Hi,


Today, some scientist (there are so many of them these days) proved what had been known to me for last so many years. I had told this to people who told me to get up early in the morning and jog a little or play games in which you have to switch off the tv/computer, wear shoes and go out. But noone believed me. Now its my turn to look at them and grin and shrug. And shrug, I will! I told you Mr.! I told you that . Now, Do you believe me??

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Life is going on, or should I say passing by, silently. I come to work, I do some work, I browse a little and I go home. Thats about it. In the evening we play cricket on the office terrace. Nothing more, Nothing less.

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Yesterday, I was in LA. In a room full of geeks and weirdos I stood at the podium with a mic in my hand. I was the only one there with combed and un-colored hair.

"One, two, three check check". The mic was working perfectly well. Many people were staring at me without blinking.. like they had never seen a man in a gray tux and formal shoes before. Maybe they hadn't.

"Those of you, who want to kill the most famous president of our country, raise your hand.". I delivered the practiced punch-line in style and the room errupted with booming applause and whistles. Geeks, who were so thin that it was hard to imagine them standing straight without any support, were dancing and throwing CDs at each other in the state of euphoria.

"It is called . You know the man, you know the story and you know what to do! You will get the same rifle, you will be in the same room in School Book Depository in Dallas. A car will come on the road in front of the building with a man and a woman in pink dress. All you get is three shots. Lets see if you are as good as . I bet you are better!".

The way they behaved was a sure sign that our new game is gonna be a huge success. I mean, who wouldn;t want to kill JFK?

Media was there too. They have covered this thingie in this . I love America. I am on my way to rich-people-club baby!

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Some days back, I had come across this at Slashdot. On Sunday, I had nothing better to do and I decided to give it a shot. It was easy. Took me some 10 minutes to come up with a brute-force algorithm and and another 20 minutes to implement it in perl. Today morning I tried doing it in Python and it looked so much better.

The algorithm is simple:
1) Find out all the possible vertex-triplets. In mathematical lingo, it is nCr.
2) For each triplet, confirm that all the vertices are not on the same line.
3) For each triplet, confirm that a line exits between first and second vertex
4) For each triplet, confirm that a line exits between first and third vertex.
5) For each triplet, confirm that a line exits between third and second vertex.
6) if all the criteria are matched then the triangle exists.

Simple, isnt it?

Heres the python solution:

#!/usr/bin/python2.3

same_line = 0

ab = 0

bc = 0

ac = 0

vertex = ["p0","p1","p2","p3","p4","p5","p6","p7","p8","p9","p10"]

line = {1:["p0","p5","p8","p10"], 2:["p1","p6","p9","p10"], 3: ["p0","p1"], 

4:["p1","p2","p3","p5"], 5:["p1","p4","p7","p8"], 6:["p0","p3","p7","p9"], 

7:["p0","p2","p4","p6"]}

for a in vertex:

    for b in vertex[vertex.index(a)+1:]:

        for c in vertex[vertex.index(b)+1:]:

            for lines in line.items():

                if a in lines[1] and b in lines[1] and c in lines[1]: same_line = 1

                if a in lines[1] and b in lines[1]: ab = 1

                if b in lines[1] and c in lines[1]: bc = 1

                if c in lines[1] and a in lines[1]: ac = 1

            if ab == 1 and bc == 1 and ac == 1 and same_line == 0: print a,b,c 

            same_line = 0

            ab = 0

            bc = 0

            ac = 0

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

On Saturday, I saw "Morning Raaga". The plan was to watch "Mughal-e-azam" but when we reached at the PVR theatres in Foram, Koramangala, Bangalore, we noticed that the theatres are closed and wont be opened in the near future thanks to the moratorium on the non-kannada films in the state. Then we called Innovative multiplex and they told us that the next Mughal-e-azam show will start at 7:30pm IF there are enough people. This really sucks. This city is going down. This looks like the beginning of the end.

Finally we had to see Morning Raaga at Symphony, MG Road. The movie is .. different. It could have been a lot better. The hero (or the male lead) sucked big time. Perizad is casted just to add some glamour to the simple movie and most of the times she looks out-of-place showing her clevage for no apparant reason. Shabana has done a good job. All-n-all, a weird and different movie which I dint like much but you just might like it for whatever reasons.

Just one question out of curiosity: Why do they keep saying "music group"? Isnt it called "music band"?

