ThePanda

It is a happy week even though I have been unproductive for most of it. There however are observations to be made, and observations I shall make…

Buying and cooking salmon steaks is probably not the best way to save money by not going out, it provides a sumptuous meal, which would probably cost far more on the outside, but hmm well as long as you’re trying to save money you might as well compare it with things you would normally eat, and it is about as expensive as eating out.

Cooking in general is fun when done with friends, though on an empty college campus, without friends it depends very much on how you react. Hence in general planning to cook for Spring Break might be a lot more effective than deciding to cook for Thanksgiving, when everyone who can go home, goes home.

If you do decide to cook, you probably want a Swiss Army knife (could tell you this while I was back home), however if you are truly up to it, buying one of those big kitchen knife sets (don’t have one) is probably better.

Sure Olive Oil is good for your heart and stuff, but you probably should not be extending a certain amount of it per food type.

Horror movies in general are not always nice, crappy horror movies are both not nice, and not scary, making them a long object lesson in why you probably shouldn’t be watching a certain movie or a certain genre of movies. Flatliners is perhaps the only such movie I have watched before making this allegation, but seeing it once was enough.

If your math professor mentions the words drunk/tired, John Conway, and calendar in the same sentence you should probably get perked up to receive awfully fun way to link days and dates encoded in the lines of a not bad poem.

Above mentioned words are probably not the best way to attract prefrosh with parents, but the decision is still out about prefrosh who come in alone.

Spring Break is a bad time to visit college campuses as a prefrosh, especially if it is pouring cats and dogs, hell I didn’t have a good impression of Providence earlier today when it was raining as if there was no end to it, and all my poor clothes were getting or at least feeling wet (ya, you see my jacket was not letting any water through, but my t-shirt still felt wet), and well as discussed with most people who visited colleges, the weather makes a big impact on future decisions to attend colleges, as does the number of people in a campus…

Umbrellas are way better at keeping you dry as compared to a waterproof jacket. It took me many a year to realize this, but there are things for which you just can’t use a waterproof jacket, or rather you could use them, but there are chances that you’d end up being wet, or feeling wet at the very least.

Confusing friends in nameless blog entries is übber easy, clearing out the mess, often not, so make sure you know who you are writing about before writing, more importantly be sure to somehow indicate in round-about convoluted terms who it is you may be writing about, so that people would be able to assign probability values, and probably not make a mistake (whew).

Have said this before, will say this again: sleeping bags are useful while in college.

Spring Break is nice because more people stay, than do at Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is nice because the weather is (not) better than it is now.

When it rains as if the monsoons are here, and you’re not in one of those places which are affected by the monsoons annually, acting like it is the monsoons is not a bad idea, even if actions and coordinates may not completely match.

Pouches are called fanny packs in North America for some reason, probably similar to why aluminium is called aluminum, and it is really quite frustrating to step into a store looking for a pouch only to have people give you weird looks.

Carrying pouches from home is a good idea if you own a Game Boy, or even if you don’t, regretting not carrying one is a common occurrence and should not cause much discomfort.

That’s about all, my bags are packed, I leave for New York early tomorrow morning, and will be out of contact for a while, probably until late evening on Saturday…

Ze Panda

I hope I post this before I leave for New York, New York deserves a post of its own, too much has been planned, and it could be fun, well it should be fun, the problem is it is New York, and while there’s much to do, much of it is too expensive, much of it depends on things being open while we are there (3 days), and other such things. New York though, hmm should be fun, and well I get to see a little of New Jersey, and bah, should be relaxing, and not boring unlike thanksgiving.

