Amul Macho

Somehow I like the word Macho. Not because of the obvious allusions towards a popular North Indian expletives but the way it is pronounced, the way your lips move to produce that sound. Anyways this is not about psycho-sexo-lingual aspects of English words but the Amul Macho - Toying ad. I have a special affinity towards the ad not because of the sexual connotations but use of the word 'toying' and how I got to know the difference between toy and toying,

The ban has added a feeble thread to debate of censor vs. sensual (errr) censor vs. freedom of speech. Well it is really hard to decide who should decide what people ought to see? Cultural chauvinists and conservatives will bay the blood of maadarn (modern), fair lasses (or was it laissez-faire?) and west-apers

And the moderners would heap invectives over desis, bhaiyyas and behenji's about freedom of speech

What about us, innocent people who just want to build over our Engliss vocabulary?

Media

Well yes blame it on media and hype.

me·di·a

1.	a pl. of medium.

2.	(usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely: The media are covering the speech tonight.

–adjective

3.	pertaining to or concerned with such means: a job in media research.

(taken from dictionary.com)

Well nowadays media has gone super-meta. Media bashing is done in media itself. Talkshows, debates etc all heap invectives on media and how we are going the western paparazzi ways.

Well coming to the point it is related to our dear and old Sanzu baba - the apple of sore Indian movie watcher's eyes. Few days back surfing through TV I watched Times Now for few seconds. They where juxtaposing Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi with Mr. Sanjay Dutt (vald Sunil Dutt) on topics of Gandhigiri and getting jailed in the same Yerawada Jail, Pune. Everything under the broken sun was discussed his new tax free payroll of INR 7 per day to his career plan of promotion to INR 9 (errr or was it higher?!). It was only a minute after that that a second news item started bashing media over going gag over Mr. Dutt and ignoring fate of an innocent child being held in prison because his dad is incarcerated and the maternal grandparents are willing to accept it!

gold and glitter

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter but who would want to wear it?

Is there an anthropological study of codo-sapiens? Or at least psycho-social study of the large swath of techno coolies?

Quines

Quines are really intriguing things. In computer programming it means a program that print itself, reading its source file and printing is a trivial thing. Do try the exercise it is a fun thing to do.

Quines are named after "Willard Van Orman Quine" an American Mathematician and Philosopher. He gave Quine's Paradox. The paradox means that a statement can be paradoxical without having reference (e.g. This sentence is false ) or Demonstratives e.g.

The statement to below is true
The statement to above is false

The basic funda is to take a phrase, put it in quotation and append it after quotation and the resultant sentence should be grammatically correct. i.e. make a sentence like "X"X
e.g. take a phrase 'has three words' so our sentence would be:

"has three words" has three words

“yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation” yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation
(This one was from Mr. Quine)

Not all of them will be paradoxical but they are interesting enough to mull over

is some fixed point theorem which states that in any sufficiently powerful language (programming or natural language) it is possible to construct Quines.

Here are some more for fun:

"is a sentence with no subject" is a sentence with no subject

"is a Quine statement" is a Quine statement

"is a sentence fragment" is a sentence fragment

Klisht Hindi

Heard of words like shishu, twacha, poshan I am sure images of an advertisement should prop up in your mind. Such pure Hindi is to be heard in advertisement let alone Hindi news channels

String of characters

On popular demand esp. Desh and Bulbul I have to write more on these fellows. Let me first make my stance clear. I neither revere nor despise the unforgettable, forgettable characters who have bedecked the silver screen for ages. They popped up in my mind because of the habit of looking at unforseen and forgotten spaces, a habit best cultivated by observing junior dance artists in P.T. dance sequences (1-2-3 types dances where half of the time hero is clearly watching the choreographer)

There are few common traits that these people share, they occupy a of your psyche where only a quaint image lingers with left over remembrances of queer accent or strange character portrayal. It is in general very hard to associate their names with their images.

