Senthil Kumaran

Happy new year to all!

I am passing this message to frank who will be proxy to LJ while using LJ Talk.

There was an Intersegment Level Xmas Tree Decoration Contest and we

participated in that. Our Decoration won the 3rd prize. It was fun!

Austin and I went to cochin to attend Neena Marriage. It was one of

shortest marriages I have ever seen. The entire marriage ceremony took

just 30 minutes to complete. Am seeing a Malayam marriage for the first

time.

Then we went to the Cochin Harbour to spend time. At cochin, discovered

that they use Boats as a mode of "public transport"! Thats interesting!.

Back to Bangalore and this weekend, I visited Banerghatta National park

with Vaishnavi, Shiva and Dad. Vaishnavi wanted to see the new Butterfly

park opened at BNP,but after the Grand Safari, Zoo visit when we went to

the Butterfly park, it was already 5:30 PM and it got closed. Next time

we would be going to see the butterfly park exclusively.

I was able to catch some great snaps of tigers during the Grand Safari.

The Cab Driver helped me, and some of them he himself captured. I paid

him Rs.10/- at the end for this extra service. :-) Well,I did not quite

like it as I had plans to improve my photography skills with some

wildshooting.

scrmable.py

Tihs is a pelicaur pproetry that if the fsirt and the lsat ltteer of the wdros rmiean the smae, and the rset is scbelmard, then you mhigt siltl be able to ierreptnt it. Tihs is very fnnuy. :-)

Inrpeisd from jwz scrmable: http://www.jwz.org/hacks/scrmable.pl

pyljvim is a a Livejournal Plugin for Vim. One can post to the Livejournal directly from vim! :)

Just as I am posting this entry from vim.

It is available at: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1724

Installation is pretty easy and so is the usage.

Thanks,

Senthil

Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.

-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I was trying to post entries directly from vim, the text is not coming up properly. Need to figure out the problem and fix it. Its been pending for some days now. Once its up, it will so comfortable to post to lj directly from vim.

Reviews

I watched The Departed and I liked it. Its a very good movie, a good story and very well directed. It might keep you at the edge of the seat while you are watching the movie. The actors Matt Damon, Leonardo Di Caprio and others have done some "fucking" good job. Well, you are going to hear that 'F' word at aleast a 100 times in that movie, but you wont mind it. The movie is kind of chase, a rat is implanted at both sides (a gang and police) and they try to find out who is the rat, while both the rats are very clever.

FOSS.IN

Visited FOSS.IN today. Well, I was bit depressed at quality of talks going down. Few were good, I enjoyed bluesmoon talk and the intro by Suparna was ok. But rest all were Bullshit!

Atul Chitnis, if I were you, I would just pick quality speakers and fit only so much that as the quality speakers would occupy ( One day/Two days). I would not let go quality in favor of 'lets do grand' things et al. But, hey you are doing a fanastic job (Few quality talks spread over 3 days) for the minor amount you are collecting frm the delegates.

Kudoes, keep going, but check for quality now and then.

Steve Yegge posted an entry on Maths for Programmers. That article is a very insightful. It analyzes how maths can be useful to any programmer at any time. We have all lost touch of basic mathematics and need to gear up. His suggestion is Maths should be learned breadth-first and not depth-first, as knowing different mathematical solutions we come to know about which section the problem belongs to and we might approach it correct. Another suggestion for all of us is to start with any math section at wikipedia and follow it till we understand it and do it daily.

Anyway, that article is a good read.

I had heard from my friend Ashok that Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Adolf Hilter a Letter asking him to stop war and teaching him Ahimsa. Stumbled upon the link discussing that letter on Wikipedia article on Mahatma Gandhi.

Here is article which discusses the Gandhis letters to Hitler. We come to know that Gandhi addressed Hilter as his friend and he emphasized it that it was not only words but he believes in universal friendship and extends it to Hilter as well. This was during the time when Hilter was suggesting to British as killing Gandhi will suppress Indian Rebellion.

The article discusses various political instances where Gandhi's ideologies could have been applied. One can notice that the author gives a favourable treatment of Gandhis ideologies to the situations. The last para of the article was impressive.

To quote from the article itself.

It is not certain that this would have worked, but then Gandhism is not synonymous with effectiveness. Gandhi’s methods were successful in dissuading the British from holding on to India, not in dissuading the Muslim League from partitioning India. From that angle, it simply remains an open question, an untried experiment, whether the Gandhian approach could have succeeded in preventing World War 2. By contrast, there simply cannot be two opinions on whether that approach of non-violent dissuasion would have been Gandhian. The Mahatma would not have been the Mahatma if he had preferred any other method. Our judgment of his letters to Hitler must be the same as our judgment of Gandhism itself: either both represented a lofty ethical alternative to the more common methods of power politics, or both were erroneous and ridiculous.

Avinash and Karthick from Spastics Society of Karnataka participated in Jack Kilby Quiz conducted by Texas Instruments. Here is photo album:

Finished reading "The Hobbit" today and subsequently became a fan of J.R.R Tolkein. It was my first J.R.R Tolkein reader, I had purchased it in 2005 and started reading it few months ago. After breaks, I had time to finish it up today. JRR Tolkein's English is superb! Now, I understand why so many fans are there worldwide. It captures your imagination and takes you the Hobbit world. The description of events is very good and creates an interest in the reader.

Recommended reading for anyone who has not yet read JRR Tolkein.