I walked for a while with my abstract algebra professor, actually talking to him, for what is probably the first time in this semester. It is surprising, I knew the man from the land of the kangaroos and had talked to him before shopping period was over, I was perhaps one of the first people, referred to by name in class, I knew and had spoken to TFB within a day of arriving in Providence, but I have not spoken to the abal professor in half a semester. Why is that you ask, hmm well I don’t know, I guess I have been intimidated by him most of the semester, with not nice results. During the first two or so weeks, I was intimidated by the fact that everyone else in the class had taken a dozen math courses, and knew all about linear algebra, and I was the stupid freshman who had not taken any linal and was in there to somehow complete prereqs for the CS crypto course. It is something I have often felt while being here, people have done so much more than me, they talk about things in a more sophisticated manner (honestly they do, I don’t understand the words in some people’s math proofs, though I am sure I did the same thing, and well as the man from the land of kangaroos has been telling us, words are essentially all we are learning in linal), and well I don’t want to be found as the impostor who probably shouldn’t be here, I guess it’s a lot like the Brown syndrome I wrote to a friend about, a few days ago. But ya, today he gave out the papers, and though I hadn’t done horrendously, I would have liked to have done better, but nevertheless, I had this feeling that we have been sticking to commutative rings all along, and seeing as abelian groups were probably the least important of our discussions in group theory, I find this emphasis on commutative rings weird, and essentially I discovered we’re not going to do much of non-commutative rings, since we’ll do some amount of fields instead, though the book carries information on it, and we’re doing near about half the book.

Something happened a few days ago, or at least n > 1 days ago, involving a friend of mine, it’s a good thing, that much I know, but that is about it, and I am expected to be curious. I can see myself caring about it some time ago, it is a close friend, and the fact that people have been selectively been told about it, would usually have intrigued me, because I generally don’t believe in telling a certain subsegment of my friends when I know people would be discussing about it, and we had this discussion while at the Gate earlier. But I am not, and that is interesting and not really, I am strangely disconnected, I haven’t been this disconnected with somethings ever, but I am now, and I am not completely sure whether it’s a good thing or not. Now it is not entirely about this, because I can see why I am not intrigued by this, we have been growing apart as friends because of an incident involving the both of us a few weeks ago, I did something stupid, and I guess he was a lot more sensitive to it than I imagined, and umm ya things went weird, so this I guess is understandable, but no in general, I am strangely unaffected by things, I am unaffected by calls requesting me to act as a map, unaffected by discussions of helping people, disconnected by things which would have made me act earlier, and I honestly don’t know why. Hell I am disconnected from some of my own work, I sit through classes, watching things happening, understanding stuff, but not finding things I found funny as funny, I ask weird things only so I can see how professor’s explain it. I am tired I guess, which makes sense, I would love to have a few days off and not have to worry about stupid things, I would love to not have to worry about what homework is due when, and about paper proposals, and how my not coming up with an appropriate experiment affects my lab partner, and I guess it would be funnier, and more interesting after spring break, but I have a feeling I am drifting away from at least some people, and a lot of it is because I am partially disconnected, both literally and figuratively. How many weeks has it been since I went on MSN, how many weeks has it been since I spoke to my friend in Canada, or anyone back home, with the exception of my parents, how strange it is to find out important things about someone who once knew everything about me, and about whom I once knew everything by answering an e-mail I ignored, and by reading e-mails, and yet do I care, do I go on MSN or things I know I would find people I may want to talk to, no. True I have a lot of work, but I am not exactly drowning, I guess I have stopped caring to an extent, or perhaps I still care, but I cannot seem to since caring too much has its own problems. I remember once a few weeks ago, as a friend sat next to me, screaming at me but no one else, screaming about things I didn’t control, and as I looked confused about why in a table of 13 people, he chose to scream at me, I was told it was perhaps because I cared about that stupid problem. Well guess what, it has gotten better, I no longer do care about things, I am finally in the land of absolute bliss where I don’t care about your problems if you’re not me, but I don’t much like it here, helping people out with problems is always so much more fun…

I have meant to talk about two things which I have seen in the recent past, have decided I should write about, multiple times, and then ignored them solely because I forgot… Well the first is a tool as opposed to anything else, and umm I am grateful for having it, since I have never gotten used to Mapquest, or more like have never liked it, and well Google Maps seems better, if only because it is flashy and has fun things to do. Hmm the fact that I can’t print most of the maps they appear on the site is somewhat of a bummer (Safari manages to lose all the blocks through which a route passes, leaving a map with white squares, Firefox does not mark the route), but considering I didn’t use maps earlier, rather preferring to leave early and wander around until I found someplace. Hmm this borrows from the next item on my list, but seeing as Google already owns a satellite imaging company which promises fly-throughs for certain areas, and hence must rely on 1X satellites, why can we not have satellite imagery combine with Google Maps to kind of allow you to see what terrain you are driving through. The act of looking at the damn neighborhoods you pass through, rather than relying on the number of blocks you cross must surely be more helpful, and umm I will admit I am bummed by the fact that Keyhole is one of the few Google services which require money and are hence unusable… The other thing/video is Epic2014 which I am sure most of you have seen (thanks to the posts about it on Slashdot, and other places), and I just wanted to say that it is perhaps one of the coolest futuristic video I have seen in a while, even though somewhat chilling, thanks to the fact that a lot of what they mention seems to be happening in someways. I had this discussion with a friend many days ago about what would happen if something like this came about, and umm I kind of decided that given enough money I would probably buy the New York Times, if only because it is so much more interesting, and so much harder for someone to procrastinate on the New York Times.

