Happy New Year Folks...!

Wish you a very happy

2009

Where are our youngsters going?

I used to believe that the present generation, at least the educated part of it, will come out of the closed mindedness of the caste, religion etc. It turns out that I’m dead wrong. One hour ago I stumbled upon this Orkut community called “The youngsters of [caste name]”. The members are not some semi-literate people who work in obscure data entry company with connectivity. They are well placed professionals, alumni and students (both gender, equally) of top professional(?) colleges including my own (this is how I stumbled upon.) The supposedly toppers of the higher secondary education (?!) of Tamil Nadu.

There was this thread in the forum:

What should do to prevent our community ppl from marryin outside our caste? (Sic)

And one gem I found in that discussion:

There are less no. of girls in our caste than boys. This should be tackled to prevent dilution of our caste.

I was like WTF? Dilution of what? I searched for other castes and sure I found communities with pretty much the same kind of membership for all the caste names that I knew (Though it numbered to only 10, including mine, I’m sure other castes too had communities).
I lost my faith. Completely.

PS: This is a rant. Excuse my grammar.
PPS: Should I be happy that these people condemn female infanticides at least?

Email Santa

There are some letters mailed to Santa kept at this website. They are funny and sometimes witty to read. Though there are a lot of them written by little children, my favorite one is written by a 40 year old boy.

I could sure use some ideas about what to get my wife. Has she sent you a list of suggestions?

And this one reminded me of my little sister's young days.

As my brother has been a very, very, very bad boy I would like you to send someone to torture him. Maybe a chunk of coal too. Bring my parents some neat stuff and the bill.

Seasons greetings to you all...

கார்த்திகை

These pictures were taken during karthigai in my sister's house. Apart from cropping I didn't do anything else. I should learn to touch up the photos using GIMP soon.

The Meaning of Akilan

Yesterday, someone came to this blog through a Google search for meaning of akilan.(saw in my statcounter analysis)
Quite frankly I don't know what I should feel. Anyway, for the enlightenment of the uninformed souls, I state the meaning of my name, Akilan, here.

Akilam(அகிலம்) means all, universe, world and the like. Akilan means one who is owner of these. Basically it boils down to mean ruler of the world.^[1]

Pity is that I’m not a ruler of even a village... :(

[1] Madras University Tamil lexicon.

Viagra Like

Today in the joke of the day gadget(iGoogle) I saw the list of  Viagra like drugs that would be very useful in life. one such drug is

COMPLIMENTRA: In clinical trials, 82% of middle-aged men noticed that their wives had a new hairstyle. Currently being tested to see if its effects extend to noticing new clothing.

These two had me in splits(emphasis mine):

ANTI-AGRA: Promises the exact opposite effect of Viagra. Currently undergoing clinical trials on U.S. Senators.

LIAGRA: This drug helps men lie more successfully when asked about their sexual affairs. Will be available in Regular, Grand Jury and Political Strength versions.

Ha ha ha...

Stealing Credits

There was this international conference conducted last month by a well known society in the field. Eighteen papers were sent to that from the concerned department of my college. They were authored by various students and faculty members. But invariably 13 papers mentioned one particular person as a co-author. Can you imagine that person’s intelligence given this info? Can Einstein be a match? The reality is that that particular person is the HOD of that department. When i saw this info in my college site i was dumbfounded. None can save Indian education system.

பூ

பூ - ஓர் அழகான காதல் கவிதை!

முதல் முறையாக தமிழ் படத்தில் ஒரு பெண் நடித்திருக்கிறார். கதாபாத்திரமாகவே வாழ்ந்திருக்கிறார் என்பதே சரி. பார்வதியின் முக பாவனைகள் அத்தனை அழகு! இயக்குனர் சசிக்கு பாராட்டுகள்.

I'm Back

The Gender Myth

Last week a prominent weekly magazine did a cover story titled "Gender Myths". A few things which were considered true by them( or by the public, since they said, they conducted an opinion poll) are as follows:

• Women make better bosses than men.
• Women can do math better than men.
• Nonsense.
• More nonsense.
  

And no one is protesting. What would've happened if the same magazine said the following things?

• Men make better bosses than women.
• Men can do math better than women.
  

Feminist groups all over the country would've burned the magazine copies.

People resent the notion that intelligence is connected with gender. As long as it's against women, that is. If the bias is against men, then gender somehow makes men less intelligent, perverts, sexual predators and all the bad things a woman can imagine!
Idiots.

தீபாவளி!

இனிய தீப திருநாள் வாழ்த்துக்கள்  :-)

Image courtesy of nkjain.