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

On a slow day, when you know that you HAVE to blog something to make you believe that you are not dead (yea, blogging is an addiction. You have to post even if you dont want to), you keep browsing the web and try to come up with something that might go well with your blog-theme. Since theme for this particular blog is "Random Thoughts" anything can go well with it. Thats why I am counting on this not to look out of place on this blog of Blabberwocky. Dont ask me how I came across this. I can tell you that but then I might have to just kill you.. I'm not sure. So you just eat mangoes, dont ask how many mango trees are there. (That was grossly translated from famous bollywood punch-line).

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

I am back in my cubicle. Last week was amazing. It was a much needed break and I'm ready for the world now ;). So many things happened over the week that I am just gonna skip all the details and come directly to the conclusion. And the conclusion is I had a great time with friends and family. :) I dint see a single movie in the theatre. But in the buses I saw

• Hungama
• Dhoom (twice)
• Air force one
• Ab tak chappan (on tv)
• Dil to pagal hai

Out of all these "Ab tak chappan" was really good and all others I had seen before.

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Today is second day of diwali. I am just loving it. Yesterday I finished "Fermat's last theorem" by Simon Singh. Its a nice book full of interesting anecdotes from history of mathematics. But I was expecting a little more technical details. But the book is interesting never-the-less. Looks like I have to do a more that a little digging up to get the details on the proof by Andrew Wiles. It would be an interesting excercise.

I have started with the second Alexander book. First one I had finished a long time ago but for some reason I dint start the second one.

Today, for some strange reason, they have scheduled an IndoPak ODI. Planning to watch it but I already know that its fixed and we are going to win. Anyway, it will be a good entertainment for the day.

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Happy Diwali to you all. I am on a vaction and chilling out in Pune with my family. I came here yesterday morning and will be here till next Wednesday.

Happy Days Are Here Again!

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,


The day I was eagerly awaiting (for extremely geeky reasons) has finally arrived. Posting this from . Get your own copy now! Now I have to wait for some of the extension.

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Many times I do think that justice system at the time of my great-great-great-great grandfather was much MUCH better than what we have today. Apparantly, I am not alone. There are people in India who think that sticking to the systems in the past is the way to go. In the village of Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, they have a similar thing going on where five people (panchayat) come together and solve all the village problems according the age-old tradition. You can read about and decide for yourself.

I, for one, think that this is the way to go. ;)

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

After a long time, on Saturday, I saw a movie in theatre that I dint like. . Usually I digest all kinds of 70mm crap that comes with approx.100 Rs ticket. But this one was almost unbearable. I saw fist 20 minutes and then fell asleep. After some refreshing sleep, I rejoined the happenings on the screen.

The story was simple as far as I could understand. There are two guys. One white. One black. White guy shoots. Black guy drives. In the end, black guys shoots the white guy. (Smart people who liked this movie should let me know if I have missed something).

Tom Cruise is good. I was in serious doubt if the black guy is actually Denzel Washigton. In the end he turned out to be Jammie Fox. He also has done a good job.

I was seriously thinking if there was any deeper meaning to all the darkness shown in the movie.

Yours Sinerely,
Metamorphosis
by Rumplestiltskin.

"Oh shit". Those were Segor Gagma's first thoughts when he got up. It was almost 7:30 in the watch and he remembered that he was suppose to get up at 6. He looked around. For some reason a retard interior designer had put a life-size mirror right infront of his bed. Segor always hated it. He had a glance in the mirror. Segor was ugly and he knew it. "But not THIS ugly", he thought. After looking carefully, he found out that he was metamorphosised into a bug.

Segor was smart and he had read "Metomorphosis" by Kafka. He had secretely thought that it was the stupidest novel ever. But infront of his fake intellectual friends, he had said great things about it. His complaint was simple. The story promised to be a great sci-fi creature-feature but Kafka somehow could not realize the money he could have made by selling this to some hollywood big-fish. "Here is my chance to cash on on what he could not!", Segor thought.

First things first. He knew he had to sway a little to get out of the bed. He was up in no time. He observed his new body carefully. Somehow it was not very different from his older one. Well, he had eight.. limbs. But that was the only difference. He felt like Dock-Ock from Spidey2. Next moment he was crawling on the ceiling! "COOL MAN!", he thought. "This feels like an upgrade from Win95 to XP. New skin and a lot of new features!". He especially loved his new and shiny antennas.

