Don't trust me on this ... I've been wrong before.

The difference between good friends and bad shows itself when you're wrong - when you're wrong and you don't know it. Sure, misfortune is a true test, but it hardly comes around every day and I'm glad it doesn't. But try being wrong about something. And you'll notice a strange fact.

These days friendships are too shallow. We're too independent to really need them. No, I'm not decrying the current times from the chair of age. I'm talking about the way my life's taken. And I notice that I've stopped being wrong - there was no wrong way to live my life. For a while, I thought it was because I finally had life figured out.

And I was wrong. Wrong on both counts. And people have noticed. I've been insulted. Told off by people that I was an idiot. But I didn't care for insults. They've never been a way to make me comply with anything. People have tried shame on me for years and failed. I've rarely got anything to prove to anyone but me.

A friend would've told me why. Felt comfortable enough to sit me down and outline the flaws. Because I'm not my mistakes, I'm more. Friends have got stuff to salvage, the snipers from afar don't seem to. There's a world of a difference between "He's such an idiot!" and "Don't be an idiot". And I react very differently to both.

Like I said, I've been wrong before. And I see no reason to stop now.

Well, you know what to do. Also, bring popcorn.

posted at: 03:25 | path: /philosophy | permalink | Tags: public, philosophy, observations

You & I both know there's no We here.

As I write down blog entry after the other, I've come to realize that there's only one person I can talk about with any sort of clarity - me. I can't speak for anyone else. Everything is as I observe, as I experience and as I feel - all mixed up into a general pile of nothing. To draw out a clear & coherent thread of thought out of that requires me to unravel a bit of myself in the process.

Self reflection leaves its own smudges in my thoughts. The searchlight of my mind leaves shadows, of contrasts & comparisons with itself. The similarities just merge into the backdrop, the differences stick out like a sore thumb. The edges & cracks appear, just like on a lake in winter, when the fluidity of thought is frozen into something solid.

And the words, like charcoal rubbing on paper, merely picks up what stands out. Everything in black & white, clearly marked out. Makes for a pretty picture, but is hardly what really exists.

Frame it up, hang it up and sign my name. And call it a blog.

posted at: 03:36 | path: /observations | permalink | Tags: public, observations, philosophy

It all started with the petty battles, with a collective comedown on a cultural philistine like me - one without taste in music, art, literature or topic du jour.

What they looked in each other was not for glimmers of intelligence, but for a bit of something shared. Something to set them apart from the rest, the secret handshakes, the shibboleth to exclude those of a lower culture. Respect doled out for abstract obscurity, while clarity was despised. The vaguer it got, the easier could everyone trot out their pet ideas without stepping on each others' toes.

I could've been a mute spectator to all that. But then the challenges appeared on my table.

I never did define my identity with things external. Rarely was it propped up with books, music or art. Something reprehensible to embellish yourself with someone else's creativity. To listen, read, collect it. And dole it out instead of your own. There I was, with life's experiences and I thought that was all that remained to be said about me. What I do, that is where my fount of self is rooted on and with some sort of gratitude, I pour myself back into it.

Never felt the urge to defend my choices, in anything that fed my mind. But I almost fanatically defend the choices I make, when it comes to actions. What went in seemed far insignificant to what eventually came out. My principles, ethics and the path I tread in life, those are up for criticism - always have been.

There was no point in responding to those challenges - to be beaten down just for someone's pleasure. For them in their world to feel superior. Maybe that's what gets them through their day, but I've got no time or energy to fight these petty battles. I've got things to do.

Culture intrigues me. I'd rather learn than fight about my personal opinions. Bizarrely, the same people fighting for their opinions object to others sharing theirs. What they always craved I guess was smug superiority, not to convince. Popularity of their niche seems to be their enemy rather than a sign of success.

