Arbit Scratchpad

The Belur Math and The Dakshineshwar Temple The post that I had promised earlier, after those crazy posts in the mean time. During my recent visit to Kolkata, I had been to the Belur Math - the place where The Ramakrishna Mission was established by Swami Vivekananda when he placed the ashes of his master Sri Ramakrishna, and laid the foundation for a temple for it. The temple has a beautiful and pleasant dark sandstone colour. The interiors when I went in was filled with devotees and the evening bhajans/kirtans were being sung. As soon as I entered it, I was in some other world. The temple is like any other Ramakrishna Math with an idol made of marble of Sri Ramakrishna seated in Samadhi, and Sarada Devi's photo in the left side inside a little room. The kirtans were so soul stirring that I just sat there in rapture for a while as this melodious song was being sung by a large group of monks; as if the whole of the temple was vibrating in consonance with positive ene...

Dissection (v.): cut apart so as to show the internal structure. The little boy slept on - unaware of what was happening outside [He was dreaming - some suspect he was retarded] [Sound moral ground, hypochondriac, mental placebo, confusion abound] His father thought he would never know he slapped his wife and held a axe to finish her off and threw her so she vanished in the cold of the night [ Allegory Act 1] The tender yet submissive mother and the fiery form yet to form. [Moronic stand of the Nth status for monolithic solitude - Himalayas flash again and again] He wanted to get rich nothing else - come what may [Disruptive thoughts for disruptive ideas to get famous] As I write this I can still hear those ghastly shouts emanating from that house in the darkness. Blood curdling shrieks as they were that would awake the cruelest demons and devils from their deepest slumber [Highly volatile dump of the mind] [World power domination Iraqi interim administration] The TV bla...

Thinking of switch from Desktop to Laptop Planning to sell off my PC - It was a HP Pavilion which cost me a whopping amount of about 65K (INR) when I bought it back then in Jan 2000. With an Intel Pentium III 450 MHz processor with MMX technology 100 MHz FSB Chipset Intel 440BX/100, 192 MB RAM, 40 GB Seagate HDD, along with an nVidia Riva TNT graphics card with 8MB VRAM. Further details here : HP Pavilion PC Model 8505 (AP) - Product Specifications One of my colleagues suggested putting an ad on FreeAds, I am planning how much to specify as the selling price (Negotiable though). Any idea guys. Would 15-20K be appropriate. Or sell the parts separately ? I am thinking of a laptop next - any idaes what would be a good deal ? I recently saw a IBM ThinkPad model for about something like 55K (INR) - Intel Celeron Mobile 2.2 GHz, 256MB DDR SDRAM, Combo drive etc etc ... Or should I go for an AMD processor based system ? Guys suggest something. I would not like to ...

WikiWikiWeb This is just great - Books and data and loads of information for free - that you can modify, add to and edit. Heard of Wiki ? (A wiki (pronounced "wicky", "weeky" or "wi-key") is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that gives users the ability to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by other users.) Here are some amazing things : Wikipedia - An open-content encyclopedia Wikibooks - Free textbooks and manuals Wikisource - Free source documents Here are some samples : Data Encryption Standard - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Fractal - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Theology - From WikiBooks (The portion on Hindu Theology/Philosophy was added by Shamit Bagchi - neat right ?) It says at the Wikibooks submission site : Please note that all contributions to Wikibooks are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License (see Wikibooks:C...

Back from Kolkata Was home by 11 am today, it was a refreshing three weeks ... Had a good time with cousins - visiting them and they coming over - I have plenty of cousins. One of them got married recently. It was a grand family reunion of sorts and getogethers, food and music flowed unhindered; Bengali culture - I am amazed to find everyone grows up to become talented singers and players of musical instruments - it runs in their veins I guess. Also visited quite a few places of interest this time: The Victoria Memorial - Storehouse of British paraphernalia and details of old Calcutta its history and growth and the luminaries it produced. The paintings on display are amazing depicting the vivid perspectives of the British on various places, events and aspects of India. Its strange that after so many years I have managed to visit this Calcutta landmark with parents and cousins. The monument is imposing in white marble and the intricate frescoes on the walls and color tinte...