"Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't to leave betimes, let be." -- Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act V. Scene II)
The story of Alexander Pope and I was love at first sight! From the very first verse I read from him, I was captured by the beauty and power of his writing. I guess that is not surprising, he is known to be the third most frequently quoted writer in the English language after Shakespeare and Tennyson, but I guess out mutual interest in epic is the reason behind my special interest in him (he is the translator of Homer's Iliad into English). I had once quoted a part of An Essay on Criticism and here is another piece from "An Essay on Man" (You can read the complete Epistle II here).
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
There is this funny article titled "The Calculus of Saying 'I Love You'", talking about a postdoctoral fellow in Chemistry and an engineering doctoral student, discussing when the right time is to say "I love you"!
The engineer says he wants to say it when he is sure of it and when his love has reached a significant point. He claims that would be when dLove/dt = zero. The article argues that the second derivative might actually be a better choice... Just read it, it is funny, and yet perhaps insightful :) This is what happens to people like me who want to drive most of their life through logic! But sometimes I wonder if this is just loosing precious time, and that cold reason is butchering something beautiful, something dear here... Perhaps this is just a way of justifying your lack of courage!
I held a jewel in my fingers-- Emily Dickinson
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: "’T will keep."
I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.
People lay the foundation of grand theories like Information Theory in their master thesis, and I am going to become the founder of the grand theory of Nagging through my work (primarily nagging to myself) here!
I was playing around with this Lecture Browser of MIT, where I came to an interesting talk by Sylvia Nasar, the author of "A Beautiful Mind" which is the story of John Nash. Somewhere in the talk, she says something interesting about how and why Nash never tried to be an expert in any field:
... what he did was to simplify a complex problem that appeared to defy solution by pursuing a strategy that the experts in the field [had set up for] and he never tried to be an expert in any field because he felt that absorbing the work of other people would dull his creativity.
A friend of his once tried to describe Nash's style of thinking to me by saying: Everyone else would climb a pick by looking up for a path somewhere up the mountain, not Nash. Nash would go over a completely different mountain he would climb a completely different mountain and from that distant peak would shine a searchlight back on the first one...
People at MIT's CSAIL has set up this very interesting Lecture Browser system, which with the help of voice recognition systems, gives you the ability to search through lectures given at MIT (I think the whole audio and video database is not yet available there, but that is the plan).
In the introduction video the project is described like this:
"Conventional search engines are all text based, and that's been very effective, it's great. There's all sorts of text on the web but it doesn't do anything for audio and video materials and this type of data is just exploding these days it's becoming easier than ever to create, to store, to disseminate these kinds of data. Just look at the explosion of podcasting for example this project is all about letting people search inside video material of recorded lectures, to find particular snippets that they're interested in..."This is just great. Although it is not as powerful as you would expect, the ranking of the results doesn't look that good and there isn't much possibility for using complex search queries, it is still a great idea. Perhaps the idea has been around for long, but putting it in practice for lectures given at MIT, I think, is going to show how useful applying semi-perfect voice recognition to a voice/video database and indexing the database based on that is going to be.
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
-- Albert Einstein (The World As I See It)
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in this warmth of human relations. Our sordid interests imprison us within their walls. Only a comrade can grasp us by the hand and haul us free.
And these human relations must be created. One must go through an apprenticeship to learn the job. Games and risk are a help here. When we exchange manly handshakes, compete in races, join together to save one of us who is in trouble, cry aloud for help in the hour of danger - only then do we learn that we are not alone on earth.
Each man must look to himself to learn the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded. These prison walls that the age of trade has built around us, we can break down. We can still run free, call to our comrades, and marvel to hear once more, in response to our call, the chant of the human voice. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Terre des Hommes, aka. Wind, Sand and Stars)
"Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers." -- Alan J. Perlis
"There could be no rainbow, without a little rain." -- Susan Polis Schutz*And pain... some say it's the only education worth having! However, perhaps it is also important to keep in mind that
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." -- Dalai Lama*
If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: –
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose Thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!
-- R. L. Stevenson (The Celestial Surgeon)
I saw this interesting cartoon on our myETH pages today, which made me go read on Procrastination.
Procrastination is a type of "avoidance behavior" which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. It is often cited by psychologists as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.
...
