Thursday, March 24, 2011

Indians are just leechers! Never heard of 1 soul contributing a single line to Wikipedia!

Here are the problems I've encountered in my Wikipedia Journey:
(1) Yana Gupta's page is minimal.
(2) Indian Rupee page does not have images of 5, 10, 20, 25 paise. etc.

What about Regional wiki?

Thursday, March 17, 2011

An Idea that will pass:

(1) Feeling happy (It's a phase), just thought of understanding what the college thinks about FOSS, questionairre perhaps.
(2) Shoes: I'm so tempted to convert all those PB issues to English through an OCR.

Seems my obsessions have a future and purpose?

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Here is a passionate txt I wrote and left in my hard disk, and recovered today thanks to Google Desktop, that indexes all content. Ironically this should be coded, because Sir taught us File Structures.


When I said I would like to councel the students [Referring to a proposition I made], I just wanted to bridge the gap between students and teachers starting from you. Let me elaborate:
Autonomy dawned, and you made a valiant effort to change the system of rot, but now that you've planned to relinquish the same responsibilites, and
soon there will be no hope left.
Your efforts to maintain the sanctity of the teaching proffession and your firm belief in strict discipline are regarded
as "egoistic attitude", "eccentricity", "complete disrespect" by the students.
Students need to look beyond this, and see the real effort you've put in to bring order to this pandemonium of a system.
Also, for instance, I beleive that you shouldn't have scrutinized the choice of bussiness plans by the students much,
instead you should have just told them, develop a bussiness plan, completely based on their passion, no matter what.
This would automatically give them a huge incentive to work, and anyway you're mission was to make them see the world of bussiness, especially its failures,
and what better way than to do it under the illusion of their passion.
Regarded as the "head fake" by Randy Pauch, where students are sent to learn, say, "to play cricket", but without knowing,
return learning about "sportmanship, team play, leadership" similarly you could have done that in bussiness.
The even greater problem is that I have seen the other teachers taking the students side and feeling justified
with things such as "feeling lost", "not having a road map" for the subjects you are teaching.
All is lost, even if the teaching staff and administration start taking sides.

Yes it is true you have abstained giving a concrete road map a lot of times, which was supplied to us, since our birth, and we now we seem to deem it as our birthright;
From the very little numericals we did in school (that already had data in them, and we never had to look anywhere to find them),
to the process of even writing exams in engineering.
Perhaps you could have told everyone at the start, that there will be no roadmap (be it filestructures, information systems),
because this is your objective... an inspiring line from your blog: "to raise programming to the level of art,
it is necessary that we encourage learners to solve problems on their own rather than forcing them to apply known solutions."
These bother me a lot, for its killing the only teacher, who opened my eyes into the world for each subject you taught,
and you, taught a rebellious student like me to respect teachers and their proffession.








The Subconscious Influence of the world:

I had thought of this quite long back, and now I stumble on a TED video (David Brook's talk "Social Animal") that touches the fact.

We are constantly absorbing knowledge, at every moment. It doesn't have to be conscious. Every interaction with a person, every movie, every TV show, every internet video, we subconsciously absorb something.

[This is a very important point when it comes to education, these ridiculous never-ending lectures and solving sums on the black board are not the only way of learning (in fact it is pathetic), experiencing, thinking, being stimulated in so many ways could enable us to learn and appreciate subjects so much more. A far fetched dream in a vicious sadist system of course]

Anyway, back to what we were discussing.
These subconsciously learnt traits effect us in many ways.

A simple example to elaborate. I have been watching a lot of crime/murder related TV Shows  and movies (Fascinating story lines and the love for thrillers and psychological thrillers). If I were kidnapped, and held at gunpoint and forced to blurt out an ingenious way to kill someone, my mind would automatically use the TV Shows as "experience" and probably come up with a way to do that (I'm already thinking of Ricin poisoning, takes hours to come in effect (Enough time to escape/cover tracks), difficult to trace).

At the end of the day this sub-conscience (very similar to "feelings") matters, because we use to reason/take decisions and lead life as driven by them. We aren't thinking of an optimal mathematical equation when taking decisions in life, we are trusting our so called "instincts" "gut feelings".