Hmm the New York Times carried stories on India today, on the front page, and not in tiny letters, hmm it has been a while, we don’t have as much violence as some countries perhaps, and even when we do the New York Times puts it on the second or third page. So why was India in the news today (I swear I was kind of taken aback), well we supposedly have a new patent law which is supposed to affect the manufacture of cheap drugs, intriguing, and something which reminds me of a discussion I had while back home. Sure India wants to be all these many things and everything, but well last I checked, a lot of people in India didn’t have medical insurance, last I checked, unless you knew people, hospitals had long lines, mostly because there are far too many people, and I remember my parents telling me how there were people who would not buy medicines because they were far too expensive, and while the New York Times chose to concentrate on AIDS, I am pretty sure there have to be people out there who cannot afford medication for colds, antibiotics and stuff, and I wonder whether we’re gonna have medical insurance for them. Reminds me of the mail sent a few months ago, when my father was distressed by the budget, hmm well I guess I am not there, right now, and I don’t really care all that much, having never had to worry about medicines and stuff thanks to my parents, but it is just something that I remember, having discussed it some months, or years ago…

Summumvationreversify (yup said that way altogether) has to be the coolest quote in a while, and it strangely enough reminded me of the man from the land of the kangaroos, though it wasn’t uttered by him. That by the way was someone’s attempt at remembering to reverse summation, which according to our CS professor is the coolest thing to do for analyzing algorithms, hmm kind of a bummer, but the word is pretty cool. I remember the man from the land of the kangaroos telling us about how math essentially involves casting spells, and telling us this even as we worked on a problem which dealt with reversal of summation, which is not always correct, and he was essentially pointing out how we could use certain phrases when we did it so that we wouldn’t have to explain ourselves as long as we were long. Well ‘summumvationreversify’, I say is the summation reversal magic spell, it even sounds like one of the Harry Potter spells. Oh well I wish the man from the land of the kangaroos jumped out at that moment to reverse the summations, it would have been nice, Harry Potterish and all. Hmm second time I, or someone I know has wanted someone to jump out in the CS class, last time it was when we had people go at warp speed from one destination to another, and me and other person from Physics class were hoping the man who wears bright orange pants should jump out and explain relativity at that point in time, thus rendering the idea of warp speed travel impossible, but then that was more of a weird tangential joke, this one was umm more related I guess.

For the second time in as many days someone added me as a Facebook friend, and while I have seen both people around, I don’t believe I have had the opportunity of talking to them. Somewhat strange, or perhaps not, hmm well OK I was the person who friended (yes that is a verb) tons and tons of people before getting to Brown, but that was mostly because I was bored, and well I found that friending people sometimes leads to them IMing you, and that has the positive effect of allowing you to know people, well right now I am not sure the same analogy works, because umm we are at school, and it is really simple to meet people, hmm well more friends for me, bigger network, yay me.

The new BOCA is up, and I have been planning courses, and despite the best of my planning, I might end up taking five courses after all. Hmm, or I probably want five courses, despite telling myself it is an insane thing to do mostly because this semester has not been fun, but well I need to take economics, if I wanna take Game Theory, and I need to take German just because I do, it forms a part of my plans for later, and well there are classes I wanna take, and then there is econ which I perhaps should take. Hmm I am still caught between five and four courses. Funny though, this paragraph started out at the beginning of the Blog entry, and slowly percolated down here, funny.

