As I was wont to do in days gone, let me start with books. I spent a long time re-reading books, sometimes more than once. Seemed to take a lot less effort than reading new books. Ditto movies, when I had enough time to watch them. Of course, bite-sized chunks of TV series were easier to grok as well. With a conscious effort now, I’ve started reading more new stuff, the latest of these being Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Gripping book, that. Incidentally, if you’ve not read Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, you’re missing out on what I am certain is one of the best SF works in recent times. Have been promised access to the remainder of his novels featuring Takeshi Kovacs, so looking forward to that.

On the music front, I sold off my guitar a year and a half ago (the neck warped too often) and now intend to buy a new guitar. Saw a fairly decent and not-too-pricey Granada at Furtado’s, and it’s now somewhere near the top of my acquisition list. As before, my tastes are (a) relatively esoteric, and (b) temporally out of phase. My latest obsession are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, about whom Rolling Stone has a brilliantly written article that borders on idolation.

Moved to a new house, and unpacking and settling in slowly proceed. All the running around before this and now mean that I still have to establish a proper working environment and discipline. I’ve been trying (with only moderate success) to maintain a reasonably “normal” diurnal cycle. Should be more successful as things settle further.

I’ve got a couple of work related blog posts lined up in my head, but that’ll have to wait for later. I hope this particular post heralds some exercising of atrophied writing muscles.

Good night, world.

I just finished the Rahul Roy book (yes, 1 hour). It’s a short, illustrated, book. Very visual. I guess the intention is to analyse masculinity and its social roles and personal influences in a way that is accessible to people who don’t read much, or at least not much literature of this kind. Of course, the analysis is not very deep (I would have preferred more), but I think the experiment w.r.t. presentation style paid off. The book provides a reasonable amount of food for thought and pointers towards more works on the matter. Good stuff.

My second choice might make sense to some who know me. Being a Tamilian whose only real cultural predilection is coffee (something I do rue sometimes), I found both the title and the topic apt. The book is something of a cultural history of Tamil Nadu. Looks a little more heavy than I want to read right now, but will get to it soon. Happy purchase.

While the Book Café guys wrapping up, they decided that they’d give out a few free copies of Al Raines’ Soul Search Engine (signed!) and November Rain. grin

And the funny part is I went to the fair once, left without buying anything, thought “what the hell” and went back to actually buy the books, which is when this happened. Oh sweet indecision.

I know there’s something I’m forgetting, but maybe I’ll remember and make another post of it.

Reading TP‘s Wyrd Sisters. I thought I’d finished all of the older Discworld stuff. Pleasantly surprised to have not. :-)

For those of you that’ve been living under a very large rock, Radiohead has released their latest album, In Rainbows on a pay-what-you want basis. But you need to jump through a couple of hoops to get to the final page.

Nirbheek is a big time Songbird pimp. I finally tried it after much nagging. It is good, if somewhat raw. Their demo video pointed me to this band (actually, guy) called Bonobo (not the component architecture, silly). Good stuff. Wish I could buy it in India. In the mean time you can get some of their stuff too (is this remotely legal?).

Just finished The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood). Fame well-deserved. On to Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (but hopefully not too soon).

Read Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Quite good (albeit somewhat morbid). Theme somewhat similar to Fight Club. This is the book his publishers found too disturbing to publish (Palahniuk, it seems, decided to write something even more disturbing to show them, but they liked it and published it. And “it” was Fight Club).

This Toe (Flash alert!) stuff is brilliant. Would really love to buy this album (New Sentimentality).

Time I read Slaughterhouse 5. Currently on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Time, it is short, as the semester end nears.

And it appears that I will be busy this summer.

Not much else that is spectacularly worthy of reporting. Now to read about routing protocols in mobile, wireless, ad-hoc networks and associated security concerns.

Before that was the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (Mark Haddon — keeps reminding me of Haddon Mirk). I’m certainly lucking out in my choice of books — this too was amazing. Next in line, is The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Busy days here, filled with a lot of “nothing in particular”s. Coding work in earnest on thesis begins. Will also probably get to commission an HP NAS head, if I can figure out, and probably an EMC filer too. Fun!

Hope ya’ll had a happy Shutdown Day.

Whether working for two years before doing an MTech was a good idea is still somewhat an open question. Well, there are a lot of questions there, but one thing I got was perspective.

