I Have a Cold in this Biting Cold

It's winter!

Yes, my semester is over and it is time again for holidays (by which I mean the time when I can work from home). December has set in. The sunlight is weak. The winds are chilly. The mercury is dropping lower and lower. The perfect time to curl up in the armchair in front of the fireplace and read a Victorian ghost story. Or perhaps write a poem about the icy weather outside. Or wear a travel cloak and walk through the snow storm.

Imagination is sweet. This is Delhi, cold enough to be irritating and yet not cold enough that it could fit my imagination of the "cold winter days". And to cap it all, I have a bad cold. With a sore throat and running nose (and not to forget the tons of pending work), I no longer want to look at winter from the poetic view. I'm dreaming of some place in the tropics where I can look at the azure sky and enjoy the sun and sand. Possibly sitting on the beach and reading a novel about sea adventures and shipwrecks. Taking a boat and going to some uninhabited island and spending some time alone there fishing. And then cooking the catch in a fire when darkness falls. What a life!

I just had a look at a recent Google Easter egg. To see it, just go to www.google.com and type "let it snow" in the search box. And see what happens. Snow starts falling and frost forms on the window. After a while the search button changes to "Defrost".

The thing is, I generally like exploring these Easter eggs a lot. They add a nice touch of fun to technology. But I somehow didn't like the timing of this particular one. Google can really be insensitive sometimes!

If I Searched for the Hallows

Excerpt from "Ankit Sarkar and the Digital Hallows"

Ever since the net was discovered, the have been people who have sought to control it.

The evil person can split his presence on the net. The more evil he is, the more horcrux-bots will he create. To fully exterminate his control of the net, all horcrux-bots need to be destroyed. Only a truly evil person can achieve this much control.

I'm not evil. Yet, I too sought out a way to become master of the internet. Hallows not horcruxes.

The Elder Comp is the most powerful computer on earth. The Resurrection Hard Disk has the ability to fetch any data from anywhere, even if it has been shredded. The Invisibility Encoding makes a person literally invisible on the net. These three digital-hallows combined makes a person master of the internet. No one can know who he is, no firewall can stop him, no data download limits exist for him. He is invincible.

I however do not recommend you to go search for it. I have wasted countless hours. My CGPA has come down a lot. I still do not know what to do after this year. And I still haven't found any of them till now.

Every time I think I have found the fastest computer, there appears one more faster that it. Every time I lose data, some of it remains lost for ever. And every time I think I have found the perfect way to be invisible, I get caught by "Cyberoam".

The hallows are a fool's lure. Do not go after it.

Explanation for the random piece of writing above:

Today is the first day of my last year of undergraduate life at IIIT-D. Hence I had put up this status

Today is the beginning of the end (first day of the last year at IIIT-D)

This was a comment I got (from Tuhinanshu, my batch-mate).

this part should be named Ankit Sarkar and IIITD's hallows.....part 4

To continue the fun I posted a comment which you just read above. Initially I wrote it and then deleted it. Later I modified it a bit and posted it again. It seems people really liked it a lot. I'm not sure if you'll fully understand it though (unless you're a IIIT-Dian) since many references are local to IIIT Delhi.

And I gotta credit Ujjwal Gupta for his suggestion of posting it and preserving it for posterity.

I only regret that I have but one 'like' to give to the above post.
You should totally have this in your notes section. Or on your blog. This message needs to be spread to every nook and cranny of the internet!

Since he wanted to give many likes, it is only fair that I give many thanks. But then I don't feel like typing it over here. Here's the next best thing.

#include<stdio.h>
main()
{
  while(1)
  printf("Thank You Ujjwal\n");
}

It's Summer!

It's summer in New Delhi again. The third week of May is about to end. The days are characterized by the early rising and late setting sun. No longer is it pleasant to go outside after 10 in the morning or before 8 in the night. The afternoons are particularly unbearable. In the evening, a warm breeze blows.

Yes, summers are oppressive, particularly in Delhi. I remember how India had the system of summer capitals during the days of British rule and wish we could have the system again now. I don't ask for shifting the entire government machinery to a new city...it would be too costly. All I want is that the government declare a new capital for the summers. The seat of the government can still stay here, but I would move out. It's just wishful thinking and impractical - that's what most would say. But for me, the summer capital reminds me of the old world which I can only experience through the words of Kipling and Ruskin Bond. A world in which life is about enjoying the cool breeze of the hills, reading novels, meeting with interesting people and writing about them...

But then there's a part of Delhi summer life which I can't live without. It is the afternoon (ironically) - which according to me is the best time of the day. There's a sense of comfort in being in a room with curtains drawn, the sun-rays outside lighting up the curtains, the dim light in the room, the fan on full speed above and lying down on a soft bed. For passing the long summer afternoon, a siesta is a must. Nothing beats it. And I look forward to it a lot. Sometimes I take a book to read and slowly immerse myself into another world, till I can stay awake no longer. Then I slowly fall asleep, the book still in my hands. I love the ambience of the room. I love the pleasure of reading a book. I love the siesta.

