Elvesbane

girL: So you’re saying that they can do whatever they want?!

guY: No… you’re thinking about it the wrong way. You don’t define boundaries for others! Boundaries exist only for you.

L: I don’t understand.

Y: What I’d like to do is to sit next to you and snuggle up, because you look cuddly and I’m cold!

L: What?! Heck! No!

Y: Exactly! I’ve set a boundary for myself that I can’t do that. I’m not setting a boundary or a rule for you, but only for me.

L: … That still doesn’t make any sense.

Y: Yeah, that usually happens. Just give it some time.

I don’t know what got me into this line of thought, but I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t make sense that we should be saying: “Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen…”, etc., instead of “Ten, Ten-One, Ten-Two, Ten-Three…”. I mean, for every number except those in the range of Ten - Nineteen (10 - 19), we follow the standard of concatenating the following number’s name to the (suitably modified) higher order number’s name.

44 = Forty + Four = Forty-Four
523 = Five + Twenty + Three = Five Twenty Three

But 14 is NOT Ten + Four = Ten-Four (which has a totally different conventional meaning), but it’s Fourteen!

Even within the 10 - 19 range, standards aren’t maintained. 14, 16, 17, 18, 19 are the names of the numbers followed by ‘teen’. 13 and 15 are similar in that the letters are modified in both to make them sound similar. 3 (Three) is modified to make it Thir-teen, and 5 (Five) to Fif-teen. 12 (Twelve) shares the first two letters with Two and 11 (Eleven) doesn’t have any obvious relation to 1 or 10!

Sigh… It would have been so straight-forward if I could just say ‘Ten-Seven’ during roll-call instead of a ‘Seventeen’ (which sounds so much like ‘Seventy’). I hate having to say it again, all because some idiot who came up with numbers didn’t bother doing his work properly.

It’s so easy to forget!

The only reason I remember the names of the guys I studied with back in school is because we have these once-in-a-while get-together-s. Really. I might recognize their faces, but I wouldn’t remember them.

Unlike most people, I seem to lack any compulsion to keep contacts alive. It’s natural for me to ignore the fact that others used to exist in the past, to forget that they ever meant anything to me. Don’t think that I willfully do this or anything… I don’t. I’m a lover of information (knowledge, experiences, wateva), and loss of memories just seems like an awful waste!

The other day, mum reminded me about (^_^) something that’d happened a  very long time ago. There was this day, when me, mum, dad, n’ bro went for a movie and there was this guy sitting behind us, who mum noticed and pointed out to me. I suppose she’d imagined that I’d be surprised and glad to see my bestest buddy from Sarvodaya (1st through 4th standard) but all I could manage was a ‘Hi’ and a prolonged and painfully idiotic face, and all the while he was looking as though he expected to me recognize him at any moment! I didn’t bother talking to him (the movie was gonna start, after all) and I didn’t see him afterwards. Mum later enlightened me that the two of us had been practically inseperable while I was at Sarvodaya. Just as well, I suppose, he prolly imagined that I’d lost much of my mental acuity since 4th standard.

She’d also told me his name. I don’t remember it anymore.

As I said, it’s pretty easy to forget, but it sure as hell makes for some awfully awkward and embarrasing moments.

My mum is one of those people who’s got vivid memories of the things they did as a child. I’ve always been amazed when she remembers what people said or did when she was was a kid. She can even remember stuff from when she was less than 2 years old! Heck, I feel amazed when anyone remembers what they did or felt when they were little. Mostly because I don’t remember much of anything! All I have a snapshots that have faded to the point of uselessness.

I only have one memory from when I was in KG: When my mum forgot to pick me up from the nursery after class ended, and I had to be escorted home by a teacher. I must have been really upset by this break from normal routine! Funny thing about it is that the nursery in question is right next door (and still is).

Then there’s this memory from very very long time ago when I woke up from a dream laughing so hard I couldn’t stop for (what seemed like) ages! In my dream, my bro had been rolling me around the ground in front of the house, tickling me non-stop. Weird that I should remember that…

Then there are a few other scattered memories, some very weird dreams, but no coherant story anywhere. It’s like my memory just decays and dissapears super-quick.