For the person procrastinating this may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of personal productivity, the creation of crisis and the chagrin of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments.
...
Procrastinators are also thought to have a higher-than-normal level of conscientiousness, more based on the "dreams and wishes" of perfection...
...
Author David Allen brings up two major psychological causes of procrastination at work and in life which are related to anxiety, not laziness. The first category comprises things too small to worry about, tasks that are an annoying interruption in the flow of things, and for which there are low-impact workarounds; an example might be organizing a messy room. The second category comprises things too big to control, tasks that a person might fear, or for which the implications might have a great impact on a person's life; an example might be the adult children of a deteriorating senior parent deciding what living arrangement would be best.
...
Traditionally, procrastination has been associated with perfectionism, a tendency to negatively evaluate outcomes and one's own performance...[wikipedia]
"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." -- Charles DuBois
I was thinking that in the recent past, I've been spending too much of my time just thinking about my fears or writing seethes here. I was thinking about this quote from Knuth today:
"The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole."After the first month here, which was more of a survival effort, I think it is time for me to try to make myself useful in some way. I really don't know what I can do that would be of any benefit to others though, but I should start from somewhere... (any suggestion?). Perhaps having the following quote in mind as the ultimate goal could help:
"Be the change you want to see in the world." -- Ghandi
"Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation" -- Laplace
I am drunk and you are mad
Who'll take us home...?
...
I asked "where is thy land?"
With laughter said
"Half from the Arabian sand
And half a heavenly strand."
"Half made of water and clay
Half soul and half solar ray
Half on the shallow beaches lay
Half from the oyster's pearly play."
...
-- Rumi
...
Hush, lay down your troubled mind
The day has vanished and left us behind
And the wind, whispering soft lullabies
Will soothe, so close your weary eyes
Let your arms enfold us
Through the dark of night
Will your angels hold us
Till we see the light
Sleep, angels will watch over you
And soon beautiful dreams will come true
Can you feel spirits embracing your soul
So dream while secrets of darkness unfold
...
-- Prayer (Secret Garden)
Son: Daddy what if the sun stop shinin' what would happen then
Daddy:
If the sun stopped shinin' you'd be so surprised
You'd stare at the heavens with wide open eyes
And the wind would carry your light to the skies
And the sun would start shinin' again
Son: Daddy what if the wind stopped blowin' what would happen then
Daddy:
If the wind stopped blowin' then the land would be dry
And your boat wouldn't sail son and your kite wouldn't fly
And the grass would see your troubles and she'd tell the wind
And the wind would start blowin' again
Son: But daddy what if the grass stopped growin' what would happen then
Daddy:
If the grass stopped growin' why you'd probably cry
And the ground would be watered by the tears from your eyes
And like your love for me the grass would grow so high
Yes the grass would start growin' again
Son: But daddy what if I stopped lovin' you what would happen then
Daddy:
If you stopped lovin' me then the grass would stop growin'
The sun would stop shinin' and the wind would stop blowin'
So you see if you wanna keep this old world a goin'
You better start lovin' me again again you better start lovin' me again
You hear me Bobby you better start lovin' me again
You love me Bobby you better start lovin' me again
- Shel Silverstein (A nice clip of this poem)
I like Zurich and ETH very much, you can hardly find the time to attend all the interesting events and Colloquia. So far I've been to a natural history exhibition at Uni Zurich, the Alles ist Spiel exhibition at ETH library, which was fabulous (an exhibition of different games and how they have attracted mathematicians, in a historic perspective), and unfortunately I missed a very good Colloquium called "Joy of Programming".
And tonight I'm off to Nacht der Forschung or Researchers Night 2007 in Zurich, at the Lake of Zurich! It should be very interesting! I'll let you know! :)
"To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be."
- Anna Louise Strong
Flower of stone, flower of stone
That's what I am, left here alone.
Shadows so dark, makes me feel cold
Nothing but emptiness here has grown.
From a performance by Monika Jalili.
Zurich, an alpine city with fantastic sceneries, classy transportations, strangest German dialect, and fantastic chocolates and cheese!
I was going back to my dorm a few nights ago, it was exactly midnight and for the first time since I had arrived in Zurich, I looked up at the night's sky. The W, or Cassiopeia, was right above my head. I remembered the first time I looked at Stockholm's night sky, and how shocked I was for noticing that most everything was not at the place it always used to be; there Ursa Minor was almost above my head and I could see constellations that were not supposed to be seen in the sky at the same time (not supposed to be seen at my hometown's night sky that is).