More than anything I love the dreamy atmosphere. And the pleasure of doing nothing.

Celebrating Holi Online

Since I have so much work this weekend, it leaves me precious little time to actually celebrate Holi. We didn't even celebrate Holi in college this time. So I'm longing to go out tomorrow and enjoy like a child, mixing colours in the water, preparing water balloons, pelting unsuspecting people with them....

Back to reality. I know it won't happen. I mean I might go out, but enjoying like a child is out of question. So here the Holi sms I sent to my friends this time. In fact I was searching for a geeky/nerdy Holi sms (or even something connected with Image Processing), but couldn't find one. So had to compose one myself. Here's it.

#FF00FF, #FFFF00, #00FF00, #000800, #0000FF, #FF00FF, #800080, #C0C0C0, #FFA500 ...and millions others. They add colour to our computer screen (and indirectly to our lives). Let's dedicate tomorrow to them. Wishing you a very Happy Holi.

PS- If you still haven't got it, these are the hexadecimal colour codes for HTML. And there are 16 million colours.

This probably shows that I now consider working on the computer as my life. And this is a message that is geeky/nerdy and has references to Image Processing too. I guess this Holi will be spent online, but that doesn't mean it cannot be fun!

A very Happy Holi to all of you!

I'm Nobody

I have a second hand copy of this book

A short while ago (during a break from finding out "how to trace source of an email"), I came upon this post "If I be the Antagonist" in Dr. Debajyoti Bera's blog. While the first part of the post was interesting to read, it was the latter part which I read with much more enthusiasm. It contained some verses by Emily Dickinson.

Emily Dickinson is one of my favourite poets. The first time I heard about her I don't remember where but it was definitely not more than a year ago. Most probably I read about her on a website. At that time, I didn't pay too much attention. It was while out seeking something interesting (in a second hand book market) that I saw a book of her poems. It was quite cheap - about Rs. 25 I guess. I opened the first page and read the verse "I'm nobody! Who are you?". In no time I had bought it.

I didn't get any more chance to read it. I brought it to my hostel room in my fourth semester - the last time I lived in a hostel - so that I would spend my free time reading. No such opportunities arrived and I carried it home again after the end of semester. It was during the summer vacations that I happened to read it properly. The summer of 2010 (like all summers before) I was doing a project at my institute (IIIT-Delhi). It required me to travel to IIIT-D which took almost 90 minutes by bus (one way). Although I have never found bus journeys to be boring (especially at that time, when AC and low-floor buses were a rare sight), I yearned for a better way to spend the time during the hot and uncomfortable journey. One day I randomly picked this book to read on the bus and thus began my 90 minutes journey to a different world.

I can't properly describe why I like Miss Dickinson's style of writing so much. Her poems have a haunting feeling. Perhaps what makes it so attractive are the references to those small truths of everyday life which we are generally too busy to notice but smile when shown to us. That is what appeals to me so much. And also I sometimes tend to identify with her poems. I often think about her reclusive and melancholy life at Amherst. Was it this which inspired her to write? Loneliness is definitely a key theme in her writings.

The verse I liked best is of course "I'm Nobody! Who are you?". The author knows that she is not really a well known and popular figure and thus delights in meeting another person who is similar. Furthermore, she hates to be public about herself. In a world, where everybody is racing one another in advertising their skills, I find it heartening to believe that there were (and definitely are) some people who tried to preserve their independence and not follow the crowd.

I have put up these verses in the "about me" section. I guess this is what truly defines me.

I'm nobody. Who are you?

Background

I am still wondering what kind of background I should use for this blog. If someone would have suggested me one, I would have perhaps accepted the suggestion. If it didn't look good, it would have been so easy to accept that after all it was not my choice. But now that the choice is entirely mine, it feels so difficult.

I chose a white and brownish background first. Then switched to a green one. Then again to a sky blue one. The sheer amount of options is proving to be a bane. It reminded me of the situation some years ago...when blogger would have few templates and you had to use them. Less options actually seemed more friendly. Finally after trying out lots of options, I decided on a minimalist design.

While trying out backgrounds, I had initially decided to use an image as a background.

It was the image of an empty road from the movie "5 Centimeters per Second" (I really advise you to watch it). Fields stretching out on both sides of the road. Electric poles lining one side. And the road just going ahead towards the horizon, finally meeting the blue. Beautiful.

Sometimes, when I read about some research about Computational Photography, I wonder if it is really possible to make a computer draw these kind of images. If it ever happens in the future, will they be comparable to the work done by humans? More importantly, will such a computer appreciate the beauty in this scene? I can only wonder.

Hello World

This is the first post. Just testing this blog.