We had a discussion during architecture section today, it involved cities, city planning, and how many people could rightly be moved aside, and displaced before it became monstrous. Ok background, Haussman when he redesigned Paris, did so to allow for wide avenues and things he wanted, without much caring about what would now be called the human cost, displacing nearly half a million people, and creating housing for the highest echelons of society. And Barcelona when renovated, relied on having an entire city built around itself. Now before coming to which was better, it is important to realize that at this point in time, Paris had immense amounts of infrastructure, and was redesigned to permit transportation between the many railway stations that were contained in the city, Barcelona did not have to deal with both preservation of history and utilizing things it already had, and that was in essence my argument for why displacing that many people was OK, and that was when the question of how valuable is history itself, and what is historic came up. I was told to look at Asian examples, and obviously I look at the responder, and tell him that well you know I am from Delhi, where there is no grid, the system is weird, or is nothing like what it probably was supposed to be, but well we preserve our history, and umm don’t displace our people, but don’t have wide avenues, or moving traffic even. I however don’t know how bad Paris is, though I have been told Rome has hellish traffic, and well so does Bangkok. oh well interesting question though, how valuable is history, are half a million people worth history?

Hmm it’s the day before the day before spring break, I don’t leave for New York for another 6 days, but well I wanna publish this, write new funnier things with the coming of the Spring Break, not a random post which I feel is randomly written to begin with. Oh well whatever, this gets published now, and we hope I publish again before going to New York.

Ze Panda

The other day someone, who won’t quite qualify as a friend, is something way more than an acquaintance, and someone who helped me greatly through 2003, sent me an invitation for a Friendster like network (yes I know at this point of time using the term social network would be more acceptable), and then I don’t think I ever got around to complete the form I would need to so as to sign up for this thing. Now I would like to say that IMO the form was bad, was too long, and scared me by asking for my phone number multiple times, but it got me thinking about things. I used to complain about how people I know just drift away, still do, I lose touch with more people everyday, and yet am I not responsible for some part of it. From the mail I received somedays ago, which I planned on answering but couldn’t due to a “lack” of time, to the many invitations I have received, I have begun ignoring stuff, mostly because I am swamped by work, but yup I think I used to complain about ignoring stuff and am doing it myself now, sort of weird, or more like what was expected, hmm…

I am done with my architecture exam, and that was draining, still have lunch, CS class, Physics lab, dinner, and the darn math exam to contend with. Why would someone want an exam at 7 in the evening, what in the world is wrong with people, 7 PM is when you sit in your room thinking about the world, 9 PM is when thinking about sleep/entertainment begins, but sadly today neither of those shall happen. Once back from my math exam, I will have to do… more math, what else, but more math, work on my Linear Algebra midterm, which fortunately I have finished solving, but which still needs to be entered into the computer, argh…

I can go to Utah (not to visit the mormons), and do math, for a part of the summer, a small part but whatever. That is the first thing I have gotten into for the summer, and it has both positive and negative things about it. Positive: It is sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Clay Mathematical Institute, both heavy weights in what they do, and it sounds like fun. I get to be in a non-snowy ski resort, and I get to meet people outside of Brown. While I love Brown, being outside of Brown for a while couldn’t be bad, it would be a break of sorts. And umm outside of this, I don’t think there is much opportunity for me to meet anyone from the IAS for the next few years or so, and I want to meet some of the people from there, if only to see what people from Einstein’s institute are like. Also TFB says it is a good place to be, says most people have nothing but good things to say about it, and seeing as usually only juniors and such get to go, I am pretty lucky to get it. I don’t get a stipend as such, I get money for travel, a condo, and money for eating, but no money otherwise, which would mean Negative: It is in Utah, mormon land, and at least some of the people I have talked to have expressed concerns about that. It involves finding something to do, for two month long periods before and after it, and while I have ideas (visiting people :D), it would be useful to have something which lasts longer. It is mathematical biology, and initially I almost did not apply because of the biology part of it. A friend might stay in Providence, and there is a distinct chance that I might get a fellowship to work here, which would also be fun, and would mean I am staying for all of summer, with a friend, though I doubt much of the money I get would go beyond the summer, living is expensive. Hmm I don’t know, I kind of am divided about this, I wish this were the one on Low Dimensional Topology, so that I wouldn’t be this divided, like I am pretty sure I would drop a lot of things to end up at a thing on Low Dim Topology, or a thing on Topology as such… Hmm the promise of a “multi-level intense research environment” sounds nice, but seems at least a little bit of a stretch, but well I will take what I get, argh this is so hard… (Having it in Princeton may have helped)