The world of high culture is full of people who'd love something, yet dissuade the world from sharing it. In a sort of self destructive selfishness, they cordon off their niches. Watching them over the years, I've seen these hypocrites slink away from the bright sunlight of popular attention. Not revel in the new found wisdom of the world or applaud at its good taste.

I've tried to learn what it is about these ideas that make it special. Read Hegel & Kant, Foucault & Derida. Listened to Mozart (ooh, the 5th!), gone to Chopin recitals (thankee hyacie), observed the layered randomness of Coltrane. I've liked some, I haven't others. Perhaps arbitrarily, I don't know.

But equally arbitrarily, I've followed popular culture. I've liked some, I couldn't care less for others. I dig down into Simpsons or Futurama, I play Lady Gaga in a loop for days. Not mindlessly, I notice the nuances of timing & melody of the Gaga, the college level literature references littered in Simpsons, the secret messages written in alienese in Futurama. I notice, I enjoy and I'm not ashamed of it.

I'm overcome by an urge to share & enjoy. I think the fact that more people enjoy it, the better it was. Perhaps it takes more talent to make something the whole world can enjoy. A deeper understanding of all humanity perhaps. And I'll do my part. I can't understand how someone can enjoy something so much, but dissuade someone else from exploring. Even more puzzlingly, only seem to enjoy things that nobody else around seem to be capable of appreciating. Are you that special or is that all a facade put up?

After much thought, I've come to a shocking, but inescapable conclusion.

posted at: 07:52 | path: /rants | permalink | Tags: public, rants

I have an ego. A nice, cheap and refurbished one in good condition.

And yes, I'm proud to have one. I've been without one, lost nearly all traces of it. Killed, choked it, sacrificed it at the altar of love & togetherness. Apologized for what wasn't my fault, forgave without apologies, silenced my self respect and cut off my ego from my life.

And that nearly was the end of me.

I couldn't survive. Because here's the thing - the world isn't always fair. Life's a bitch and it shows its true colours. It criticizes without reason and often without gain. To keep your course through that minefield of criticism requires a tough skin and a crumple zone. An ego is the crumple zone for your real self. It stands up to the world, in your stead. Takes a few dents, but nothing permanent.

Building myself back up from nearly nothing, there was my ego, leading the charge. Driving me, pushing me to do things I'd never done before, channeling my Id into the useful. Everything accomplished was an ego boost. Every failure hurt, but every failure challenged.

An ego strong enough to repel the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, from the inner sanctum of your self and spirit. Something to keep the material world out of the spiritual, something with an edge to cut my path through the world.

There's that bright light within my eyes again. A smile on my lips and a spring in my step. And screams that it is here to stay, till death do us part. But there's balance. Between me, my ego and my Id, I'm ambitious, curious and cautious all at the same time.

In a mirror, I see me. And I smile.

posted at: 04:12 | path: /philosophy | permalink | Tags: public, philosophy

So bluesmoon wrote a blog entry on function currying in javascript. Read it first, if you've got no idea what I'm talking about.

But the example given there is hardly the *nice* one - you don't need a makeAdder(), you can sprinkle a little bit more magical pixie dust to make a maker. I remembered that I had a better sample lying around from early 2005, but unfortunately it wasn't quoted in my journal entry.

I couldn't find the exact code I wrote back then, but here's a re-do of the same idea.

function curried(f, args, arity)
{

  return function() {
    var fullargs = args.concat(toArray(arguments));
    if(fullargs.length < arity) 
    {
      /* recurse */
      return curry(f).apply(null, fullargs);
    }
    else 
    {
      return f.apply(null, fullargs);
    }
  };

}

function curry(f, arity) 
{
  if(!arity) arity = f.length;

  return function() {
    var args = toArray(arguments);
    if(args.length < arity) 
    {
      return curried(f, args, arity);
    }
    else 
    {
      /* boring */
      return f.apply(null, args);
    }
  };

}

Basically with the help of two closures (the two function() calls without names), I created a generic currying mechanism which can be used as follows.

function add(a,b) { return a+b;}

add = curry(add);

var add1 = add(1);
var c = add1(2);

Now, the hack works because of the arguments object available for use in every javascript function. Also every function, being an object as well, lets you look up the number of arguments (arity) it accepts by default. You can even make a full-class decorator, if you pay more attention to the scope (null, in my examples) passed to the function apply().

