Benford's Law

Benford's law is awesome! Real science, although it is arguable whether statistics is in fact a real science and I know someone who'll be up in arms were such a claim to be made, is far more intriguing than the stuff of novels.

Whoobie

It bugs me when I'm forced to write bad code in a language as beautiful as Ruby.

Watching...

It looks like I'm one of a minority who think Slumdog Millionaire is a mediocre derived piece of work. Utterly uninspired, shallow, overtly dramatic and clichéd, it borrows heavily from the traditional Bollywood genre - not that there's anything wrong with it, but we've all seen the rags-to-riches tale with the boy-meets-girl--boy-loses-girl--boy-gets-girl spin enacted in countless creative ways for decades now, that it's just mindless repetitive consumerist crap at this point. Even if Danny Boyle's film has its moments (and how colorful some of his scenes are), ultimately Slumdog Millionaire is drone Bollywood melodrama dressed up to meet its western counterparts. Too bad it's being elevated to undeserving heights of film glory.

Late last night, I watched the pilot of Alan Ball's mindblowing series Six Feet Under. Yes, I know I've arrived long after the train has left the station (the series debuted in 2001), and it's time to board True Blood, but I've just had my mind blown away by the dark despairing humor that is the show's catalyst. I'm now seriously considering spending a hundred bucks and just buying the box set instead of scavenging through the local library.

Sigur Rós

No form of music till now, with the possible exception of the electronic melancholies of Ulrich Schnauss, captures that pure essence of music for me, that prompts indescribable feelings of bittersweet memories to float vividly in front of my eyes, that sets my heart, my lungs and every part of my body thumping with excitement and anticipation, that combines rhythm and progression into a distinctive form of artistic expression, and that is able to lull me simultaneously into the darkest of corridors and the brightest of gardens.

Watching Sigur Rós perform on stage was undeniably one of the greatest moments of my life. The audience at United Palace Theater, New York, was mostly comprised of people my age, and suffice it to say, at the end of two hours, we were drained of every possible emotion known to man. Testament to the fact that music is universal, I'm pretty sure very few people in the audience actually understand the lyrics of Sigur Rós, partly because the songs are sung in a mixture of icelandic and "hopelandic". But matter it does not, since we all connected and related to the music in ways far more ethereal than just its vocal interpretation.

Beautiful and breathtaking in scale and form, Hoppipola is that one song I screamed at that night. Riding back in the New York subway amidst hundreds of faces, a sight I found to be relatively uncommon even in that densely populated city, I was ecstatic that night. I had finally experienced true beauty.

My new macbook

I finally got my own macbook! It arrived today morning, but as I was not at home, the Fedex delivery agent had left a notice pasted onto the front door. I couldn't wait until tomorrow, when he would return, so I took a bus to the nearest Fedex location (a 20 minute drive), but in the rush, forgot to check for a return bus. So here I am, sitting in an office operated by one of the bus companies, still an hour to go, waiting for the next bus home. Thankfully, they've Wifi here, and it took me just about 20 minutes to unbox my new laptop and let 'er rip.

  The initial cold touch of aluminum felt good, and the laptop feels ridiculously light yet somehow sturdy. I'm grappling with the new trackpad and the absence of the familiar Home and End keys. Other than that, I'm pleasantly surprised with the screen; the glossy finish is not as bad as I'd thought it would be, though a test under normal sunlight would probably fail miserably.

  I'm now waiting for my new copy of Photoshop CS4 to arrive in the mail in a couple of days. After that, it's installing Windows XP and try on some real gaming. Yaay.

The Wink

It is refreshing to watch a tongue-in-cheek ad, expertly made, from the presumptive democratic nominee; and especially one so close to the election. I am partial towards advertisements with no speech - the visual medium is far more convincing than the auditory one in conveying a message, a thought, an idea or simply a suggestion.
And it should be clear that I favour the senator from Illinois. Now there is nothing left to do, but hope.

wiThin

He said - I took the risk, didn't I? I took the first step, didn't I? We briefly hit it off, didn't we? How then, did I miss your cue?

My favourite quotes of the past few days...

"Quantum physics is to regular everyday physics as a David Lynch film is to a mainstream blockbuster." - a cracked article on Dark Matter.

"It's the oldest law of warfare: have your guns in populated areas, and when the enemy responds, show the world your dead women and children." - Thomas Goltz, an academic specializing in the Caucasus, commenting on the recent Russo-Georgian war.

"Every time Barack Obama makes a speech, an angel has an orgasm." - The Daily show with Jon Stewart.

I've also been watching a lot of old episodes from The Simpsons. And this line by Homer is just...such a culturally observant remark, especially considering that it comes from a bovine personality.

"In a world gone mad, only a lunatic is truly insane." - Homer Simpson.