Chandrayaan Launch Succesful

Chandrayaan-1 is in the transfer orbit as of now after its successful launch yesterday. India is all set to join the exclusive club of space explorers. :)

Pic: PSLV-C11 lifts off with Chandrayaan-1

Phew....

Three days of exams....
four days of conference^*....
Four days of exams again...


And then came Shaastra 08.

Phew... I was in a roller coaster ride for past few days.... :-o


Up next: meme from the Rat. :)

*Attending conference(read as 'sleeping in AC hall') is easy. I was in organising team :( Will write a separate post abt it.

You Can Search For Any Nonsense And Still Get Results!

I don't mean a page with 5 results. With results containing thousands of pages!!

Try these Google searches:

asdf

abcd

jkl;

eeeee  (weirdest)

nonsense

:-)
Ok ok... The "Nonsense" search can be justified since it's a word. It's just to sum up my reaction to the other queries.

The Best Online Joke Ever

Watch this video. Its hilarious to the core. ;)

I lifted it from D Rat. :P

Kanimozhi

I too contribute to Kanimozhi now. Kanimozhi has taken a blog avatar and continues to provide usefull information about GNU, free software and copyrights among others.

25 Years Of Software Freedom

GNU project celebrates its 25th birthday this month. FSF has kick started a month long celebration and has released a video featuring Stephen Fry. The video is available for download from here.

GNU project was started with the vision of providing a free(as in freedom) operating system and to uphold the ideals of the knowledge sharing. It was an answer to the nondisclosure agreements - that the companies required you, the users, to sign- which prevented the knowledge sharing.

Stallman said

The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker. Most likely I would also be developing software that was released under nondisclosure agreements, thus adding to the pressure on other people to betray their fellows too.

He chose the harder but a more moral choice. GNU  was born.
This article describes the history of GNU briefly. Do read it. Here is the initial annoncement of GNU project.

QOTD

I read this quote in Ben Casnocha's blog.

It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.

-- Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC

I like this quote very much.

Google To Launch A New Browser, Google Chrome: I'm Thrilled.

Google has decided to build a a new web browser from scratch and named it Google Chrome. According to the official Google blog entry, a beta for Win platform will be launched soon followed by Linux and Mac versions.

I hope the browser will be good, but no comments until i use it. Anyway, I'm thrilled at what they might offer new. For a peek look at this cartoon put up by Google chrome people.

UPDATE(4 sep): I used it this morning. The new browser has interesting and innovative features. But there are also many flaws. I'm not dissappointed though, considering the fact that this is still in beta and that its from scratch too.

Post Olympics: Shame On India

We are the second most populous country in the world. But we are in 50th position in Olympics medal tally. Even that single gold does not belong to India. It's Abhinav's own. Not everyone's father is a billionaire who could afford lakhs for equipment and training. In fact he succeeded against the red tapism of this country. Not because of it. Even small countries in Africa got more medals. Nothing is a mystery. There are concrete reasons for this, which could be set right.

• Firstly, we as a nation forget that there exists sports other than cricket.
• The government too is in same category given the poor infrastructure it has developed for other sports. Decline of hockey is a classic example of this. We were winning until synthetic came in the way.
  
• Our education system is so screwed up that most of the schools are bad in academic as well as in sports. The school in which I studied had only a single building without a single square feet of playground. Nothing was done even after the kumbakonam tragedy. The authorities were simply corrupt.(After our school got its approval renewed, it conducted a ceremony in which all the district officials of school education and of the then ruling party and the MLAs were honoured.)

It is high time we realised that there are many things other than +2 marks, that there are more important areas(including basic sciences) other than engineering and that we are lagging behind academically as well. I say this since many people say that we are in a very good place academically if not in sports. This is simply not true.

Insult To Hackers

The Gujarath police thinks that only a techie could hack into an unencrypted wireless internet connection:

 Now, apparently, the word[hacker] means "someone who borrows someone else's open wireless connection." And this, according to the Gujarat police, is not easy to do: they suspect a "techie", a Wipro engineer of having done it.

If its complicated enough for the police technical wing(Is there one?), then it must be hard and hence hacker worthy. :)

Here's a news flash for our police and our equally moronic media: ANYONE with a laptop within a few tens of metres from the building in question could have used the internet connection, if it was unencrypted.

Both the above quotes from Rahul Siddharthan's blog here.

Offline Saga: Is Searching In Google While Logged In Good?

Our department lab was not working for a week due to some electrical problem and I was left offline till yesterday. My spam count hit triple century and even my inbox was full. People usually get spam with Viagra, sexual strength and other such stuff. (My blog's going to get R rated! ;)) But I also get spam about watches and binoculars and there's an unusual story behind it.