There was a time, when I was petrified of exams. Ok correction, I have always been petrified of exams, and the general thought of an exam makes me tense up and become overly anxious. Sadly I am also one of those people who work so much better without thoughts of screwing up, and such, and when I am more calm. Hmm so things changed when I got to Brown, I honestly was so much more relaxed walking into exams, things just didn’t matter as much, and I knew most things, and I didn’t have to worry. So that worked until yesterday, and we came to today when I had not one but two exams to take, and a take-home midterm I was (am) supposed to complete, and things. I walked into the first exam fairly calm, makes sense, it was my S/NC course, I knew enough that I might come in on the weird side of the S, but I will get an S, and that helped. Also the fact that I was walking with a friend, and that it was bright and sunny helped. Then I had a midterm at night, and I am sorry to say, but I freaked out, this was the first time I have freaked out for an exam this much since leaving home. It was weird, Thayer was deserted, and I remember I saw this guy who was wearing a suit talk about black and white photographs to his son, and walking by, and it was like I was disconnected. I have not been so anxious since being at Brown about an exam, and even though I became a lot more relaxed like 5 minutes before the exam (yay iPod), I am still a lil concerned by this.

There have to be reasons why I like the math department, OK I admit I haven’t hung out with the physics department, and some of the people in the CS department are pretty cool too, especially the TStaff, but ya the math department is funny, or parts of it are. Earlier today I ended up attending a faculty lunch, which is this thing the Math DUG organizes at Kabob and Curry, this Indian restaurant on Thayer (yes I am aware Kabob should probably be spelt in a different way, but this is how they spell it), which has crappy Indian food (says me), but is a welcome change, and is umm kind of nice, the food is not Indian, but then it’s not American either. So ya, the math department ended up their, and I went because I was told I should attend one of those someday, they are nice, and the conversation is good, and ya it’s nice. So I went there, and I was petrified before leaving (why, hmm I don’t know, have attended enough lunches/dinners with professors who talk weird things, but ya most of them were people who were my parent’s acquaintances rather than my professors I guess), about how I would fit in and stuff, but it was surprisingly entertaining. I sat at this one spot where neither the man from the land of the kangaroos, nor TFB could talk to me, not out of my own choice, but because of when I arrived, I however ended up sitting next to this friendly person who was my MA35 TA, and is from Germany, and this professor who is a German citizen, was in the US as a student, has a green card now, and knows about the funny ways of things here. So we were discussing flying into Frankfurt, debating BA vs Lufthansa, talking about Russian and American embassies, immigration at airports, summer plans, why summer plans don’t work sometimes and things like that. I discovered the TA, who I think is really really good at math, had also been rejected by William’s, something about them having funding for only on international, and generally preferring students from Williams, heard hilarious stories about how people got into the US, and such things. I also heard funny stories about Russian embassy officials in Germany, which reminded me of how Indian offices work, it was so similar, I am waiting for the day when I get to hear stories about the Indian visa sections. The German professor I was sitting next to is also the first person I have ever run into, who does not have finger prints, because she’s a rock climber, and they got shaved off, and she was telling us about how the fingerprint scanners never manage to take her prints, confusing people, and things. It was really fun, and while the table did get around to one stupid mathematical problem (we wouldn’t have had math except for this one bright spark who wanted to prove he was good) that I remember having seen from back home, it was interesting, and I really felt as if I would like to work, or do more things with a lot of the people who were there, and while I have run into math professors I would rather avoid, they weren’t present at the DUG lunch, and I guess that made it look so much better. I should attend more of these. it’s just that for the past two semesters I have a scheduling conflict with this particular time, oh well soon I shall… Oh and the German professor found the thing about mathematical biology hilarious, something about people making tons of money doing it, and when asked what it was, she said she did not know, and well if she did, she would do that and get rich, funny.

It’s the ending bit of St. Patrick’s Day, the first time I have ever been through one of these. I find it strange that all religions should have something which promotes drinking in this period, St. Patrick’s Day, Purim which is next Friday, Holi which should be somewhere before or after, and other such things. What is with this period of time and drinking, it’s kind of strange. Oh well I saw someone sneak alcohol into the V-Dub, and that was funny.