Sure, you’d say that lots of people forget stuff from when they were kids. My problem is a lot worse. I don’t remember anything from school. Forget the fifth to eigth standards, I don’t remember much from my 12th all that clearly! That was only… 3 years ago! I don’t remember anything that happened in school. I only know that some things used to be some way, and that I did certain things at certain times… factual information, like: I used to play basketball after lunch everyday (but I don’t remember any of the playing). I remember me n’ Asif used to go to the canteen (or to Joseph Uncle) to have ‘post-lunch’ snacks everyday (because I never got to eat anything from my lunch box; everybody else did). Well… wait a second, I actually remember that part quite clearly now. Having lunch at school, that is. I even remember my lunch box - a small blue snap shut sorta thingy. I usually had bread with chocolate syrup inside, and I used to make sure that I got to eat at least one piece from the eight or so that mum packed (I didn’t really like the bread, but it seemed wrong to not eat at least a little from what mum’d packed ^_^).

Interesting. I don’t remember anything from either of the La Fest-s that I participated in (and those were supposed to be big events in a student’s life at Loyola!). But I remember other little things, stupid things even, like the tree whose root I sat on (it stuck out of the ground like a ledge) to study during the lunch break at term exams. I don’t remember what it felt like to be in class at school. I don’t remember anyone teaching me. I do, however remember the first time I was able to jump and touch the rim of the basketball basket. Hmm… I don’t think I can do that anymore…

Well, it seems I haven’t forgotten everything yet. I wonder how much longer it will stay, though.

Question: Design a two pass assembler for an SIC machine in C language.

Time: 3 hrs.

I spent around 5 hours today working on the above mentioned program. A program that I had been working on, at college, for the past few weeks, totalling perhaps 7 hrs out of 9 in three lab periods. That’s 12 hours.

And I haven’t finished.

Now, I really don’t think I’m stupid or anything (or even lacking in the field of coding)… but this reminds me heavily of something Sriram chetan told me about my mini-project a few weeks ago when I told him what it was:

“Hmm… Graphical Representation of Non-Recursive Sorting Methods… hmm… kozhappamilla…

Pakshe… ithu moonu manikkoorinte karyam-e ollu.”

What is interesting is that nobody ever really questions the logic behind our examinations.

Exam (Definition): Tests designed to measure progress against the objectives of a lesson, course or field of study.

It’s a difficult concept, at best, so I’m gonna leave it at that definition. Let’s talk about our 3hr assembler for starts.

The algorithm for the 2 pass assembler is two pages long. One page each for each of the passes. It describes in a very general manner how the first pass scans the whole assembler code, finds of the locations of symbols and stores it. The seconds pass is similarly described as how the results of the first pass are used to put together the final object code.

The whole  thing really isn’t that hard to understand. A layman can understand the nitty-gritties of the whole damned thing in maybe 1 or 2 hours of reading. I began much the same way because I didn’t really pay all that much attention to the algorithm last semester. It was way too big for me to have finished studying the the last few hours before the exam, you see.

Constructing the actual program is, as always, an entirely different matter. The assembler is expected to read the contents of a file, and do a hellu-va lot of things (to say the least) before anything resembling an object code comes out of it. After my 12 hrs on this thing, I’ve completed the first pass, and maybe one-third of the 2nd pass.

As far as I know, no one in my class has completed this program yet. And I know that 90% of the girls and at least 70% of the boys (well rounded figures, don’t pay too much attention) are incapable of completing a program of  this scale. And this isn’t even that big. I’ve gotten to around 300 lines and think there’s another 100 to go. Not much, no.

But 3 hrs?? I mean, seriously?! I think I’ll barely be able to finish typing 400 lines of code in that time period, let alone make a program that size from scratch.

I also remember that my bro had suggested something like an assembler (macro processor, maybe) as an ‘easy’ candidate for a mini-project. True, it would have been an easy option.

For a mini-project! Not an effin 3 hr exam!

Gotta ask the teach about this one… just to see how she’ll squirm out of it. ^_^

P.S. I’ve updated the blogroll to include Sriram chetan’s new blog.

Edit: I’ve completed those programs and talked about them here.