Mundanely enough, I understand a lot more about personal finances than I did, and that’s a good thing. (I just read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Content is okay, but presentation is very much teh suck)

Secondly, I now have a lot more perspective on how exploitative work life is today (hope a certain friend doing 16-hour days isn’t reading this … if you are, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you). Whether we want it or not, we all (I’m generalising, so sue me) fall into the trap — this needs to be done, this is a really important project. Agendas (agendae?), prioritised action items. It’s how we’re programmed — hard work good, life bad. So fucking forth.

To what end? More work, greater responsibility (so that’s okay), more stress, a litle more money for me, a lot more money for my employer. Corporations continue to exploit customers and consumers. The rich slowly get richer, the cog turns a little faster, that it’s master needn’t wait so long to rake in that much more. Time with your family? Don’t make me laugh. Participate in social activities (there are things other than cocktail parties, cherie)? The Master owns your society, and deigns that you need not participate.

I’m bad at articulating this shit. There are many who are infinitely better. And all for nought. Noam Chomsky likes to think that the revolution is coming. That’s a load of bull. No such thing is happening. And I think he Gandhi said something cloyingly optimistic to the effect that The Man is always beaten. Fat fucking chance this times. You’ve been pwn3d. Deal with it.

Ah yes, it’s Chuck Palahniuk that articulates it better. I remember now. Him and a bunch of others.

Alright. Break’s over. Back to the wheel, boys and girls.

Not much book reading done. Lolita. Subject is horribly sick, writing is beyond words. And Nabokov rues the fact that it’s written in English, which isn’t his native language. Possibly reason enough to learn Russian. Prachett’s Carpet People is next, borrowed from Eloor. I’ve till tomorrow to finish it. Need to get hands on some Chuck Pahlaniuk. Our library’s got Fight Club, but it has been (temporarily) purloined by some daft child.

Went to Palakkad for a wedding. God’s own country. There was a strike going on this one day. Went to Malampuzha Dam, three of us on a motorcycle. Nice dam. Cops caught us on the way back. Got off the usual way. Next day, we’re leaving, Dad was haggling with porters. It was interesting to see these people. In most other places, people are openly greedy, openly corrupt, and make no bones about being this way. In Palakkad, though, there seemed to be some strang, skewed morality there. The cop insisted that “we don’t have this sort of thing in Kerala” (refering to bribery) with a whole lot of righteous indignation, before accepting the money (amidst continued protests of honesty, and insisting that a group of 3 people is a congregation). The porters started off with a ridiculous figure for transporting the luggage, but seemed offended when we suggested that this was so (he settled for a third of the original amount, so there is certainly a contradiction there). Maybe it’s just a different negotiation style there, or maybe the people are too proud to have outsiders suggest such atrocious things as “you’re greedy”.

Words of RHCP wisdom — “Staying high and dry’s more trouble than it’s worth”. Gurgaon, Kanpur … here I come. Superman’s Song. Nice.

Got here (== UP) a couple of weeks ago. Getting monstrously slammed in Math, but studies are interesting, and being done far closer to right than under the aegis of the much venerated bastion of education of which I am but a chipping.

Rooms are decent, food is decent (except that I’ve transferred my malignant swearing from the peacocks to potatoes).

Turns out the audio on my laptop uses a Conexant chipset (Intel HD Audio using a Conexant codec chip for audio/modem). I hope I have better luck with getting it to work (with reasonable volume, now) than the last time. For what it’s worth — the codec’s a PCI ID 14f1:5047, which is, I believe, a CX20551-22 chip (not documented in their literature even).

Other news … I got way too many books (heh … there is no such thing, I realise) here. Slow progress. some Nabokov, some Amanda Cross, and Stephen Donaldson. Formal update to booklist when time permits. Currently, the Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

Yahoo(exclamation-and-all) Mail Beta sucks. If I want Outlook, I’ll use Outlook. Except I won’t want Outlook.

Now to get some lassi and ponder in vain some “elementary” problems in probability (… and whiner, too).