It is that time of the semester again, the time when I chose my next weird/semi weird research project. It is interesting how in the last two semesters I have always managed to pick humanities courses which involve research papers, despite there being many which require normal papers, not research papers (yes there are differences), hmm interesting. So yes I need to do something for 19^th century architecture, and I was dazed by what to do, many ideas came, and I discovered a lot of things I associate with the 19^th century were actually creations of the early 20^th century, and would hence not do. So when all else failed, I tried looking for Russian architecture, hmm which has issues, seeing as they didn’t do much in the 19^th century, and whatever they did do, is chronicled in Russian, rather than in English. So it is the Danes I have turned towards (darn turning towards the Dutch and their windmills may have been fun, however I am pretty sure windmills were not a 19th century creation), and umm ya gone on to discover the British managed to destroy parts of Copenhagen in an attempt to get the Danes to join them in the Napoleonic war. There have to be more counter-productive ways of gaining allies, I am sure there have to be a few, but wow destroying someone’s capital city, so that they can be your allies, rates highly.

This has been one of those things which has been lying for too long, it gets posted now, even though I have written little in the last 3 days.

Ze Panda

Strange things happened yesterday, and parts of my blog entry were deleted. Hmm perhaps it was a good thing, there were things in there I perhaps did not wish to write about, only perhaps, for I am not sure there is anything which is absolutely unwritable. Having said that, my last blog entry inspired a few reactions, and umm generally I write stuff when I have to think clearly, or when there is stuff bugging me which I must get out, so that I can do other work, and get other things to bug me. Ergo some of my blog entries come off sounding weird, hmm well at this point in time my blog entries are delayed by enough days that things usually stop bugging me, or continue bugging me but there’s little that is to be said about it, hence the blog runs.

We got the house, so no more housing lottery, and finally I have an address which ends in a house as opposed to a room or something. But before we got the house we had a set of discussions yesterday about what happens if we enter the lottery, and having been through that, I am not sure where we stand. I will accept the house, that was never a question, since not doing so would mean having to go through the housing lottery which I don’t want to, however I don’t know how things are going to be next year… My future roommate, and one of the closest friends I have assures me that it would work out, or he would force people to make it work out, but I honestly have my reservations, and while I don’t want to ruin the moment, while we are celebrating and stuff, I sure as hell hope it’s going to work out as well as I initially thought it would. Oh well house we have…

Finally been through a tour of the house, they have a gigantic hole in the wall, which exposes some of the inner skeleton of the house, though nothing of the outside, felt kind of strange. I am not sure they are repairing the house before we get there, as someone mentioned earlier today during dinner, Brown has better things to spend its money on. We are going to decide who gets what room (roommates are done) tonight, hopefully they’ll keep it short and painless, hmm well I hope at least, I don’t care much about what room, but most people do, and hence we need to decide. I was sure there was going to be some divide, so now there are talks of a “drama free zone”, of a “science free zone”, and things of that order, which both confuse me and feel weird. I don’t know, I find it kind of hard to believe that many of the people who are in the group and are involved in the humanities, find people in the sciences to be too much/to be weird, one of my things has always been being involved in a little of both, and even though I am currently entrenched in things which perhaps lend themselves to a more sciencish sphere, I am not completely sure where this current idea comes from. Like perhaps I can see issues involving people’s sleep schedules, which for a lot of people are screwed to put it mildly, but neh that cannot be it, I don’t think there’s that much of difference. Maybe I am confused, which would make sense, since I really want to do math, but am writing this, because I don’t want to do it, or perhaps do but that would involve being productive, hmm don’t know. The man from the land of the kangaroos is not going to be around tomorrow, and we get to see his contemporary from the other section in action tomorrow, I look forward to that, though I have been told that I might find his style very different and minutely dry, hmm so now that I am used to interesting, rambling fun math professors, what happens when I end up without one of them.