HD-DVD is dead. Yaaay! Finally, someone has decided to give up in the mad race to be the next next-gen recording media. Finally, I can look forward to backing up the hundreds of gigs of data I’d rather not keep on my hard disk. Well… at the very least, I can finally anticipate a near future where I can back up all those HD movies to some brilliant multiple layer discs.

I played Witcher the other day, and realized that graphics in computing has moved beyond my 7900GS for good. It seemed like the sort of game I’d really appreciate, but the frame rates were too inconsistent, even at medium settings… and that’s a total no-no. Ah well, this is in a way, good news, since it just points to the improvements being made in the general gaming industry… unlike some once-in-a-while rarities that are more graphics than gameplay (cough! crysis! cough!). I most certainly look forward to the story-telling possibilities created by the new graphics powerhouses that are the updated nVidia 8-series. I suppose I could say the same about the 9, higher ends of which should be out late this year.

The Macbook Air was a delightful surprise! Un-buyably costly as it is, it’s perhaps the best example of the thinning that’s going on among gadgets in general. And thinner is almost always better! The one device I have which follows the same trend is, of course, the nano… which is ridiculously thin! In fact, the nano, as a mp3 player with a 3.5mm jack has probably reached it’s minimum size since the device is just thick enough to accommodate the jack! You gotta put the hole somewhere!

I’ve also been wondering about just how important sound is in the field of computing. The thought of sound bring three things to my mind: music, movies and games. Of these, both movies and games demand surround sound reproduction as an obvious feature. Music on the other hand is still primarily stereo. I remember seeing the intro of DVD-A-s with AC3 / DTS audio and such, but those don’t seem to have caught on… and having listened to a lot of surround music, I can attest to how ruddy brilliant it is, and how much of an improvement it is over regular 2-channel music. Surround music is still a rarity though and I wonder when it’ll become mainstream. It should, eventually, since it seems like a natural progression.

Staying on the topic of sound and games, it comes to my mind that close to no one I know has ever experienced any game with surround sound. I haven’t either… not really anyway. Almost everybody owns just stereo speakers, even though decent 5.1-s can be had for dirt cheap these days. I wonder how many guys are even aware of the fact that sound could actually matter when playing a game (or how much it could matter). Think F.E.A.R. or Doom 3 with perfect directional sound reproduction. It’s one of my dreams to play such horror thriller titles on a properly working surround setup.

That’s enough thinking for one night, I think. I need to sleep!

I’m happy. For no particular reason. Well, maybe not. Methinks it might be the happy feeling I encounter every once in a while when there’s nothing going on (or about to happen) that’s bothering me or there isn’t any work pending.

Free.

There, that’s more expressive. It almost makes me want to go to sleep. At 10! Imagine that!

I didn’t post that bit of insight and it’s been lying there for forever. Maybe I was so happy that it didn’t matter. Unfortunately those things pass pretty quick.

Anyway, what was I going to say??

Shit, I forgot.

Read me first:

Cutting Nails - I

***

I’ve finally cut my nails. Yay!

I sound nuts, yes (among other things).

There is no clear point to what I just said. It isn’t another one of my logical conclusions, because I’ve had more than enough time to note that logic, clearly, doesn’t apply to what’s going on here. The first argument simply ended up producing answers which begged the questions that begat them in the first place. What I’m about to say might sound absolutely senseless to a lot of you, but believe me when I say that it isn’t entirely senseless.

I was able to cut my nails because I didn’t really think about what I was doing. It wasn’t planned. I just sat down on the bed, picked up the nail cutter and started cutting my nails.

I’ve always (for as long as I can remember, and that isn’t too long) had this idea that anything that I fantasize or dream about will turn out not happening… which isn’t all that surprising, or unexpected, since I don’t exercise any control over my dreaming and most are far-fetched enough to be completely ridiculous.

I expect almost everyone does the same… about controlling their dreams, I mean.

But I wonder, sometimes, whether I’ve taken that… expectation… of whatever I imagine not happening, to the point where I expect even the most mundane of my dreams, say - of cutting nails - to not happen. I wonder, whether, somewhere along the way, I forgot how to just make decisions and then, follow them, then and there. It’s all about dreaming - planning, if you must. And then not doing since, after all, it’s just a dream.