My teacher, Krishnaraj PM condemns the ideas of "gut feeling" in Engineering.
His famous quotes are:
"One solution is no solution", - means there have to be choices, and each of them must be carefully/mathematically weighed (some procedures were elaborated in his Information System classes)
"Ask questions until no further questions can be asked" - This is his obsessive design technique, he considers possibilities, permutations and combinations to deliver a software which are compliant with all the funky jargons in the true sense [Fault tolerant, Robust etc.]

I love these quotes, because if I apply them, I feel the gratification of having designed a well engineered solution - It's an art.

And my favorite quote that follows this is:
"to raise programming to the level of art, 
it is necessary that we encourage learners to solve problems on their own rather than forcing them to apply known solutions"

So learners should solve problems on their own, be creative - in a sense move with their sub-conscience.  
Dexter Dump, Searching in Sneha's Profile:
In Mumbai with my parents.
  • Ankan Zerob well i need to explain my obsession for dexter in-depth which makes me "biased" and hardly criticize it, which i cannot do from this irritating mobile device. Eg. i like relating to his dark passenger, i abstain myself from watching the interviews of the cast so that in my mind i don't spoil the "characters"
    January 15 at 12:29am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob season4 ending spoiler alert!............! no i'm not a fan of julia stiles, i dont know she exists, but the death of rita(sneha has already watched it) was in a way killing dexter's precious human connection, but given his sinister nature in season5 i deemed it was right she died, dexter could peacefully pursue his passion.
    January 15 at 12:34am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob at the most, i'm surely we all do, we imagine ourselves to be the protagonist, i am dexter, i have a dark passion, i channel and decorate it in my own way to live in this world normally, but on way i even sacrifice the slightest thirst of my passion, i tend to them as much as needed and even more.
    January 15 at 12:38am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob proof of the part that he doesnt hesitate at all to quench his passion - 1) he counts the number of hours and seconds, until his first kill after his brother's murder. 2) even after rita is dead, and he assumes the huge responsibility of his son, a blood stain at the back of his moving truck distracts him... And he sparys luminol and investigates the scene in front of his son.
    January 15 at 12:42am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob i like seeing myself as dexter, having passions that drive me to perfection, that push my limits, that quench my thirst, but sometimes so much that i forget my loved ones, and my responsibilities.
    January 15 at 12:44am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob oh god lol, i completely let go of writing in your comment thread! Sorry :-)
    January 15 at 12:45am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob its not "on way" its "no way i even sacrifice the slightest thirst of my passion....
    January 15 at 12:49am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob dexter has this unique fascination for all people around him (normal people mostly, and a few killers like trinity), he takes a lot of effort to understand them, so that he can learn, if not learn then mimic! Harry's code is his only answer, but this complex life has questions that cannot be answered by his code, so he frantically searches for these answers elsewhere.
    January 15 at 1:04am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob
    proof of the above statement: (1) the old woman (forgot her name) asks for the best quelime pie from dexter, because she is diagnosed of a terminal lung disease... But she wishes for even more, she cannot bear the suffering, she wants dexter to end her suffering, perform a coup-de-grace even! Dexter is torn with this thought, she does not meet harry's code, but he wants to end her suffering. Dexter is troubled, in a dilemma and finally finds the answer in miguel's words "sometimes for a friend, you have to do the right thing, even if its really hard"... Finally dexter decides to end her suffering, i cannot forget that episode, it brought tears to my eyes, as she said "finally dexter, you brought me the world's best quelime pie."
    January 15 at 1:11am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob ‎(2) the thoughts of the dark passenger are inspired by a coffee conversation with laila (the got british girl, who even i can't forget lol)
    January 15 at 1:13am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob ‎(3) the trinity fascination: we all know this very well, dexter tried to understand how could a serial killer have a family? Where did he keep his trophies (in plain sight) and his unique way of being invisible(only lundy's talent found this "ghost") even though he left his bodies behind. This cost him dearly...Rita.
    January 15 at 1:18am via Facebook Mobile ·
  • Ankan Zerob ‎(4) he listened to all of jordan chase's insight (revealed in the end), which i'm not elaborating until i have proof that sneha has finished season 5.
    January 15 at 1:21am via Facebook Mobile ·