Segor was a software professional. A QA engineer to be precise. And he hated his job because hating your own job was a fashion. On this particular day, he was supposed to attend a conference call about the latest bug in the latest build. "These developers are useless. They dont know what they are doing. This project is going nowhwere", he remembered telling his friend. To be frank, he was very confortable in his job. People would have killed for a job where you have to go to office at 10 in the morning, do almost nothing but crib about things and receive a fat pay-check on 1st of every month. Segor smiled at his good fortune.

He sat on the chair infront of his workstation. He started calling into the tele-conf bridge. Somehow he knew that this conf call would be canceled.

"Hi, Segor here", he said after the long beep.

"Hey Segor, Sorry for the inconvinience but most of the guys are caught up in some high-priority project meeting. I guess I have to reschedule this meeting. Sorry again.", said his manager.

"No problem. bye".

"Asshole", Segor muttered to himself.
"SO no BUG meeting today". He chuckled at his own pun.

He checked his mail. Typing with six hands was so much easier. He forwarded a mail with some nice photos to his friends' mailing list. He read his daily news and blogs like a ritual. Now that he was done with the routine stuff, he started thinking about what to do next.

Possibilities were infinite. "I'll do this systematically. I'll have a plan.", he decided. He knew very well that if you want a plan, you have to have an excell sheet for that. He watched the stupid hour-glass turning round and round as his workstation struggled to start MS Excell.

"OK! here I go".

He opened that standard template he had used for many projects before. First item was "Project Scope:". "Nothing less than World domination!", he roared and grinned like a maniac and typed "Optimal use of the new equipment to to maximize efficiency". He was good at this. Writing non-sensical stuff that looked and sounded important was one of his plus points.

-------------
Thats all I have. :)

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

A couple of days ago, I came across by Franz Kafka. This, I think, is the second novel/story I read online on the net (first was by Ray Bradbury.) Metamorphosis is simple and good. You can interprete it in many ways. Thats the beauty of it. Kafka just gives you the facts of the fiction. Rest is left to the reader.

I liked the concept where a man turns into a bug (vermin to be precise) very much. Writing fiction is a difficult task. I often wonder if I could write a fiction. Last Saturday I had some free time and decided to give it a try. Metamorphosis was still fresh in the memory. So I took it from there. In an hour or hour and a half, I came up with something totally random. I dint have a plot as I started writing. I dint know where it is going. It just flowed and it was fun. I really enjoyed it a lot. I still dont know where its going or if atall going anywhere. So whatever it is I am just posting it here because these are nothing but "Some Random Thoughts". :)

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

This just sums it up for me.



Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Across the border, in Pakistan, the government has been busy. They think hard, harder than neccessary, and then they implement. I know they are efficient because just now I came across a news item. According to that . I dont understand the reason behind it but has to be something to do with Islam... or maybe they are saving the resources. Its a good news for to-be-weds but a bad news for those of you, who go to a wedding just to eat!

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Today, as I was walking in a hurry to come to the office (yes.. another working Saturday for me), I saw this beautiful (is there any other kind?) butterfly.



Last weekend, when I was on the beaches, there were plenty of butterflies but none of them would sit steadily for a couple of seconds so that I could shoot them (with the camera ofcorse!). But this one posed just for me and I had enough time to get the camera out and capture it.

Beautiful, isn't it?
(drop a comment if you want the snap with GOOD resolution.)

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

As usual, Indian Cricket Team relied on a miracle and it came through. We have won (dont ask how) the fourth test against Australia at Mumbai. Essentially it was a two days test. First day was washed out almost completely. India won the toss and elected to bat. This was the difference between this test and the previous three where we had to bat in the last innings. Indians made 104 in the first innings and got Aussies out for 205. In second innings the Indian batting collapsed again to make 203. Aussies needed 107 to win but somehow they failed to do that.

India won by 13 runs.

I am happy that we have won. But we were pathetic none the less. Its high time that batsmen should do something about their pathetic form. We have lost the Gavaskar-Border Trophy that we had for last three years.

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Have you ever imagined how a nail, trapped in a time loop right at the moment when the hammer hits its head, feels? You probably do if you have attended a meeting with three managers have a technical discussion.

You explain something till the end with hand gestures and white board drawings and simple non-technical words. At the end of it, one of the three makes a i-have-understood-it-completely-except-for-the-last-part face. You gather the last drop of patience that is somehow alive in you right toe and start explaining the last part. This goes on until they make you go through everything for atleast seven times and THEN they start to come up with suggestions. You are at a point when you know that it is gonna last for few more hours. You request your brain to find the funny side of all this. You stay quiet and enjoy the words of wosdom flying around you. Even then some ridiculous suggestion begs of you to try to explain the things again. And you find yourself back to square one.