Satyen Kappu: He has done various roles most remembered one is Sholay's Raam Laal, the best context specific help ever made. All that the Thakur had to call out was RaamLaal in his deep baritone and master's task would be done. Most of the times he used to be finished before the movie ends or would be weeping/whining on various things.

Jagdish: I think he and not Iftikhar has the most number of appearances as police officer without a single promotion in his life time :)

Sudhir: Now sudhir is a character which very few people can recollect. He is the fellow with long downward turning mustache and queer thick foreign accent Hindi. To aid your recollection he was one of the brothers in Satte pe Satta.

Tej Sapru: Now this one is a bouncer. Tej Sapru was epitome of road side gangster, college baddy, goon's son etc. He dominated the scene in 80s and 90s like no one else. Remember the show manager in Tezaab. Or the baddy in Saajan who tries to rape Madhuri Dixit and a crippleed Sanjay Dutt tries to save him. I guess the best AHA moment belongs to him because of the contrast between persistent presence and relative obscurity. Trying to google tej sapru results in some lawyer named 'Tej Bahadur Sapru' of British era.

Macmohan: It is easy to remember him with his all encompassing beard thin and frail frame. His most memorable role was that of Sambha in Sholay where he had only few lines. Interestingly he is uncle of starlet Ravina Tandon.

I would not include A.K. Hangal here as he is quite well known by his name and his lines in Sholay 'Itna sannata kyon hai bhai' but many people do believe he was born old :)

Do check out later i will continue this :)

PS: another good habit is to go on staple diet of movies on Zee Cinema and Star Gold

string of characters

Remember Iftekar(man with record polic officer roles) ? MacMohan (Sambha) ? Satyen Kappu (Sholay ka omni present raam laal)? Bob Christo (Quintessential phoren baddy)

We should document such people whom no one remembers by name but faces. A typical reaction would be 'oh that guy' and a smirk :)

words

Some of other stuff from my side. Photos belong to Saurabh

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/509032043/

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/421224382/

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/509253022/in/photostream/

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/521356406/

मेघ

ज़ुल्फ़ों के काले मेघ, दिल मैं गम बरसाते हैं
दर्द के फूल खिलते हैं जब सामने वो आते हैं

zulfon ke kaale megh, dil main gam barsate hain
dard ke phool khilte hain jab saamne wo aate hain

प्रतीक अग्रवाल कायल

quark's dilemma

B.Tech. is Bachelor of Technology OR Bachelor because of Technology?



If it is that important to study pros and cons of everything why limit yourself to constitution?

Quark's Law

Moore's law, Murphy's Law, this law, that law

Now comes quark's law: 'There exists one more law than the number of laws you can count'

Structures

"Web site" baffles Internet terrorism trial judge

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/security_britain_internet_dc;_ylt=AszIY5m_8gyrEPggaWSqKdgjtBAF

This is an apt example of how internet and www is changing our society and yet formal structures of our society are still unaware of this or don't have anything in place for this. Lawmakers and dealers are still groping in dark about cyber-crimes primarily because our law like mathematics works on a set of axioms (which are fundamental rights, consitution etc.) and derived truths (laws which adhere to these) so we would need to incorporate these things in the axioms itself. Describing new age things in old age terminology will backfire one day. Describing website in terms of published books or equivalent wont work

Mahatma, Bapu, Gandhi

It is really hard to talk of Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in India without being in extreme. Awe, Disbelief, Reverence, Negligence are few of the emotions in which you have to delve or others would make you delve on topics related to him.

This post is less on Mr. Gandhi and more on 'on Gandhi'. Recent past has shown Gandhi revisited, re-analyzed. The best part is analyzed because he has been hailed as a messiah, prophet, avatar, the perfect soul, the Christ who took others pain, the man who never did anything wrong. We have started giving flesh to his soul, making him human, fallible. Accepting that heros are fallible, spiderman can fail, there is sweat under his arms.