Here's the full code example.

posted at: 21:45 | path: /hacks | permalink | Tags: public, hacks, javascript

Five years is a long time, no matter how I look at it. I've been in Yahoo! for half a decade now or to put it in perspective, half my adult life.

If I had to describe the last year of here, I'd use almost the same words as I'd used to describe my first year here (with fairy godmothers and unicorns inked in). And it almost feels like all that was yesterday as I stare at that gumball machine at my desk.

No matter how I look at it, working here has been a huge personal event in my life. Not just professionally, but with everything else that I've managed to accomplish over the years. I guess that's what's kept me here, year after year.

posted at: 23:03 | path: /yblr | permalink | Tags: public, yblr, memories

I love Bokeh. Nothing stands out more in a portrait or a macro photo than the bokeh and the shallow DoF you can get out of a wide aperture lens. Here's a quick tutorial on how I managed to add to the effect of bokeh with some cheap carboard, masking tape and a bit of math.

The idea is to mask out the light from distant sources, without masking out the close up objects at all. The lens is designed such that the distant object light rays hit the lens and form large circles of light, instead of points as the beams focus before the sensor and diverge out into blurs. The math involved in designing the lens hood is to actually cut off some of the distant beams while retaining all the close object beams.

This is drawn roughly from a 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor. Anything covering the internal 15mm would block closer objects , but everything within the 20mm (approx) ring would only block distant objects. So anything you could punch out between those, would form a neat and clean bokeh image.

After trying to remember enough of 1st year engineering drawing, in my attempt to draw a heart with a 5mm tolerance, I gave up. Instead, I just took a print-out (A4) of something I could easily draw on a computer. Here's an easily printable PDF, in case you want to try it out on your own.

Here's how my Mk1 version looked like. I eventually ended up making a more collapsible version nearly completely out of duct-tape, which is far uglier, but has a slot in the top to slide in different filters. The tube collapses, making it slightly squarer and the pdf has the pull-tab version that the Mk2 uses.

Update: Someone pointed out that today's flickrblog covers this exact topic ... *ugh*, I'm an hour late. But at least, the PDF should come of some use to the lazier of you :).

posted at: 03:11 | path: /tutorials | permalink | Tags: public, photography, hacks

Censorship is bad, mmkay?

Free speech is not any different just because there's the internet involved. And any country attempting to close its internet borders in the name of censorship should be defeated, for the fear of setting a precedent. Censorship anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.

Otherwise very soon, the internet will turn into a series of █████ which will only be used by █████████████, unless ██ take action and stop the █████████.

So, visit ███████████████████ to learn more about what's going on.

posted at: 22:20 | path: /misc | permalink | Tags: public, conferences

I run. Out on the road, as each stride drags me ahead, my mind is truly free. Free of this world, free of troubles and free from everything else, but the next footfall. Distances blur out, time stretches out, pain becomes a companion and your body falls into a rhythm which you dare not break.

About three years ago, I started to run. I never really had a reason for it. I ran everywhere and ran back as well, if I could. But then people started to pop up in my life who couldn't keep up. And I stopped ... for a while.

But just like everything important, it came about from a random conversation over coffee. There we were, me & @teemus, sitting in Java city, checking out all the upcoming concerts. Right in the middle of everything from jazz to house, was a bright red poster telling us to run (and eat sunfeast biscuits).

For the good part of two weeks, I lived a very disciplined life. Ate right, slept right and spent an hour or more in the gym. Racing each other on the treadmill, steadily upping the distance, speed. Finally one morning, stretching up in Kanteerva stadium, drinking redbull mixed with orange juice, I knew I'd always wanted to run long distance.