At the end of it all hammer schedules another appointment with the nail the next day.

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

US elections continue to be great entertainment for rest of the world. Better than any suspense comedy. Last time the backdrop for climax was the state of Florida (Dave Barry's home state!). This time its Ohio. These Americans have a knack of making good climax. Just like in their basketball movies (where only one second is remaining and the "good" team needs a three pointer and the ball does a sssllllloooowwwww motion) everything was in balance and the state of Ohio decided the President. It's Dubya again.

They made movies. They wrote books. They compared him with an ape. They made fun of his accent. They came on talk shows and told everyone how W. is going to lose. It was good entertainment. But He's Back!

Looking forward to the next four years full of more such entertainment! :)

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Mornings arnt the same for last couple of weeks. The sun does rises from the east, the road to office still jammed. But something is different. RJ Sunayana used to host a show on Radio City 91FM every morning and she has left the channel. They have someone called as Basanti on that spot now. But noone can replace Sunayana.. except for the "Swades" cassette that I had to buy. If you are heartbroken because you are not getting your daily dose of Sunayana, try Swades.

They say time heals every wound..eventually. ;)

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

Here are some of the snaps I took on the . If you want any of these snap with GOOD resolution, post a comment here are I will mail it to you.

Yours Sinerely,
Hi,

I still havent come out of the "Beach and Sea" hang-over. These were some of the most beautiful and mostlt virgin beaches I have ever been to. Now that I am back in office I wish I was still there. :)

The plan was not to plan much. :). We left by 10:30pm KSRTC Volvo to Mangalore. (FYI: Fare is 299Rs) . We reached there at 5:30 in the morning. After checking in in Hotel Navrang. It was decent place with very nice view from the room windows.

A quick Breakfast and off for the first destination. We hired a Qualis and it took us almost an hour to reach that is in Kerala. You have to pay 300Rs. tax to enter God's Own Country. Kerala is all green and blue. Trees, back waters and mosques. The fort is the place where the famous "Tu Hi Re" from "Bombay" is shot. Its one awsome spot. If you are planning to go to this part of India, this place is more than recommended.

Right next to the fort is a beach. I dont even know the name of that beach and it proves that you dont need names to be beautiful. Just cant describe it in words.

One more thing. I am sure I saw a couple of dolphins in the sea there. Everyone else saw them too but now they are doubtful about it. But not Me. I am damn sure!

This part of kerala/karnataka is just like any other coastal place. One moment its bright and sunny and the next its pouring cats and dogs.

The same day, we went to Someshwar temple and found that its under renovation or something and could not find any God inside. We promptly climbed down the hill and found another amazing beach. After some time it started raining. It was the first time I experienced rains on the beach. I'm all thumpsup about this! :).

Then we went to a place called Pelikula. Its a well kept garden with a lake. We did boating there. Had great fun racing with each other in paddle boats.

Next day we were off to another beach in Suratkal. It is called . But the locals pronounce it as "Kapu". Another excellent beach with a light house.

Next destination was Udupi. The place is famous for the Krishna Temple and dosas. Throughout India you will find Udupi hotels. Ironically, in udupi, there are a lot of shops and restaurants with names like "Bombay Shop", "Bombay chaat" etc. :) The temple is clean and big.

One more beach at Suratkal and this trip was over. Came back today morning by the same bus. I should do this more often.






Yours Sinerely,

#!/usr/bin/python2.3

same_line = 0

ab = 0

bc = 0

ac = 0

vertex = ["p0","p1","p2","p3","p4","p5","p6","p7","p8","p9","p10"]

line = {1:["p0","p5","p8","p10"], 2:["p1","p6","p9","p10"], 3: ["p0","p1"], 

4:["p1","p2","p3","p5"], 5:["p1","p4","p7","p8"], 6:["p0","p3","p7","p9"], 

7:["p0","p2","p4","p6"]}

for a in vertex:

    for b in vertex[vertex.index(a)+1:]:

        for c in vertex[vertex.index(b)+1:]:

            for lines in line.items():

                if a in lines[1] and b in lines[1] and c in lines[1]: same_line = 1

                if a in lines[1] and b in lines[1]: ab = 1

                if b in lines[1] and c in lines[1]: bc = 1

                if c in lines[1] and a in lines[1]: ac = 1

            if ab == 1 and bc == 1 and ac == 1 and same_line == 0: print a,b,c 

            same_line = 0

            ab = 0

            bc = 0

            ac = 0