Spontaneity!

Finally. I spent a whole minute racking my head for that word.

That reminds me of something the little woman told me the other day. She said she liked talking to people like Sabir because they respond immediately to whatever you say. Spontaneous, in other words. Quick thinking, sharpness, whatever. There are a bunch of words for that, every one of which share at least one common property - that I lack it… or have so little of it, that it hardly matters.

Equals… say, becoming the topper in some class test.

See, I’m being modest.

I remember a conversation that I had with kitty…

long ago, we don’t talk anymore… sigh.

…which somehow wound its way over to discussing somebody’s intelligence. She was kind enough to mention that I was one of the most brilliant people she knew (or something like that ^_^). She went on to ask me why I was the way I was. I appreciate how lightly she put it and I felt all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing that she could. I gave her the only answer I could - that I didn’t know and if I had known she wouldn’t have had to ask me that question. I’m assuming that she too understood the obviousness of that answer (once I’d told her)… but I don’t think she understood just how depressing it was.

As incisive as that question is, the lack of a clear answer renders it, if not meaningless, pointless at the very least. Of what worth is a question without an answer?

That sounds awfully philosophical, doesn’t it? It is? Ah.

But it is incisive and that is where its worth lies. It shows (in that horribly depressing manner) what exactly is the end result of being who I am.

And what is the end result?

A really cute girl effectively ends up telling me: “Man, you are one fucked up dude.”

This is going to be a big one. So fetch that pack of Lays / Popcorn / Favorite munchies before reading any further. ^_^

B.t.w, I’m going to make use of the word fun a lot in the following format - fun! (italicized with an exclamation point) in this blog entry. It’s just that I’m classifying those things as being under my category of having fun. Capish?

The whole thing was… enjoyable, to say the very least. Quite possibly unique too, which is kinda sad (like Jaimy mentioned towards the end) since a lot of it was entirely new to me, and that doesn’t happen often enough. I’m gonna go through the whole thing in as orderly a manner as possible, but that’s going to be hard since a lot of the stuff that’s happened is mixed up in my head, not to mention the fact that the itinerary got modified a helluva lot of times. I’m gonna avoid mentioning the train journeys since they were slightly boring, at best.

Hyderabad didn’t really turn out the way I’d thought it would… actually nothing did, and that’s to be expected, I guess. The greatest surprise during the whole trip was, undoubtedly, Sharika. Not that I really understand her more than I did before, or anything, but it definitely is nice to know that she doesn’t think of me as a completely hopeless conversationalist anymore. In fact, my high point during the whole trip was an argument I had with her, Shreya and Rajani during a trip back to the hotel - I disagreed with their opinion that women don’t pay any attention to a guy’s looks when it comes to a relationship. I hope I made at least one of them think differently. I thought the best part of shopping at Hyd was the Imax mall. It reminded me of Dubai what with all the expensive shops and the arcade (that was fun!). I even had a go at the rock-climbing wall - I climbed about halfway until I reached the negative gradient section which proved too much. (once again, fun!)

Snow World was also fun! Making a snow ball is difficult! But I pride myself in the knowledge that I was probably the only one who figured out how to make a proper snow ball. Towards the end of the one hour, my snow balls could travel as far as I could throw them (which isn’t all that far) without disintegrating. ^_^ My aim isn’t all that good though and that, coupled with being a pacifist, meant that I didn’t really hurt anyone with my super-duper snow balls. I got hit plenty of times though. It stings, lemme tell ya. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any pics here since I didn’t want a wet SLR on my hands.

Ramoji Film City was, as far as I’m concerned, a day wasted. At least everybody had the good sense (perhaps beat upon them by the unyielding sun) to leave early. Ramoji is more of a plain park than anything else. It’s got its fair share of interesting buildings, sights and curios, but the sad fact is that there is nothing more. Its all just something to see, and all that seeing gets pretty boring when you’re walking under a sun hot enough to make lead liquify.

