techies & expos !

without trying to over generalize (of course of course , we understand ;))- here are some quick observations from a novice in a techie (ahem ahem !) expo .. 

1. Most techies in who can come up in front of an audience & speak (well) about their work tend shave their heads & have a goatee / french beard.

2. the rest (techies who are probably real good @ what they do , but can't do the talk too well) make it glaringly obvious to everyone listening that "it wasn't my idea to come up on stage" - the body language , the inane attempt @ blending in the humour . 

3. there are only two categories of booths (it is a techie expo & we do talk digital ;-)) - either everything goes overhead or the folks in the booth will get stuck with the "why" questions . the best questions to ask at the booth are the "who" questions , even "what" may draw some blank stares. My friend came up with the ingenious question which opens up a whole new area of conversation in every booth - "where is your head quarters located?"

4. Most ppl who spend a lot of time in computer labs seem to be on the bulkier side - there must be some sort of a connection - hmm .. lemme see .. lack of physical activity u say ?  i didn't say anything - u said it :P .. 

5. we've come so far in terms of tech , but our freebies are still the same - i mean how many t shirts can one possibly want ? why can't we come up with something more creative , say u pass my booth , listen to my sales pitch & u get x amnt of storage free on the cloud , or a lease on xyz processor for free for z amnt of time - i mean something i can really use. 

20 Qs

Top three questions
"is it Appa?"
"is it Michael Phelps ?"
"did he win the election ?"
So I happened to engage in a game of 20 questions with two kiddo kin of mine - & I gotto to say this , I've never had this much fun playing the game ! :D
Ground rules -
1 there is a clear distinction between man , boy , girl & woman
2 when talking about things , they need not essentially be on earth - they could be anything , thankfully ,confined to the solar system
3 if the person happens to be man the first guess would be "Appa !"
The general awareness of the kiddos impressed me . They knew about Barack Obama , John McCain ,Joe Biden , Sarah Palin , Michael Phleps , Alexander Grahambell , Edisson , the list Goes on !

random stuff ...

I make it sound like the rest of the things i write about is meticulously thought out ! heres a thought .. "there is a thin line b/w abstract and nonsense , & i'm on it :P " (but of course , this is inspired from the quote on my class t shirt .. there is a thin line b/w madness and genius and we are on it !) ..
Despite being random , I'll try to put it in an organized fashion , after all chaos is only organization that has not been understood :P .
The first thing is about the newest resident in my apt complex , who traces his roots back to Canada (or so I hear) . Meet Mr Goose . to give u a better a idea , check out the pic ...
I saw him walk into our complex form one of the side lanes . Now, it turns out pets are actually not allowed in the complex (except fish, though for some reason i never think of fish as pet) , so this guy must have walked from out of nowhere ! He gazes in my direction and start "walking" towards me. Here is an aside , I find it freakish to see a bird walk , especially when it can fly ! If i could fly , I would , why would I walk ! So I'm not sure what I am to do , except for fish out the camera . Thankfully, My Goose takes a deviation and decides to instead go for our backyard . I trailed him out of simple curiosity (and take some more pics :P) . I figured he would find his way out just the way he found his way in .
Cut to evening : After a long day of work (ya right !) I come back home and as I look out of the window , whom do I see ? Mr Goose got himself into a caged area (a rather large cage surrounding the dumpster) and is trying desperately to get out the cage . Of course , he can very easily fly out , but either something is wrong with his wings , or he's too bored of flying ! The funny thing is that u can actually just walk out of the cage , but Mr Goose was just not thinking straight ! I wasn;t sure (& am still not sure ) if a goose can peck , or in any other way attack somebody , so as I approached him I just naturally picked up a small stick (just in case ! I can't seem to picture the scene of a goose pecking me !) . I called my Roomie to see if he had any brilliant ideas .. which he did .. just call campus police ! ..
"Hello.. Campus Police , can I help u " ..
"hi .. I'm calling from ...blah blah ... u see the problem is that there is goose in the apt " (I could almost hear her giggling) .
" Is it in ur house ? "
"no .. in the complex " ..
" Is it attacking u ? "
" no .. "
" Is it aggressive ? "
" could be .. i dont know if it is .. " pause .."ok .. look .. this bird is obviously troubled , can;t u call animal control or something ? maybe we could get the bird to the lake ? "
" no sir .. let me know if it attacks u or gets aggressive ! "
" what ?? .. k ... "
Eventually , my Roomie n me manage get the goose out of the cage , with the assumption that he would be able to help himself from that point on .. (remember those things they would write on the black board before the exams " God helps those who help themselves" .. now how is this related to this .. i dont know :P ) .
It's been a week now , the goose is still in the complex . In fact he seems pretty happy to be here .
The second thing is abt some thing my advisor said . Well .. My advisor is an extremely witty person (seriously , I mean it ) .. I need to be on my "wit"s end to see when he drop in one of witty comments ! We were talking about a tool I;m wokring on, which I very naively call "myTool" , for my thesis. We were talking about renaming it to something more interesting . I got a little mixed up with the name of another tool (which was called bound-t ) I called it S tool; S being stack . he seemed fascinated by my confusion . said I should renmae my tool to S tool . and then when some one asks me what I did for my thesis , I would say " Stool analysis " :D ... (this was not the wittiest of his comments but sure was funny to me ! )
NOw u probably think I;m extremely jobless ! dont u ? just to prove that I'm not I;m going to ask u a question ... how can u find the recursion depth of a recursive function statically? All the brilliant papers that I have read on this boil down to (in the end) some sort of heuristic/ assumption .. is there a solution without base assumptions ?

a->b , b->c ,c->a => (a,b,c) ??