When you move around, many things change in your environment, the look and feel of the place, the buildings, the signs, the plants, the way people dress and most obvious of all, the language. But for me, none of all those has ever had an effect as powerful as noticing the changes in the sky. It is like the final verdict, that proves that I have moved, and I am in a new place now!
It is just the contrary of a saying we have in Persian, "Where ever you go, the color of sky would be the same!". It is definitely not so, in the outside at least. But perhaps in the inside, skies stay the same. My internal sky has stayed the same for a long time now, it is gray, with a touch of pink!
= = =
Vienna, good old Vienna. It was a weird feeling, walking by the consuming silence of Donna (Danube) again, remembering the meditating nights I had, gazing at the dancing lights of the bridges over the calm flow of the water. The water looked so calm, but it surely carried the huge burden of what it had seen on its way since it had left the springs, the falls it had passed, the floods it had caused..., but it still had a long way to go; and so did I, and so did I.
= = =
Tehran, the hot city of dry eyes and lost cries.... The capital of my country, whose state and affairs hurt me, just like most other things I love do.
The stay in Tehran this time was just a simple one day transit stay, perhaps not that simple though. Our flight from Mashhad to Tehran was scheduled to be at 7:45pm, and we got home in Tehran at 5am next day. Mashhad's airport was just like a war zone that night, I have traveled quite a lot with plane, but I had never experienced such a havoc. The result of it for me was three broken nails (finger and thumb) and a twisted wrist!
= = =
Mashhad, home. It is already three weeks since I left it again, but it looks like a year. I don't know how on earth I survived the last days, I just have a vague recollection of trying to stay sane, keep my face straight, and handle what I had to handle. And also of reciting these verses from a poem by Saadi (here is the song):
There was a boy...
A very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea,
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.
And then one day,
One magic day, he passed my way.
And while we spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to me,
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return."
-- Celine Dion (A New Day Has Come)
Taciturn, reluctant, reticent...
Somber, dreary, gloomy, ...
Scared, frighted, panicked...
Confused, addled,...
Lonely, desolate...
Respiration, breathing!
"In this I owe a debt to G.K. Chesterton, who pointed out on many occasions that the fantastic, when looked at properly, is much less interesting (and a lot less fantastic) than the everyday.
Take Magical lights, for example, A wizard snaps his finger and light appears. Where's the fun in that? He's only doing what wizards do. But a bunch of apes weren't doing what apes do when they learned, over half a million years, how to take the universe apart and put it together again so that a bit of it was now th electric light bulb."
-Terry Pratchet, The Art of the Discworld
Once upon a time,
in a faraway land,
a young prince lived in a shining castle.
Although he had everything his heart desired,
the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.
But then,
one winter's night,
an old beggar woman came to the castle
and offered him a single rose
in return for shelter from the bitter cold.
Repulsed by her haggard appearance,
the prince sneered at the gift
and turned the old woman away,
but she warned him not to be deceived by appearances,
for beauty is found within.
And when he dismissed her again,
the old woman's ugliness melted away
to reveal a beautiful enchantress.
The prince tried to apologize,
but it was too late,
for she had seen that there was no love in his heart,
and as punishment,
she transformed him into a hideous beast,
and placed a powerful spell on the castle, and all who lived there.
Ashamed of his monstrous form,
the beast concealed himself inside his castle,
with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world.
The rose she had offered
was truly an enchanted rose,
which would bloom until his twenty-first year.
If he could learn to love another,
and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell,
then the spell would be broken.
If not,
he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.
As the years passed,
he fell into despair,
and lost all hope,
for who could ever learn to love a beast?
-- The introduction part of the "Beauty and the Beast"
"When you don't show up, it hurts twice. Not only for I realize you don't care to come, but also for I loose the chance to see you!"
"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with his might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that
is stable." -- "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran
Have your muscles ever failed you? Well, that is a very broad question, you can say which muscle and considering that your body has more than 630 muscles, you can make a very long list of how each of your muscles can fail and how that could affect you! I'll bring a few samples here:
If your heart's muscles fail, you will have a cardiac arrest! That is the sort of muscle failure I've had in my nightmares in the past 12 years!
