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?