Until a year ago I got only little spam with usual sex, finance themes. Then one day I searched online for watches to buy one. Two days later I got my first watch spam about a site that sold watches. I couldn't understand how that happened. Then a week later I searched for binoculars (I was on a shopping spree then... :)) The very next day a binocular spam landed. I was like 'What the hell's going on?' I searched for other things too, but they didn't materialise into spam. (I never gave my id anywhere. I was making decisions only. After selecting model I got it in retail.)  Then it hit me. On both occasions I was logged into my Google account! I still don’t understand how those people got my id. I always disabled third party cookie access too. Though I never knew how that happened, I stopped searching when I was logged in. And I no more got spam about my search queries. But my spam count has only increased. :(

Its Exam Time Again!

Assessment-1 starts coming Monday in my college. And the first paper is our worst: Propulsion. Yesterday night(around 11) my friend AR texted me and the chat went like this(my shortest SMS chat, i suppose):

AR: wat doin? studyin still?
Me: ya.. you?
AR: am goin to sleep. do u understand?
Me: I understand that u r feeelin sleepy. s tat sentence such hard to understand?
AR: i asked if u can understand wat u r readin. gud nite.
Me(confused and irritated): No. good night.

Reading  textbooks  always leads to confusion and mental tiredness. :-) Really. The great Bertrand Russel said this:

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Ha Ha Ha... I Never Thought 'Society' Could Be A Person's Name

This Book is written by Hacking, Counterhacking and another one fellow called err.. Society.

According to my college librarians:

Couldn't control laughing... lolz....

Data Recovery From A Formatted Drive

Last Sunday I formatted one of my partitions mistakenly.(Note to self: You moron. When you login as root, be EXTREMELY CAREFUL.) This is one of the occupational hazards of wanting to be in the bleeding edge of GNU/Linux. I reinstall Linux once in a while since it'll become painfully unusable due to my ripping apart all settings and damaging it to the core. This time it affected a windows partition also due to a silly mistake done by me. Affecting a windows installation is not new. But not this severe.
Fortunately, most, if not all, of the data was recovered using EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard. While searching to find a suitable software I realized that there were no decent reviews about these software. So this post.

Fortunately one of my friends had this software and helped me out. But the file names of some of the files are changed to hashes(#) etc. and the files are sometimes in more than one location(size of the recovered data is nearly 50% more than what I actually had.) Anyways, I'm happy to get them back. I was in very bad mood since it contained my entire collection of pictures, arranged. The last word is the catch. You could get almost all of them, but arranging them is a hell lot of work.

Best thing to do when you want to recover data from a drive? Don't do anything to that drive! Install the recovery software in some other dive. Don't touch that particular drive. The more you write, more the chance that your data is overwritten.

For the one who's wondering: The data is not gone when you delete it. Not even when you format it. They can be recovered back. If you want to really delete sensitive info without a trace, try shredding.

Sudoku solver in C [Linux]

When I was in first year of my study (now in 3rd) at my college, Yuvarajaa and I wrote a C program to solve sudoku. The program solves it much the same way as we humans do. There is no brute force used.

To download the source code go here. The instructions for compiling are also given in the same page. I explain the algorithm used below.

Sudoku is a type of Latin square and an exact cover problem and efficient algorithms to solve it can be written using methods like backtracking or dangling links. But our algorithm is very simple(meaning beginners can understand. We ourselves were beginners then:-)) which solves it pretty much the same way as we humans do. Consequently our algorithm is slower than above mentioned ones.(It is still much faster, given the capabilities of today's PCs & you wont notice a difference.)

The program does following things in the given order:

1. Enumerates possible values of all empty cells. The cells which have only one possible value are filled up.
2. Next the enumerated values are scanned to identify the locked pairs, naked pairs(triples also), Hidden pairs etc. and appropriately deleted. The steps 1 & 2 are repeated to fill-up the grid.
3. There exists some very hard sudokus which cannot be solved by the above methods. When no more cell could be filled up by the above steps the program jumps to a hard function which assumes one of the enumerated values and proceeds by above way. If contradictory solution is obtained then the assumed value is changed and proceeded again. This does not amount to much time since usually there are only two possible values in the cell to be assumed. Anyway, for safety, we terminate the program with an "Unable to solve" message when the solution is not obtained even after assumption of a third value.

As far as we have tested, this program solved all the sudokus, including an empty grid. I finished it by the middle of first year itself. But i didn't have a web page or blog to host it then. And now i forgot many intricate details of the algorithm. :( I re-read it once more to write this post. ;-)

This is essentially what humans do while solving. This type of algorithm has some advantages too. according to wikipedia:

human-style solvers can be employed by hand-crafting puzzlesmiths for their ability to rate the difficulty of a created puzzle and show the actual solving process their target audience can be expected to follow.