It's not the thought that counts

It is with mild disdain that I relate to the fact that those moments when the mind is drowsy, such as a just-awoken state or a near-sleepless one, are the most interesting - such as this fleeting, hopeless, reclusive thought that I cooked up today: "Swallowing its pride, the lion swallowed its pride".
Really, how juvenile does a person have to be to think of such phrase-mocking statements as these, even in the most unstable of conditions?

What is probably more disturbing for me is that the thought ferociously stuck even after I was fully awoke. And, well, I had to pretty much swallow my pride in order to post this one.

More than a feeling

It's humbling: trying to condense my last eight years into a single page, and finding out there's still some space left at the bottom.

Another Oracle takes birth

If you're a gamer, the next year is going to be one massive joyride, with the gods of computer gaming that are Blizzard, ID, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Maxis, Valve and EA prepping up to give us an orgasmic barrage of titles that can satiate, hell wreak total havoc, on even the most casual and unyielding gamer. Me, I again descend into nostalgia, remembering the time when a friend and I bought six epic games together, and I went breathless for a moment, unable to grasp the gravity of the situation. I guess most of us are urban escapists, one way or the other. The familiarity yet the distance posed by films, music, novels or gaming - showing worlds unbeknown to us - draw us ever closer to them, eventually leaving us hip-deep in chimerical alternate universes. *twitch*

These fits...these...convulsions...
Should I live this world?
Or play it?

Quasi Una fantasia, Op. 27, No. 2

It was late in the evening and I was walking back home lugging the overweight laptop and lost in thought about nothing in particular. I usually glance back at the clock on top of the tower as I tread on the grass beneath my foot and silently recollect the crunch of snow during winter while also feeling, quite viscerally, the acrid humidity in the air recently. The clock read nine. The sun still hesitated to dip below the dotted horizon, and started flinging harmless, tingling shots of orange and yellow into the far sky in a dying gesture that hinted at ingratitude. To whom was a mystery. Is always a mystery.

The chimes began to ascend into the heavy air. Warmth around, and void inside. I find myself asking the same dreaded question - Will it all just be a chimerical fantasy? Silence. The cadence in the evening sky continued still. Right around the eighth strike, I realized I was subconsciously counting every chime, feeling it like a heartbeat, relinquishing the last while anticipating the next. It was like a roller coaster ride where the sudden turns no longer held any surprise. I knew exactly when the next one would come. Just around the corner. There you go. Nine. Elementary Arithmetic has a strangely comforting feeling.

The moon started to peek shyly through the leaves of the nearest tree. The night had just begun.

And another....

Yaawn. Staying awake has never been so frustrating. I await the despondence.

Cold Peace

So I watched Eran Kolirin's brilliant and hilarious Israeli debut The Band's Visit this evening. Beautiful!

One more cup

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm slowly yet progressively getting addicted to caffeine.

Willkommen

I unboxed a Macbook Pro today. Sadly it belonged to a friend. And as I slid my fingers over its keyboard, I came to the realization that I was destined to buy it someday. I'm a sucker for everything that's eye-candy. Afterwards, we watched Frida on the new Macbook. Such a beautiful film; but Julie Taymor looks to be a tad too eager to prove herself, frequently imbuing the film with stylistic touches that were otherwise unnecessary. Somewhat like Joe Wright in Atonement. I just regret not watching her latest, Across the Universe, when I had the chance.

Stuck in a moment that I can't get out of

So I wake up this morning and there it is. Tijuana! A name that's stuck in my head since morning. Ever had a word stuck in your head for unknown reasons? It's mildly disconcerting, like a distant splinter that the eye can barely see and stubbornly refuses to ignore. So every few minutes now, this word keeps popping into my head while I'm in the middle of something; and all I care to know about it is that it's a Mexican city. And this is not the first time something like this has happened; at least the third. I think the last one was some European politician who hung around mysteriously, stalking me for a couple of days and then disappeared in a puff of smoke (ok, maybe not that last one). So, Tijuana, how long will you be staying?

If only I could turn back time

This C&H strip appeared the day before yesterday. Perfect timing. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just too blunt/instantaneous/careless/rude/insensitive; can't even seem to count the number of times I metaphorically bit my lip in the last two weeks alone.

[update] Of course in the strip, Calvin does it intentionally. And the title is alludes to a song from the 90's pop band Aqua.

sigh

It's one of those nights; the heart is restless; the mind is excited; the body is a slump. I'm not able to sleep....

No mon, it wasn't always this easy

Reading an old paper on MULTICS, I came across this as one of the design goals of the system:

"To permit a degree of programming generality not previously practical. This includes the ability of one procedure to use another procedure knowing only its name, and without knowledge of its requirements for storage, or the additional procedures upon which it may in turn call."

Oh the things we take for granted today.