Another meeting with my advisor/CS professor (I seem to be having many of these. weird since none of them have been strictly advisor-advisee meetings, and I hope we have one of those lunch thingees this semester too), this time with more people, and what was perhaps a more varied audience, things about the project (the dating simulator), testing plans and how professorial parents affect you in college (just so everyone knows this was started by friend whose parents are professors at Yale, not by me), and other such things. We may have a CS19, supposedly the man who likes boats is in favor of the idea, and it is under consideration, that should be a fun thing. We have been talking about testing plans, and it reminds me of this mini-discussion thing I had with a friend at school about how we should develop software in tiny chunks and test things. Makes sense, I find it sort of hard to write a class which I can test without semi testing it, unless I am sleepy, because then I am uncertain about how it would work, but it is awfully boring to write one of these down for checking. Argh, I guess testing is a huge part of actual development, and they are trying too teach us good programming practices, but it is boring and repetitive to write a lot of this down, and somewhere during my project I discovered that I had in essence spent more time writing I/O code, than actual logical pieces of code. I don’t like I/O, I know all about the humans and everything, but darn, have ants work on my programs, or mice even, so I don’t have to worry about I/O.

We chose out rooms, it was shorter than I expected, and relatively painless. I get what is a humongous room, with a semi-private (nearly, shared with one single, inaccessible except through the rooms), bathroom, which is good I guess. It was good that we picked consensus over lottery, but we were warned about possible issues with a certain neighbor, and things like that, hmm so there are outside pressures, let’s see how this works out.

Cuban Revolution tomorrow, I am excited even though the owner made me repeat my name multiple times, they have live music and supposedly good food, should be fun, especially since I reserved a little more than half the restaurant, perhaps that’s what happens when you celebrate a house thing with such a big group (12-1 of people living in the house, friend’s kid brother, 2 people not in house, perhaps another one or two people).

Cuban Revolution was fun, and was followed by watching Robots which was even funnier, hmm the number of animated movies I have watched since being at Brown, hmmmmm animated movies ;)... But now I have to study for a multitude of things, go through books and stuff. Somewhere in my book on Relativity there is a statement which reads “It was typical of Einstein, and a sign of his greatness, that he drew conclusions of the most profound and far-reaching kind from a bare minimum of data. Lesser men often attempt the same thing, of course, but differ from the Einstein’s of this world in that their grand conclusions or generalizations are usually false.” Interesting, so Einstein’s greatness is tied with his luck, for isn’t making mistakes as much a part of doing science, as getting the one unifying theory. Hilarious in someways, that a book written to teach “future physicists” should have a statement so unlike what it should.

I am done with my Physics midterm, but there’s abstract algebra, and history to contend with. It is on days like this that I feel that a) taking five courses was sort of stupid, b) I care about somethings far too much, c) that Brown followed UBC or someone’s rule of never having three exams in a 48 hour period, d) my abstract algebra midterm was something in the morning or in the afternoon, rather than at night, and other such things. I also must publish this since the computer needs to be restarted, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t restart my computer without publishing this.

Ze Panda

Lower bounds are probably a good thing, there unfortunately are too few of those around. How far can one go down before something pushes them back up. Hmm well it goes pretty low down, that has been proven before, but seeing as we had all those problems back in school where we essentially proved that a journey through the center of the Earth would in essence take you through the core and down to the other end and back up and then keep into this beautiful kind of oscillation and keep oscillating. I guess there is a long way to the other side of the Earth, kind of unimaginably long expanse of space to go down, and it obviously gets deeper each time, or memory is transitive, it remember what it must but forgets all that it can. I spent many days wanting to get into this one math program at Williams, even though they are not supposed to accept too many freshmen, well it’s one of the few math programs outside of Brown which allows people like me to participate, and well even though I will retry next year, it would have been awfully nice to get through this year. I interviewed for this job I really really want, I am hoping I get that, knowing my luck with such things the chances of that happening are kind of small, so whatever, it’d be nice though. Cingular screwed up my cellphone bill, and even though they are looking into it, it’s not a happy thing, to be faced with things like this. The person who used to help me out at the bank left, where for I don’t know, I called up earlier today and he was gone. Oh well so people come and leave, sort of obvious, but hmm he was a nice person, and one of the few strangers who helped me learn about parts of how to function here.

French movies are great fun, this is one of those times when I wish I could understand French and not have to rely on reading subtitles. Subtitles are cool, but are sometimes wrong, it be kind of weird to watch people act and read subtitles, somewhat like being in a disconnected world, where the visualization is done for you as you read a book. I have watched two so far, I liked the previous one better, it was better filmed, and seemed more thought provoking even though it didn’t have a clear ending (a friend mentioned that he felt the French were snobbish for not having clear things), and was filmed really well. The one today was more like a Canadian-French movie, shot like a B-grade Hollywood movie, translated into French, good fun, but not very thought provoking, think Blade minus the martial arts, on crack. I might end up going to another one tomorrow (note time has little meaning in this entry, it’s been in the works for days), we shall see.