10 Km: Ran the Sunfeast 10k. Running slowly became more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge. To actually cross the line of discomfort to actually hit the limit of pain was more of a mental barrier than I thought. It was just too easy to just quit, stop by the side and take a breather.

The physical barriers were there. They were definitely a huge challenge all by themselves. But even when I could run 5km without falling over, the urge to give up does not fade. To actually gag and silence that part of your mind which keeps whispering "quit now, there will be cake".

It was all in your head.

You could stop anytime you wanted. But it took all my vanity and ego, to keep me running. To see others vanish ahead, lit a fire that would burn me through the miles and miles ahead of me.

posted at: 00:09 | path: /me | permalink | Tags: public, me, life

Avatar is Pocahontas set in Fern Gully, except with Smurfs who are Thundercats. And hero's plugged in from somewhere, with a smattering of a messiah complex thrown in (and a pity, they'll never make any sequels ... *ssh*).

But now that I've got the cliched bits out of the way, let me rave about the visual beauty of the movie. The reason this movie takes so much flak about the plot is that the CG does not jarr the suspension of disbelief required. To watch Neytri wail and definitely do the damsel in distress routine does bypass the fact that she's a giant cat-alien, into my emotional awareness. Somehow that disrupts the dehumanization of the enemies that the Colonel is under (if he had a cigar on him, I'd have had Quake3 flashbacks). The fight sequences are hardly overdone and they haven't gone bullet-time or john woo freeze-frames on it. Perhaps the brain-stem connections all animals share is probably the only thing that really stretches the imagination. But the movie goes to great lengths to illustrate that it's not really a form of direct control. There's hardly anything wrong with the movie as such - as long as you're only watching it.

There's EPIC FAIL and some glimmers of brilliance in the fauna of Pandora. Most of the animals on the planet have six limbs. This is perfectly acceptable, but if only they'd kept it consistent and extended it to the Na'avi. A bipedal/tetrapod Na'avi co-existing in parallel with hexapodal large animals sort of suggests a really un-bottlenecked evolutionary history (think of the Cambrian explosion, followed by millenia without an extinction event). Which would almost make the nerve fibre connections into a miraculous act of convergent evolution. But not all of it is bad. The lung openings on the direhorses, on their chests with a large volume intake, would've been a brilliant evolutionary jump away from a narrow trachea and probably an easier jump from book lungs & gills. Somehow the fauna is vaguely reminiscent of Nemo Ramjet's Snaiad universe. Last but not least, Turok - the flying giant in butterfly colours. I just can't get over the fact that its name is "last shadow" and the import of that.

All in all, it's a mish-mash of the noble savage, the greed of man (ah, Rousseau vs Hobbes), the modern industrial military complex and an imperfect romance. The movie is watchable, though not by any means an instant classic.

posted at: 20:03 | path: /movies | permalink | Tags: public, movies

I've left too many things behind with 2009. And I'm better off for it.

It wasn't exactly a pleasant year to begin with. Betrayals seemed the theme from the start. Which I could've dealt with, except my inability to deal with betrayal was treated as some sort of personal failing on my end. As if my disappointment was some hint of immaturity I had to grow myself out of.

Anger boiled, seethed in my veins. But I held my hand, because I still believed that people would do the right thing, albeit eventually. Patience lasted exactly a month. Then it was time to blast off, blow everyone off, leave the liars and traitors behind, to cleanse myself of the grime and corruption of their world. Yes, I still don't think as my trust being misplaced ... it was betrayed.

But perhaps, adversity is a forge of character. I revved up my thunderbird, cruised along the hills and valleys of south india, in a quest for my soul, self and maybe something more. The wandering took me to places of my self where I've been loath to shine a light into, hardly tread.

