found it a more than satisfactory substitute OS to M$'s windoz. And its always got better since then. Do give it a shot. You can even pre-order a free CD here. (Please. Please. Don't make an order unless you know what you're going to do with it or not going to do anything at all. But it is worth a try)

The naming is quite appropriate. Especially, comparing it with an Ibex. These are Mark Shuttleworth's own words:

During the 8.10 cycle we will be venturing into interesting new
territory, and we'll need the rugged adventurousness of a mountain
goat to navigate tricky terrain. Our desktop offering will once
again be a focal point as we re-engineer the user interaction model
so that Ubuntu works as well on a high-end workstation as it does on
a feisty little subnotebook. We'll also be reaching new peaks of
performance - aiming to make the mobile desktop as productive as
possible.

A notable improvement will be pervasive internet access. Wherein you can roam(like a goat does) while Ubuntu automatically hooks onto whatever bandwidth is available across different wireless technologies. Also, what's special about this release is that a developer conference played a key role in drawings its blue print; There has been a sudden burst of contribution through this conference, from artists and developers to translators and advocates.

On why this release is important to me. I currently have Hardy, incrementally upgraded from Feisty. There have been too many packages installed, improperly removed, broken etc in them. I've been waiting for this release to start anew with Ubuntu. I'm planning a minimal install which will help my box's humble computing power. :-)

My friend Vishal, who's been trying Ubuntu beta releases for the past two, says he's pretty happy with what he sees and recommends it for people switching to GNU/Linux.

I welcome Ibex!

PS: The next release Jaunty Jackalope is expected to give Ubuntu users a jaunty boot up experience! w00t!!
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Not guilty!

To hell with Uleadin and his post!

I spent half an hour going through my comments; counting them.

This is what I've found,

Post	Female : Male commentators
Its a dog's life	3:2
Early Bird Gets the Worm	2:1
How to...Why is...	4:3
Petrol - The Elixir of Life!	2:3
Idiot Totalica	4:1
The Uncertainty Principle	3:6
Firefox 3 - The best yet!	3:4
False fueling	2:4
Open Sesame	3:3
A New Unit of Fuel Efficiency	4:3
Orion	1:2
A collage of phrases and idioms	1:2
A trip down the IT high(and low) way...	1:2
ATM - Automatic Turn-off by Microsoft	3:11

That totals to 36:47. 36 females to 47 males commenting on my blog! Hail statistics!

Looking at them however, I haven't got too many comments per post. Sigh.
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Its a dog's life

I used to drive to work on OMR daily. Often, I find a stubborn pile of rubbish in the middle of the road; on closer inspection it invariably turned out to be a dog. Run over. Squashed. Dead.

Its quite a gory sight, mind. Many a times you'd find their guts pushed out or even massacred beyond recognition. I have never seen it actually happen, though am sure it would have been terrible for them. The thing is, I have been taking the OMR for over 4 years now and have noticed such accidents only since they started with the new road. It was quite understandable when only one side of the road was usable, but on a road broader than ECR...that's bad!

Whom do we blame? Drunk drivers? Sleepless cleaners driving? Racing enthusiasts? Or the dogs?

What's worse is, I don't see the Corporation or Municipality removing the carcass. Even the scavenging crows don't get a chance with vehicles zipping past every second. Wonder what diseases it can spread....Of what I've noticed, the body is run over and over by vehicles, until its totally worn off and vanishes from the road...uuggghh...however, a few days later, the spot is spot-less!

I have never seen anyone hit-and-run a dog, neither do I want to. But lets be safe on the road, its not just humans who are involved in accidents. After all, its a dog's life...
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