Have you ever heard of the phrase “my knees failed me”? That's actually the tight muscles that fail you. It is when under tremendous pressure (emotional or physical) you are unable to move or just fall down. It is quite common when you are faced with a great fear, or you are extremely nervous.
If your tongue and throat muscles fail you, you’d be unable to utter something comprehensible. It usually happens when you have a good deal to say, but some intensified emotions or confusions lock your voice in! One could also experience it while dreaming. It has happened to me many times, that while dreaming (or rather having a nightmare), I start screaming and I feel that my throat muscles are failing me since I don't hear my own voice and usually at this point I wake up!
The most interesting is perhaps when your facial muscles fail you. They can fail you both ways, to reflect your feelings when you really want to cover things up, and to fail you in showing what your true feelings are when you want to show them! Having control to restrain your facial muscles is sometimes good, to be able to keep a neutral face. But it gets really frustrating when your _trained to be neutral face_, don't budge to reflect your simplest feelings, like smiling!
Interesting, isn't it?
My dearest Niki had his big day. I talked to him before and after it, he was nervous. I was nervous too, everybody was nervous. But happy at the same time. Amidst all the turmoil, the thought of his big day was something that gave me the feeling that fireworks are in order. Still, it was/is bittersweet.
And I did have the fireworks, and the tears too! Although very short and minuscule, there is a sanction on dreams and fantasies for the time being. I don't remember much about it, I just know I did have it.
And I can't tell them. Or shall I? I didn't ask to grow this fast, or did I? And now the responsibility is upon me, or is it? But certainly the guilt. Or is this the natural order of life? People come to life and people leave it to make way for the new?
The new loves the old, but has a certain way of restraining it. The old but loves him in the extremest public way. And they both love me (I think), but I haven't learned to give them back. Anger, fear and desperation sucks it all before it reaches my skin.
My aunt said I'm an incapable person, a waste. I thought I had got used to her offenses and insults, but this frank into my face, with her eyes testifying that she was just telling the truth from the bottom of her heart, it cracked and it took just too much an effort to hold together. Luckily there was chips and sandwiches to get reinforced and busy with. I feel like liking her more though, at least she is frank. The bliss of ignorance is long gone. Most everything is gone, or has been exiled.
I learned the Prim at last! I've made up my mind, enough of the humiliation and degradation. I just don't fit in, that is all. But Graphs are nice, so perhaps they have some room for me, they are polite and elegant, and sometimes handsome too! There are still things to hang on to!
"White Queen: It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards!" -- Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
According to my friends, I have an irregular taste when it comes to music (actually not just music but most everything!). But actually I am quite fond of my taste of music. I enjoy my music not just as something I play on the background, but I try to sense the feeling of the composer while composing or the player when playing it or see the imagery it tries to convey. This taste is not limited to any particular genre, it could be Iranian folklore music, or European classics, or even pop and rock. But the essential thing for me is the music itself, it can have a singer, but I can enjoy it only if the voice of the singer is well integrated into the music and is actually working like just another instrument in the orchestra (singers with exceptional voice or strong lyrics are exempted here).
Anyway, enough about me! I said all this because I wanted to talk about Hermes Records, which is my favorite music publisher in Iran. It has published some fabulous works that I think no other publisher in Iran would have dared to. Not for the fear of censorship, but for the fear of bankruptcy, since the audience of these kind of music is unfortunately quite limited here. You can hardly find their tapes or CDs in most music stores and to my utmost disappointment, one of the stores I knew in Mashhad who used to bring them told me today that they won't bring it since they don't get sold!
You can check out their online catalog. I have a few of their albums and I particularly like these (you can hear a sample by clicking on the name) Journey by Massoud Shaari and Christophe Rezai, Genesis by Navid Afghah, Gypsy Moon by Mohammad Reza Aligholi and Now and Then by Alireza Mortazavi.
Hermes Records is also the publisher of the Endless Vision by Hossein Alizadeh and Djivan Gasparyan, which was nominated for the Grammy Award 2006. I like the "Sari Galin" and "Shurangiz Improvisation" in this album very much.