20/20: Twenty meals alone. Once you're through that barrier, being alone hardly holds any terrors. Life flows around you, every face a stranger's, every smile an accident. And you're in no hurry, there's nowhere to be, no one to meet, nothing really left to do. Sitting there, as you watch the world rush about, you feel content to just be a spectator to the human race.

Rock bottom is a pretty productive place to be. Wrapping myself in a cocoon of solitude, I spent hours, nay days scribbling bits of myself into my little diary. An outpouring of self, a vignette of modern urban life, my only story, a fictional biography of someone I used to be.

Perhaps it was cathartic. Perhaps it was inspiring almost to examine myself through an honest mirror, instead of relying on the judgement of others. Brutal honesty cut through the threads of self pity tying me down. I may have had a crappy time for half a decade, but I've come out of it scarred, but smiling. And again.

Resurrection. Life's a little less serious now, I think I have most of it figured. Simple rules to live by - smile, don't give a damn about what "they" think and do what you really want. If you're good, you'll float ... else, you sink. But there's no room for pretending.

And that was 2009^[1].

[1] - Wait, that was only four months? The rest of the year? A blur of fun, parties, travel and stuff that'll eventually be a footnote to such a page.

posted at: 03:03 | path: /me | permalink | Tags: public, me, memories

eiπ + 1 = 0

Euler's Identity. 'tis a thing of pure beauty.

Three very suspicious numbers in a menage-trois, creating something real. How can two irrational numbers and an imaginary number work together to make a very real integer? It boggles the mind entirely. Somewhere in a past left behind, this was the first equation to make me sit up and consider imaginary numbers as something more than a trick.

posted at: 20:19 | path: /misc | permalink | Tags: public, maths

Inner beauty is overrated.

Perhaps the greatest handicap my parents ever provided for me was the concept of inner beauty. In their attempts to prevent me from turning into a flake, they emphasized that it was probably the most important thing to develop. Their efforts bore fruit. They taught me to look deep into the heart of others, judge them by their intentions and to know them by their actions.

But they also taught me to avoid the shallow. I learnt that the shallow, do not linger to explore another. Like butterflies, from flower to flower, they pass on from one to the other, having known no one, but calling all friends.

Slowly, but subtly, I started to wrap myself up in myself. Layer, by layer, everything that was good in me, was only there for those who lingered long enough to peel back enough. And I thought that only fair, that only those who cared enough to know me, got me. There was precious little of me to go around and I kept it for those special people.

But as it turns out, *that* was a very stupid thing to do.

Sometime over the last year, reading the Bible at some hotel room somewhere in the country, I ran into something that clicked. Something that made sense and shone a light on the errors of my ways (uhh... no, I'm not going Born Again on you folks ... keep reading).

Mathew 5:15

	Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, 
	but on a candlestick; and it gives light to all that are in the house. 
	
	Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.

There's a certain arrogance of self that is required to be an introvert. That it seems worthwhile for someone who's met you once to dig through all your issues, fears and eccentricities, to know the really awesome person you are. That the end result, i.e You, is something enticing enough for a stranger to actually embark on that quest. As if there is some secret sauce, essence of pure self, that makes you unique among all others. That it doesn't really matter how you appear to be, that all that matters is how you really are. Pfft, maybe in an Apatow World.

Perhaps it is humbling to know that what you are isn't worth someone's time - at first glance. Perhaps there are so many who are boring on the inside & outside, that the odds are against you, all the way. Perhaps they are indeed shallow people who judge others by appearances or by popular opinion/reputation. I don't exactly know why people don't bother to look twice, but they don't (actually, some do ... which is how I got by for years). But it's not their problem that they don't, it's yours.

So, pull the covers off the true You. Shovel out a path through the icy reaches of your outer surface, put a window on your soul. It'll change your life.

In short, SUIT UP!

posted at: 01:01 | path: /philosophy | permalink | Tags: public, me, philsophy

You get to say no last goodbyes.