As we sat through brunch today, three of us, without most of the usuals, in a place farther away than normal, remembering this is the weekend, but we all are semi-drowning with work, we discussed matters of importance, about the patterns and things which seem to be changing. It is interesting that in their we talked about everything from “big L liberalism” to journals, to how Brown seems to follow this weird schedule with people being really calm and partyish through the first month, being jittery and academic through the second month, then eventually taking a break (Thanksgiving or Spring Break), and then going back to being extremely jittery as they are asked to start back up and do unbelievably large amounts of work, after nearly a week of near 0 work, interesting.

I am trying to get physics work done, and while it would be unfair to say the work itself isn’t interesting, I must say reading the damn book is downright boring. For one MIT could have worked towards replacing its physics series, making them more vibrant and interesting, or at least someone should work towards producing more interesting books on relativistic dynamics. He who wears bright yellow pants, says it is impossible to find better books on the topic, ‘coz while they were written in the 60s and are hence übber dry, they present a lot more than any recent book. Does it not worry people that very few attempts have been made to replace the tons of books written back in the 60’s, what was with the damn 60s anyways, every book I seem to have as a textbook (including my lin al text), and even some of my favorites, seem to have emerged out of nowhere in the 60s, and then there’s a wide gap with no new, interesting, funny books which can act as textbooks emerging, and while I know the 60s was supposed to be one of the major eras when American colleges underwent changes which would eventually make them whatever they are today, and that thanks to the Cold War, the race to the moon, and all those tiny details which would make Physicists write about their work, and get people interested in Physics, and all that, but surely the past 45 years have seen new developments, and changes in writing style, significant changes in how math is formalized (or so the man from the land of the kangaroos assures us), and I think it would be really cool if there was another wave of people writing really cool textbooks. Ideally I would say a 45 year gap is rather long, people change in something like 20 years, new trends emerge, what was funny 20 years ago, is now vaguely interesting, and while there are classics which transcend time, new books are always appreciated, and think of all the money someone could be earning, for the next 45 years… Hmm here’s how you determine the age of a book, “As the first Sputnik sped around the earth…”, not satellite, but Sputnik, we are back in the days when the Soviet Union still existed, when there were funky things going on, and when James Bond did not go to North Korea for fun…

I just got an e-mail telling me I didn’t get the job I mentioned earlier in this entry, hmm makes sense, I am not really annoyed, but it would have been awfully nice to have the job, and I am pretty sure I was qualified enough. Oh well… Applications to the house are due tomorrow, I don’t know how well or badly that would work out, I am no longer sure which I want, hmm well I guess being indifferent helps, whichever way it may go, seeing as people are stressed out, it would be nice to know what it’s supposed to be. Hmm day after that’s when we find out about that, darn. So many things to go wrong, so few things which are going right, I wonder how the end of this week will come around, or how would all other weeks end. Darn, so many things to go wrong, so few things which seem to be going right, hmm…

Dating simulators, that is exactly what I need to write. Hmm perhaps dating simulators are actually supposed to help the CS department, not sure, but I definitely know I need to write one of these, my grades depend on it… But seriously think about it, what would inspire you to ask an entire class full of people to write a dating simulator. Hmm first I read about how my previous CS professor gained his name in part from an old girlfriend, and then I am asked to write a dating simulator, the CS department is surely an interesting place, with a “scintillating dating life”.

While I know I am late with this, this is the thing I shall end with. Jef Raskin is dead, the guy who designed the original Mac interface, the one I spent some days playing with in my dad’s office died a little over a week ago, and umm I ended up buying one of his books from the bookstore, while looking for a copy for my friend, and I guess it fits in. Even though I have heard of the famous disagreements between him and Jobs, and while I know I would probably have never considered shifting to a Mac before the advent of OSX, thar however was not because of any design issues, I think the design of the interface was perfectly OK pre-OS X, it’s just that it was hilariously hard to find software for Macs back in India, and umm without the internet, ya well without the internet…

This now goes online, shall I title it, maybe not, far too many things are covered in here, I am sure no one would care about not having a subject…

Ze Panda