As I said they have a very nice taste for what they publish and they do it with elegant packing as well. Most of the albums they have published have a story behind the music. For example, at the back of Gypsy Moon you can find:
"A lunatic falls in love with the Moon. He marches the world night and day, not to loose the Moon from his sight. A different style of using traditional motives accompanied by Iran's most passionate instruments like Daf, Setar, Kamancheh ..."
"The story of Creation is the most important chapter in the mythology of the Babylonian civilization. Based on an ancient Sumerian tale, the order of the universe was built upon a dramatic confrontation between a Dragon-shaped creature who ruled the darkness, storms and the seas, and Mardukh, the God of Babylon. After over forcing the devil-hearted Dragon, Mardukh created the sky and the stars, the trees, animals and finally mankind.Genesis is formed in three separate parts: Genesis, Universe, Life .
Genesis, the album, is a remarkable experiment, using the diverse sound generating capabilities of Iran's traditional Drum, the Tombak. Navid Afghah, a young talented musician and Tombak player, tells the story of Creation by making a unique and colorful ambience with his instrument..."
I arrived in Mashhad late at Wednesday night. Watching the small light dots on the way, I was thinking "Let it crash, let it crash...". Well, it didn't crash but in the past 5 days, I've been to 4 funerals (4 different people). It seems the wish or the curse has fallen on other people and tonight at the 4th one, I was thinking of one of Parvin's poems:
Against all my anxiety and everything to come back home, it is just great to be home. After a year again, you can't imagine what a good feeling it is to sleep under a ceiling who you had opened your eyes to for about 25 years.
The weather in Tehran is so hot. So hot that incites the flame within and too dry for eyes to cry. It is noisy, so noisy for the cries to be heard, and so poluted, for the eyes to meet. It is also busy, too busy for people to forward a hand or spare a time.
I might have been born wealthy, but my life is definitely not painless. Or perhaps I'm just ungrateful, selfish, arrogant and too self-centered to feel and see.
This year, was the first year in my life that I was away from my family for most of the important family events or holidays, like the new year and the birthdays. The side effect of being away (or perhaps the most important effect :P) was, not receiving presents! My good friends did throw me a lovely birthday party here, but when Norouz was approaching, I thought now that my lifestyle has changed, perhaps I should get myself a present. And that was how I got myself a basketball!
To my utmost grief, my dear ball, my dear companion in many light nights of Stockholm, tore apart tonight! :( A few days ago, I got the ball reinflated, but as usual I was in a hurry so I didn't check whether the pressure is right. Tonight when I took it out to play, after some dribbling, it just tore apart. But I guess I shouldn't worry much, I had to leave it behind in Stockholm anyway. One may say I'm an unfaithful owner, but anyway, I'm already planning to get a better one as soon as I arrive in Zurich :D
Well, it is already four years from the first IAUM-CCC. I have some good memories from those programming contest days at IAUM and I'm very happy I am still involved (Although I'm watching what is happening from outside and as we say in Persian, "فقط از دور دستی بر آتش دارم").
The forth year of the "Islamic Azad University of Mashhad - Collegiate Coding Challenge" is going to be held this summer. Although there is a possibility that I'd miss the final, I'm quite happy that I'm going to be in Mashhad for the most of it. I bet my parents will try to kill me when I tell them I'm going to be off to good old IAUM for several Fridays, but I hope by now they are used to my "hassani habit" of going to school on most of the Fridays! :P
Anyway, here are the links:
- CCC4's details and contests' program
- IAUMCCC4 weblog
The first round is held online, so spread the word and take part if you are interested in programming contests and you can read/understand Persian!
One of the worst tortures in life is to be tormented by a dear one who only has your best interest at heart...
Today I saw a poem by Robert Frost that I had sent to a friend 13 month ago.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
"I do not want a friend who smiles when I smile, who weeps when I weep; for my shadow in the pool can do better than that." Confucius
And why not death rather than living torment?
To die is to be banish'd from myself;
And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her
Is self from self: a deadly banishment!
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?
Unless it be to think that she is by
And feed upon the shadow of perfection
...
The 5th Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital executive conference has just come to an end, with some interesting exhibitions and interviews. The climax I guess was the interview with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It has some interesting insight on where the industry is heading, and some good advice on how to move foward and not get stuck in your past!