One cold december evening, I walked into a house of wailing to see my dad in a casket, laid out in the living room. If I could call it a living room anymore. And I couldn't even cry. Not while things were left to be done, people left to be comforted and a pair of large shoes to be filled, before I could truly mourn.

I cried into my pillow all night. I told myself that I wouldn't. But as the waves of sorrow came crashing down, I just couldn't help myself. I told myself that I had to be brave, I had to be strong, that now more than ever, I am a man.

The years have passed but, every december 2nd, I turn into that weak kneed young boy. Feels like it was yesterday. And I cry.

And I cry. For all that I've left unsaid. Respect, love and my last goodbye.

posted at: 22:33 | path: /me | permalink | Tags: private, death, me

People don't make decisions. Decisions make people.

That can't be true. I know to the exact dot, dash and every crossed tee to why I made the decision to write this blog. Or am I just writing out a rational framework as an after-thought to a pithy cliche? Maybe it's because I picked up an Orwell book and read Shooting an Elephant again?

I will never know. Not for sure. The sequence of thoughts that precede and follow an action are often so mixed up in retrospect. They get even more muddled up when I introspect deeper. I can't use my mind to understand itself. Going third-person collective on this stuff!

We strive to maintain a certain rational self-integrity as a survival trait. In some sense, our self images involve a picture of a conscious, self-evolved and rational person. We cling to it, however transparently false it might be to everyone else around. We are proud of it.

Impulsive decisions prompt a certain cognitive dissonance in deep dark of your sub-conscious. You know you aren't that kind of a person, but the act is behind you and there's no rewriting your actions. But perhaps there's other things you can change to make it all fit. Most of us fight it by becoming a new self, to whom the actions are a natural consequence of who they are. I understand, even have grown to respect that it's inevitable. But rather than admit that the change of heart was after the action, we'd rather revise our history a bit to recover a bit of internal coherence. Because in the disordered and confused world they live in, the coherence of self is perhaps the only thing they've got left to hold onto.

You've become a different person and it surprises everyone around you. The most convenient lie to trot out to mask all this internal turmoil is the ever cliched "I've always been like this, you didn't know me well enough!". I can't really read minds, but I've learnt to read people. Observing people will themselves into believing this - that they haven't changed due to their decisions and that causality flowed the other way around - has brought me some insight into the ways change has creeped into me.

I've come to embrace it. My decisions have changed me, some for better & some for worse. I'm a product of my decisions, not of my dreams or desires - of my decisions & actions. I live out my own punctuated equilibrium of personal evolution. And not everything that changed me came from within. I'm not taking anything away from myself with that admission. It's the truth.

But I've come to despise the impulsive pretenders of later rationality.

Perhaps despise is too strong a word. But it'll do for now.

posted at: 06:01 | path: /observations | permalink | Tags: public, philosophy,

Inglourious Basterds. I almost had to be dragged to this movie. I'd like to thank that person before I actually put down anything here.

Now, I'm not a big fan of gore. I mean, superflous, gratuitous gore that Tarantino has almost made into an art. I'm not against realistic, in-context gore, but the sauce and ketchup show that was the restaurant scene in Kill Bill is exactly the kind of scene I never want to see again. I shouldn't have worried about that. I really shouldn't have, because I was in for a treat.

Tarantino had it spot-on with the Basterds. For what, from a quick glance, promises to be a jewish cowboy Western mashed into a World War II universe, the movie really revolves round the brilliant performances of two characters. It turns into a drama of unexpected events and odd coincidences, instead of the grit & gumption of the war hero. The script really winds around them and are perhaps the most real characters I've ever encountered in a Tarantino movie. So, move over Brad Pitt and the rest of the Basterds off the posters and let Shoshanna & Landa take their well deserved privileges. They're the real deal. It's their movie.

posted at: 01:32 | path: /movies | permalink | Tags: public, movies