We have started accepting his limitation and power e.g. Lage Raho Munna Bhai. Puritans and fundamentalists have codified Mr. Gandhi in dhoti, khaadi and charkha. But this new Gandhigiri is less on Gandhi and more on our perception of Gandhi, how should his principles be interpreted in new age (or should they be reinterpreted) . What he said and did was best for his times and situations. Applying them rampantly in space and time is a blatant insult and probably not all of his teachings can be used. (Imagine government some special occasion giving goats to poor people because Gandhiji used to drink goats milk, Doode! those poor fellows would feed the goat or their children?!?).

We have also started coming to terms with his personal life and his affair with Mira (I am yet to read Mira and Mahatma and other related text to comment in detail), his tumultuous and destructive relation with eldest son and never talked of family life.

The worst that we can do with great men is to create there statues, put them in pedestal, codify there teachings and sayings and elevate them to a prophetic status of idealism from where they are a mute spectators of there own insult.

From 15th Aug/26th Jan based Attenborough's 'Mahatma' we have moved to Lage Raho Munna Bhai. From 'prerak prasangs' (inspirational anecdotes) we have moved to deeper and more professional studies on his life.

साधो रे

साधो रे ये मुर्दों का गाँव - अग्नी

http://efreakyshare.blogspot.com/2007/05/sadho-re-by-agni-video.html

अति उत्तम प्रणय पत्थर (Rock) और दोहे का

कहाँ थी ये अग्नी अब तक
किस सीने मैं दबी थी ज्वाला
अब जो छलकी है तेरे उर से
पीने दे यह जीवन हाला

- प्रतीक अग्रवाल 'कायल'

Dil ki aahaten

chand lafz apni zindagi ki kitaab se hame bhi padao
kya beeti kaisi beeti kuchh hame bhi sunao
kis panne pe kaun mila, panna palatate bichhad gaya
kahaan syahi ke daag lage hume bhi batao

Indian debacle

As i am a bona fide Indian i have to comment on Indian cricket teams performance and have to give my expert comments on what should be done next. What is the best strategy, should Chappel be kicked out or Dravid be spanked?

I feel the team needs to rest, rejuvenate themselves. There is too much cricket. Players are not puppets. Give them a break. Every batsmen a good one, bowling is just okay, all of them have proved themselves so no need to revamp the team apart from certain policies like one should be kicked out (or allowed to cool your heels) with assurance that you will be taken back when you are ready. There has to be a stable opening batting line up. India plays 3-4 opener

0x49 0x6e 0x6e 0x6f 0x76 0x61 0x74 0x69 0x6f 0x6e 0x00

Bummed! Flustered! Sounds Greek!
Is it a puzzle? a code? a key to Aztec gold or secret of Da Vinci's sexual orientation or Michelangelo's link with Al-Qaeda?
The answer is Innovation. It is simple hexadecimal representation of ASCII code for innovation. (What an innovative thought eh ;-) )

Yes the innocent word innovation. Knowledge industry, flat world, globalization, information age blah blah to the nth power.

Every one is crying hoarse, look at us we are an innovative company. We lay a lot of emphasis on innovation. We want our employees to be innovative. We always innovate
Holy crap! No one cares as long as the monies are coming

Read some serious stuff here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation and start innovating

(what an innovative blog)

Moore's Law

Number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles in every 18 months. (Reference)

Well I propose new Quark's Law of idiocy. Average 'level' of programmers dwindles by half every two year.

By level I mean the kind of work you do, the kind of work that get proud of(if you get a chance to do so).

\

A programmers problem in C language:

How do you print a new line of information on a console?
printf("\n");
Turn the problem into itself, recursive
How do you print the symbol \ followed by n on console?
printf("\\n");
Then how do you print the symbol \ followed by \ followed by n?
printf("\\\n");

\ is a popular way to express the inexpressible because new line is a concept not an axiomatic symbol like: a,b,c
Just as one uses . to denote an end of line in English language. So whenever you have to comment about the dot you have to write d followed by o followed by t (as I did few characters back) or use '.'

Surely our computer and there arcane languages are no contender against our evolutionary advanced hair covered CPUs