Steve Jobs: There’s a lot of things that happened that I’m sure I could have done better when I was at a Apple the first time and a lot of things that happened after I left that I thought were wrong turns, but it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter and you kind of got to let go of that stuff and we are where we are. So we tend to look forward.You can read the transcript or watch the video.And, you know, one of the things I did when I got back to Apple 10 years ago was I gave the museum to Stanford and all the papers and all the old machines and kind of cleared out the cobwebs and said, let’s stop looking backwards here. It’s all about what happens tomorrow. Because you can’t look back and say, well, gosh, you know, I wish I hadn’t have gotten fired, I wish I was there, I wish this, I wish that. It doesn’t matter. And so let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.
UNTERHALTUNGSMATHEMATIK IN HISTORISCHER PERSPEKTIVE (Obviously, auf Deutsch)
It doesn't matter what I want
It doesn't matter what I need
It doesn't matter if I cry
It doesn't matter if I bleed
You've been on a road
Don't know where it goes or where it leads
It doesn't matter what I want
It doesn't matter what I need
If you've made up your mind to go
I won't beg you to stay
You've been in a cage
Throw you to the wind you fly away
It doesn't matter what I want
It doesn't matter what I need
It doesn't matter if I cry
Doesn't matter if I bleed
Feel the sting of tears
Falling on this face you've loved for years
-- It doesn't matter by Alison Krauss
Whatever enters my mind cannot be tossed aside.
But the thought there in I cannot confront.
What shall I do when I am unable to scream for you?
Separation, Separation, Free me from this Separation.
Whatever language is spoken, Separation always exists.
Vicious, Relentless Separation ...
-- Part of a beautiful song by the NoorSaaz group.
Baby Bunny Grooming!
I always loved to have a pet, but when your father is a parasitologist, the most you can have at home is a fish tank! I want a bunny too...
A cool tool for using the power of while blogging. It works like a charm, you just need to install the Greasemonkey's add-on for firefox and then install the LaTeX for Blogger script. (For more details, check the instructions provided by the author of the script).
Then you can simply write
$$e = \lim_{n\to\infty}\left(1 + \frac{1}{n}\right)^n$$
or
$$e = \sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{1}{n\fact} = \frac{1}{0\fact} + \frac{1}{1\fact} + \frac{1}{2\fact} + \ldots$$
and get
or
Published on your blog :D
(As ashamed as I am, I'm illiterate in , so I might have written the formula not the best way possible, I just put it here as a proof of concept.)
--
By the way, recently I'm just fascinated by the constant e. It keeps popping up in the proofs for correctness and convergence of randomized gossip algorithms we study these days. I really regret why I didn't pay enough attention in the math classes, I wished I could free up some time and go back and study some real analysis and some linear algebra. Also some more graph theory... if I could I might have considered changing my field and go study math....
Another by the way! I'm buried (as usual) with my course work and my move to Switzerland (effective from September 2007) has added more complications to the situation, so you shouldn't expect this blog to be updated regularly for some time. Thanks for your understanding! :D
Steve Jobs has given a commencement speech at Stanford College for 2005 graduates. It is quite moving and inspiring. (You can watch it on YouTube or read the speech here. For those friends who don't have access to youtube, the audio and video are available but you need to have iTunes, I'm not sure if it works with other podcast softwares)
"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life, don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."
Today I came by a Birthday Tributes Speech by Herbert Wilf given on Donald Knuth's birthday in 2002. I quote some parts of the first half of the speech where he pulls Knuth's leg a little bit for his emphasis (obsession/passion?) on using correct notation and correct typesetting.
" [...]
Don is one of the great communicators of the twentieth, and we all wish for him, the twenty-first centuries. Actually, that depends a little bit on which endpoint of the vector of communication Don is sitting at. If he is at the initial vertex of that arrow, he is supreme. His papers, books, web site, and other writings and talks, are brilliantly original, and crystal clear. All of us, very much including yours truly, have learned a lot about clarity of scientific communication from his example.
On the other hand - if Don is sitting at the terminal vertex of the arrow of communication, life is a bit different. You have to do a lot of things right in order to get your thoughts through to him.
