Arbit Scratchpad

Shreyas tagged me with the tag : ' Time well spent: Books in 2005 ' So here is the list: 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic of events in the different generations of a family in an imaginary town, with his unique style of magic realism and confusing sequences of names of the characters, leaves you numb at the end by the sheer imagery and imagination that words can infuse. Hair raising stuff. 'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee A poignant story about racial discrimination and the way people were treated; from the perspective of a little girl as the narrator. 'Foucault's Pendulum' by Umberto Eco A heady exploration of occult practices, and pagan rituals expressed by Umberto Eco through the crazy ideas of three literary editors to uncover a hidden source of enormous energy and power, leading to chaos and a series of gruesome events. '1984' George Orwell's future prophesy - a saga of dictatorial rule a...

Watched three movies at Kolkata: 'The Grudge'. 'Darkness' and 'Hulk' The first one is a haunted house story, a remake of a Japanese movie; second one also a similar story, better than the first though - the evil spirit in the form of darkness, taking its toll; the third one is about a genetic engineering experiment by a professor, on his son, going wrong with the professor's son turning into a green giant when under duress ... All three easily forgettable. Renamed the blog as the previous one seemed too pretentious ... ;-). So turning on the thought stream now: After all life goes on and assuming everything is fake/maya; we cannot deny our existence even though I may never be the ideal being; because there is no 'ideal' being - I am what I am - that in essense is the true identity; there is no need to be ashamed or proud of any particular thing, as either is a false feeling an imaginary 'hobgoblin' created in the mind that brings bondage and ...

Trains have a knack, almost a flair for running late - however things are getting better with Indian Railways. When discussing the general state of affairs one afternoon, we came to the conclusion that technology is intruding into the more culture oriented Bengal and the intrusion isn't especially for the good. Ultra-conservative people even suggest that technology is the greatest bane for society and the eastern way of life which gives prime focus to spirituality, will soon come back with a vengeance - I argued giving some examples of things that make mundane life much more easier like communication or travel which was pointed out as not the ultimate goal. Makes me think - what everyone is following - the general direction that technology is leading us towards - is that the right way for the human species, making limbs and the brains gradually inactive - like slow poisoning. Kolkata is fast becoming like any other place - super malls and western dressing styles, mega filmstar show...

Where will I go back to ? When I am back from the old, renamed, city of joy; Into another awaiting that ceremony. Cold it is more here, getting colder even ... The extra-warmth of people making up, for that deficit in percieved heat.

You have a passion for say reading and writing or dramatics (which are mine) and then you are in an industry say software (mine again) and a background in computer science engineering. So how would you actually combine the two and get double the fun – be doing what you want and earn your livelihood by combining the experience of your current profession and of achieving, what you always wanted to do. Start a firm? Maybe … Cogitations, ideas, thoughts on opening a startup. What do you say ? Do I even make sense? (UPDATE: Key ingredients - Arts, Paintings, Literature, Books, eBooks, reading, writing, authors, libraries, Software, Open Source Software, Linux, OpenSolaris, antialiasing, machine learning, neural networks, startup). Calling for v olunteers and their thoughts.

Promiscuity (physical and mental) is disgusting. It is impossible to enjoy each moment, since that would be like saying, laugh every moment even when the pain increases. How do you make out if life has been a failure? Is it disguising itself as a successful life. Or is this yet another hurdle in life, part of the unending race that has a hurdle every few steps. So if you don't have the gusto or the wind in your lungs to run further ? What do you do ? Take rest ? And then start the run again ... Competitive life. Disconnected to any real peace in life. Are people insane if I call this false - all of this glory, fame, riches, amenities, gadgets and what not? Or am I insane to question things. Unending change; more than change, the process of having an open mind which is very important seems to be missing. People see only the narrow confines, restricting the vision. You are a software developer, means you only read technical tuff, code, code and code more. Think of nothing else; that ...

Final day at FOSS.in (2nd Dec 05) had a talk by Jonathan Corbet (Editor Linux Weekly News - http://lwn.net and co-author of the book 'Linux Device Drivers') on mutual exclusion in the linux kernel which was followed by Alan Cox (former kernel maintainer) on Writing a Modern Linux Device Driver which was loaded with far too much info for a one hour session, anyways got some pointers. I attended these two and went to work. Read more here: http://planet.foss.in/ Got a Belenix LiveCD based on Open Solaris - it is memory intensive and the GUI does not render after boot. Apart from that Yahoo seemed somewhat subdued at the FOSS.in conference, they had sponsored the event every year, but not this time. Google was an official sponsor and the buzz in their stall was evident all the time. Sun also generated lots of frenzy with their software and contests. [Update: The OpenSolaris team here in Bangalore, came back and wanted to know what the exact problem was and I registered based on...