On to Bangalore! The first day was entirely devoted to shopping. We (Me, Sabir, Sreekanth, Sreejith, Divya, Deepti, Roshini) went around the local shopping places looking for stuff. Actually I wasn’t exactly looking for anything but I ended up buying a USB cable for the iPod (which turned out to be useless), and another air-gun (I just can’t resist those ^_^), and a funky t-shirt.

Wonder-la turned out to be a photocopy of Veega Land. All that talk about it being 4 times the size and 10 times the fun is a load of hog-wash. It’s, at best, just as much fun as Veega Land. I tried out all but the most adventurous rides, and had fun (fun!) making a fool of myself in the Wave Pool. That’s about it for that Wonder-la, really. It was just your everyday water-park in a nice clean (heavily chlorinated) package. ^_^

The third day was a joke. We went to some temple in the morning - It seemed to me to be more of a commercial center than a place of worship so I bailed out early. I heard that the food stalls inside were very good though. The I.V. (that oh-so important ingredient) was an even bigger joke. We walked around the Infy campus and were finally lead to an impressive conference room, only to be shown a worthless promo vid, followed by an even more worthless question-answer session which proved that our guide didn’t know what to do with us and didn’t really care whether we left the campus impressed or not. Sigh…

Tour organization began to break down that evening. We got informed by the organizers that the train tickets to Goa hadn’t really been booked yet so we were going to have to look for an alternative means of transport. That really sent a lot of the guys into hysterics. Guys, mind you, not girls. All the girls remained calm (I thought that was mightily impressive) but a lot of arguments broke out among the guys with a few complaining about the lack of organization and what-not. Here’s an excerpt from a mail I sent Asif around that time:

“… It turned out that the tickets to our train to Goa hadn’t been ‘booked’ as had been assumed. This was two hours before the train was supposed to leave, approx 2 hrs before ‘now’.

All the expectable results followed - meaning a whole fuck-load of hue and cry. Sreekanth shined by being prominent among those who whined. That’s a whole story in itself so I’m not gonna get into it. …“

to which Asif replied:

“... Ah, something always happens. What’s a tour that goes strictly as planned? A strict tour, maybe.

Sreekanth shined by being prominent among those who whined. shine - whine - shine - whine - shine - whine - shine… …“

Truer words than he realized, I think. I actually had to physically drag Sabir away from Sreekanth at one point when their argument got a little too loud. Sabir later confessed that might have actually hit Sreekanth (or tried to) had I not pulled him away then. That would have been a sight. lol.

Anyway we reached Goa at 6 PM (much delayed, on a sleeper-coach bus), the next day and a few of the guys (including me) had a dip in the pool at the resort. We celebrated Nidhin’s and George’s birthday that night and I later went out with Sabir and Sreekanth to Dominoes and had some really nice pizza. Me and Sabir spent the night improving our aim with the air-gun. The can of deo that we used for target practice was left looking like the moon, its surface scarred by lots and lots of little craters.

The second day at Goa was spent shuttling back and forth between beaches. We went to the resting place of St. Francis Xavier towards the end of the day. The church exterior seemed to be in need of a lot of renovation, but the interiors were magnificent. Once inside, Sharika pointed out that a few of the girls (in our batch) who were actually crying as they prayed in the church. That seemed a little odd to me since I couldn’t spot anything that would make anyone cry. Religious fervor seems quite far-fetched so I assume it has to do with something I know nothing about.

Further breakdown of tour-organization meant that everyone was now fretting over whether we’d have tickets on the train back home that night. A lot of opinions were flying around and I tried my best to stay of the way. Eventually, after a lot of sorting through the chaff, it was finally decided to make do with what seats we had on the train. It actually turned out okay, and I still have no idea how they managed it, since we fit 58 people onto some 40 seats, and technically that’s illegal.

The ride back home was sombre at best. I spent a lot of the time sleeping and kathi-adikkifying since my iPod had lost its charge and I didn’t have any books to read. We reached Thiruvananthapuram at about 10 o’clock at night, and I got back home within 15 minutes. I slept from 2 o’clock that night to 2 the next afternoon. God, was I tired.

I’ve uploaded all the good photos I took during the trip to my PicasaWeb Album. Clicky!

Catcha’ll later!