To enable this we have a function called ibug which, when enabled(at compile time) displays step by step procedure and the enumerated values at each step. It was originally written to track bugs in the code. Hence the name ;)

To know how to solve the sudoku and the terminologies used you may go here.

Friends' Blogs

Vasanth, my senior, friend and guru in management, started a blog almost at the same time as me and is rocking after going to NITIE.

I went to the battle field armed with full hand buttoned, tucked in shirt and formal leather shoes (at 3.15 am) and tasted victory in all the 3 battles.

He is actually describing his interview. By the way, he has a nice template too...
Note to Vasanth: I'm gonna steal your template soon(With a fighter in the place of car, of course.)

Recently I found the blog by my friend B aka Stranger. The blog is hilarious to the core. I guarantee that you'll laugh and laugh till your co-workers(or students) wonder what the hell happened to you. An excerpt:

BS: Is Today your BCM?
JP(Confused): No! Why do you think so?
BS: You look smart only on your BCM days.. He He He
(Loved that smile on his face)

Paavam co-workers...

UPDATE: Vasanth changed his template. But this too has a car.

கணிமொழியின் ஆடி மாத இதழ்

கணிமொழியின் ஆடி மாத இதழ் வெளியாகியுள்ளது.

"ஆடியிலும் உங்களைப் பிரியாத கணிமொழி"
--ஆமாச்சு.

படித்து பயன் பெறுக.

UPDATE:
For those who don't have Tamil Unicode font: Kanimozhi is a monthly magazine about the free softwares(GNU/Linux etc) and and contains tips & tricks to use them. Go here and follow the steps to install Tamil Unicode fonts and enjoy reading the July edition.

QOTD In Aero

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.

-- Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

Saw this in our textbook(Jet Engine, Rolls Royce). Especially true in Aeronautical Engineering.

Wordpress Programmers Are Smart Enough To Display Your Passwords In Cleartext

I may not be the best programmer, but I' know programming well enough not to mail the password in cleartext or display your password in an unencrypted web page.

The password I received in mail or the one shown in the web page is not auto generated. It is MY password in clear text.
Idiots.

On a related one see this by Jeff Atwood.

Indian Media is a Ring Circus

I'm amused at the prank played on Indian media.

Kudos to Pen Pricks

ROFTL :)

Dasavatharam

Plain nonsense.
I went to movie, despite bad reviews, hoping it would at least be watchable once.
Result: Severe headache.
No comment about kamal roles. Asin is irritating at best. Why the hell does he write screenplay when he is not capable of even a semi-decent one?

Someone wrote "People whoever written good about the movie are talking more about Kamal and whoever written bad about the movie are talking more about the Movie itself." I see a film for its story and screenplay. I don`t give a damn if Kamal dons 10 characters or works hard to act as an old lady.

P.S.: I want my money back.

OOXML On Hold

Due to protests from South Africa, Brazil, India and Venezuela, ISO put on hold the OOXML standardization process two days ago.

The OOXML format is not fit for anything, let alone an international standard. It is full of bugs(sample), non compatible with itself(!?, forget ISO/IEC compliance) and more. It is carefully designed to enable only MS to build applications that can handle the said format. It is a move to monopolize the market and is against public interests.

Microsoft heavily influenced the standardization process with all the means one could imagine. It even lodged complaints against BIS committee members that they are acting against national interests.(Apparently, to Bill Gates, national interests means Microsoft's interests.)

Here is an open letter protesting that, by Prof Deepak B Phatak, IIT Bombay, India. He is one of the BIS committee members. A Tamil translation of the same(in part) can be found here.

Top 10 Life Tips

Nassim Taleb's life tips and more presented here are really useful.
The ones that caught my attention were:

5 Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.

7 Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).

9 Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

Hat tip to Ben.

Learning FEA. Is there an open source FEA software?

Currently I'm learning FEM(Finite Element Methods) for structural problems from my HOD. We use computers for solving those problems fast and in our lab the software used is ANSYS. I'm an ardent supporter of free software and am searching for an equivalent Final Element Analysis software in Linux. Or at least GPLed Windows software. I saw some of those using Google search. But I'm not satisfied with their capabilities.

Anybody know such good software? If so please comment.

PS: Twisted DNA suggested doing a post on 'navel bra' as my first post. But my research(;)) on that is still under progress(!). Hence I write a different first post.

Test post.

hello... blog testing 1 2 3...