Okay, so maybe it’s time for some updates

• Li’l while back, I (after promising not to) went to Blossom and (after, again, promising not to), bought books. Three of ‘em. Larry Niven’s The Ringworld Engineers, Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country, and Gary Zakov’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters. In a shocking turn of circumstances, I’ve finished reading all of them too. *gasp* (they’re all quite decent (barring the slight let-down of the Ringworld sequel) — *pats self on the back for displaying such remarkable taste)
• Am now reading Robert Pirsig’s Lila. The metaphysical parts of the book (which started out being quite reasonable in ZAMM) have become spotty and hollow in this, but the character of Lila is (as intended?) quite intriguing
• I’m self-interfering with parentheses again. :-)
• I didn’t make it to the IISc MS programme. I’m starting to get good at botching up interviews
• Python is a rather uncomfortable language to look at (particularly w.r.t. scoping rules, absolute disregard for encapsulation and so forth)
• In random order, watched Bang, Bang You’re Dead, Man On The Moon, Annie Hall, Cruel Intentions (uggggh!), Samsara, and Gori Vatra — good stuff (barring the absolute dross that was Cruel Intentions).

And I’ve quit Synopsys, what with my plan to pursue “higher” “studies” in this government college in UP. ‘Twas most agonizing, particularly leaving good friends behind.

Am now in the market for a laptop, subject to successful scrounging of funds. Looking at the HP Pavilion dv5118tx/dv52xxtx, if I can get a good deal. The only competitor, the Dell Inspiron 6400 (a.k.a. E1505) lost out due to pathetic reliability of Dell laptops (Earth to Michael Dell — are you listening?).

Much cleaning, packing to do. Can’t believe I’m leaving Bangalore. Youch.

Related interesting read (slightly over-the-head for me) — Implicate Order.

Had a most depressing and infuriating conversation with about The Blank Noise Project. The name is kind of pseudo, but the topic is no less real for it. Conclusion — the human psyche is truly sick.

Played basketball for more than an hour yesterday. The sweet soreness of physical exertion. :-) That, and somewhat regular sessions of TT are completely failing to keep me from growing fat. As I tell everybody, just think of it as a sign of prosperity.

My office is going to move to Old Madras Road. I happily look forward to spending 3 hours a day commuting.

I’m looking for good (don’t know how to define that generically) guitar tutor somewhere between Jayanagar and Koramangala. Or possibly Indiranagar, given the location of my new office. Suggestions, O audience?

Now, to find something to do…

Coldplay – Clocks — what is it about this song?

Hope to have an AMD64 box in less than a month.

An interesting thing to note — tags – gotta love ‘em. But most people just create random tags based on content. I try to keep a limited number and organize them instead. It’s a little painful too keep track of previous tags (unless you’re using del.icio.us, which gives you a list of existing tags (tangent — their Firefox plugins sucks. It’s too obtrusive. The existing one on MozDev r0x0xr5.)). Anyway, the point is that I see tags being used rather haphazardly, rather than to provide organizational metadata. Or maybe I’m just an order freak.

Reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. Got me thinking about my “everything is random” theory. Which now officially explains The State of Things. Assume that everything that happens is truly random. Thus basic things happen with equal probability. Good Things, as we know, are created by a combination of many factors. Even if a few of these are not in place, you have a Bad Thing. Given the first assumption, all events are equally likely. Thus, the probability of a Good Thing existing is the product of the probability of occurrence of all individual contributing events. Since each of these is less than 1 (considerably so, by observation), the product is going to be far less than 1. The probability of Bad Things happening, is just 1 – P(Good Thing). Corollary — it is the nature of the Universe for just about everything to suck. And there’s nothing you can do about it, even if you knew how.

There. Aren’t you happier, now that you know?

Need to update my book list with all the new bookses.

Bought six books yesterday (aside: when’re you going to read them, idiot?) in this book sale in Jayanagar 4th Block. Was fun.

Very sleepy now — was up till late working on slides for what (if deadlines are not respected) should be my talk at Foss.in.

Applications to colleges in the US are happening. Once completed, I must start preparing for GATE. Too much to do — work, apps, slides, studies. Sometimes I like this kind of frantic-ness. An interesting change of scene from placid, static, serenity.

Adding to my Douglas Adams book wishlist — Last Chance To See. Humankind is the suck.

Addendum: The 6 books

• Frederick Forsyth – The Dogs of War
• Arthur Hailey – Overload
• Amanda Cross – The Puzzled Heart
• Roddy Doyle – The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
• David Eddings – Guardians of the West (Mallorean Book I)
• Anne McCaffrey – The Rowan

The popular fiction were bought for obscure reasons, the next 2 are my attempts at literary evolution, and the last are good ole SFF.