Math is far less complicated than human psychology. If you've ever followed Seinfeld , you will notice that there is an eerie silence between them (the four friends ) when it's not all four together (except for Jerry and George , they've known each other for too long ... ). In fact the episode is fun only when all four are in their "nothingness" together. so (a,b,c,d) work well , but , usually any other combination sucks! The opposite is more glaringly seen, a->b , b->c & a->c , but (a,b,c) doesn;t seem to work !! (now how strange is that!!!).

Krakozhia!

So, I got to meet Viktor Navorski :P .. well , obviously I'm kidding ! There is no real Viktor Navorski, no real Krakozhia (I did check that ! ) & I didn't even meet Tom Hanks !
But, the person I did meet reminded me so much of Viktor Navorski :) .. I almost blurted out "Krakozhia" when he started talking !!
Now that I have this lucky streak of meeting characters from movies that I like (terminal happens to be among the top in the list) I really hope I'll meet some specific ones. To do justice to all languages I'll try to name characters from every other "wood" . Shalini from Dil Chahta Hain (thats Priety Zinta , in case u forgot ) , Kalpana from Ghajini (thats Asin) , Mona Lisa Vito from My Cousin Vinny . I don't really follow any of the other "woods" , but thats just some of them ! Anybody else who wants to join the party is welcome ;) ..
Before U say "Ya , but U've only mentioned all the female characters .. " , I gotto point out that I did start this post with Viktor :P . I would also want to meet Luis Vargas from Original Sin (thats Antonio Banderas) (& not Angelina .. I;m not fond of her! ) , George Clooney (U can come from any of the Oceans ! ) , Vito Corleone from ... (I dont need to tell u that !) ... thats Marlon Brando , Neo from Matrix (only Matrix 1 .. not 2 , not 3 , only 1 ) .
Pixar's characters are on the top of my list too .. since there are so many of them , I'm not going take the trouble of telling you all of them ! As of now , I'm just going to keep my fingers (& toes) crossed :P

chinna chinna aisai

Sometimes I pity the song .. once touted to be the "song of the millennium " is allmost allways skipped when it pops up on my player . No offense really .. i used to like the song when first came out . There is somehting about Rahman's song that would not make u listen to it after a while . The song comes out .. it's a craze .. i'm listening to it all the time .. then after a few years , i don't think twice before skipping the song! The funny thing is that I never - ever do this to a old classic ( what would the song say .. it may get offended ! ;) ) .. jokes apart , I can listen to them (non rahman songs)many many times no matter what . Anyway , I digress ! .. the point of the whole post is the small stupid asai's that I have .. some i've done .. some i've not ..
1. to stand over a freeway ( i mean on the bridge ) & watch the cars whiz past below me .. gives me a strange sense of calm .
2. to go generally ( maybe to drop off somebody) to the airport & board a flight .. i like flying .. airports are like magnets literally !
3. to travel in a train in India & buy everything that is sold in the train .. most of the stuff sucks .. but i still want to buy it .. ne it the "coffeeeey" or the "vegetable cutlet "
4. to go on a trip without a destination ( nope .. i didn;t want the kudremukh trip to go the way it went & anyway it can;t be put i nthis category .. coz it did have a destination - kudremukh ,eventhough we never reached it !)
the list goes on ! ..

allways seperate

I wish I had the spell check thing when I was in junior school .... that way my teachers would have thought i was a a potential contestant for the spelling bee . ;) A strange thing happened today - I was putting together a presentation; when the Mr Smart (or should I say Miss Smart - for some reason I allways associated good spelling as a feminine quality (maybe becoz I've seen girls spell better than guys ))! ) Spell Check kept interrupting me .Yet again , I had made an error in spelling. This happens to be a word my teacher made me write God know how many times as a punishment for not spelling it correctly then .. the word is separate ( & the way i spell it is seperate ) .. but that did not correct my thinking ! Actually , I disagreed then & I still disagree that I did not spell the word correctly .. we dont say ''sepaaarate '" we say "seperate " , to me "e" fits there better than an "a" . Another word which i often make a mistake in is allways ( i mean i spell it as "all"ways & not "al"ways ) .. in fact i allways make a mistake with allways !! for the same reason .. it's all ways - why doesn;t it have a double l ?? it has to happen "all" the time right ?
Actually the whole post may sound juvenile - this guy is some loser in spelling & so he is pulling out some vague reasons for all those mistakes he makes ! but thats not true - I believe I'm fairly good at spelling - you tell me a word & based on the sound - not on stupid rules , I can spell the word .. In that sense I like the american way of spelling things - spell it as they sound ( color as against colour ) . As a mark of my disagreement I title my post with my version of the spelling . PS : You can comment on anything other than tell me why seperate & allways are spelt as separate and always.
& I dont use spell check ;)