First, abandon e-mail, all ye who seek to enter here. [...] So you take the hint, and after writing 37 e-mail messages to various addresses that you thought might have gotten through to him, you decide on written communication. Of course, since you are about to write to the creator of TEX, you are not about to write in Microsoft Word, are you? Of course not. To show your respect for your addressee and his creations, you will write in TEX, and so you do. You spend a great deal of effort to get it to look pretty, and you send it off. Let's say that you're writing in order to describe a proof that P = NP which you've recently found. Unbeknownst to you, your letter will be placed on a stack that already has 5,379 letters that reached him before yours did, and which are waiting while he completes his latest additions to 47 new manuscripts and 311 revisions of already existing books. But one day, probably in the same year, your moment will come. He'll read your letter and give you his reply. You eagerly tear open the envelope that reaches you, and what you find inside is your own letter to him, on which he will have pencilled a number of pithy comments on your theorem. Really insightful comments, that make you pleased to have gotten the benefit of Don's knowledge and brilliance. For example, "It's best to use a backslash comma here, in order to get exactly .073 ems of space," or, "the backslash mathchardef doesn't belong here; see page 397 of the TEXBook for a better way," etc. [...]
You take a clue from Don's reply, which was a pencilled scrawl on your original message. That's it! You'll sit down and write, by hand, in pen and ink, on fine paper, the whole P = NP proof. Then, at least, you'll be past the TEX barrier and into real mathematical give-and-take. And so you do. [...]
Breathlessly you tear open the envelope once more, and again you read the now-familiar pencilled scrawl, this time wrapped around the words of your elegant handwritten letter. In one place it says "Good grief! The Euler numbers of the fourth kind cannot be denoted by E(n, k)! That notation went out in 1642 in the writings of Fermat, and since then everybody should be using the triple parentheses with the n upstairs and the k downstairs." [...]
I could go on with a description of the complete Inbound Communication Algorithm, but I won't because there's a better way. The Collected Works of Monty Python's Flying Circus are well known to have the property, shared only by the Bible, by the works of Shakespeare, and by The Art of Computer Programming, that whatever it is that you would like to say, they have already said it, and in a more interesting way than you would have. So let me show you a video of the Monty Python group doing the Police Station skit, which summarizes such communication problems as I have been describing, [...]"
Windmill, Windmill for the land,
Turn forever hand in hand,
Take it all in on your stride,
It is ticking, falling down,
Love forever love is free,
Let's turn forever you and me,
Windmill, windmill for the land,
Is everybody in?
--Gorillaz / Feel Good Inc.
(source)
There is this group called Digital Ethnography working under the supervision of Michael Wesch at Kansas State University. They have produced this fantastice piece of video called Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us. It is worth seeing.
You can see it on YouTube, or you can download it from here (WMV, 55MB).
Do you recognize the Sabze in the picture? It is the very lentil sprout dish I had posted the photos before! :)
Happy New Year!
"Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down."
This Run Run... post seems to have been quite controvercial! I can't say I totally agree with what I quoted there, but I found it an intriguing way of thinking about the whole race of life thing (which indeed was!).
Anyway, among the comments was:
"Life is a marathon, not a sprint! And sometimes you need to stay a while and look around carefully. ...".
Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep and cows
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
These are some common German sayings:
"Arbeite nur, die Freude kommt von selbst." (Work only, the joy comes automatically.)
"Ohne Arbeit früh bis spät kann dir nichts geraten. Neid sieht nur das Blumenbeet, aber nicht den Spaten." (Without work early until late nothing can turn out for you. Envy sees only the flower patch, but not the spade.)
Lately, I've been trying to to follow this model. Yet "Arbeit ist das halbe Leben!". So, I'm living a half life!
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle awakens knowing that it must run faster than the fastest lion in order to survive. Every morning a lion awakens knowing that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle in order to survive.
It makes no difference whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun rises, you must run or you will die. This is the race of life...
{a little girl crying in the background: I want my mom an dad...}
Why should it, of all time, come right at the exams week. I'm doomed this period, no chance I'm going to get prepared for the exams with this illtimed illness! :(
Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be. --Karen Ravn
A very interesting piece from "What Is Intelligence, Anyway?" by Isaac Asimov:
...
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"
Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."
Alexander Pope has a famous poem called An Essay on Criticism which I have found quite interesting.
"Pope contends that bad criticism is worse than bad writing. But despite the danger of bad criticism, some worthy individuals need to become critics. Pope also delineates some common faults of critics, such as using easy and cliché rhymes..." [Wikipedia]
The all-hands meeting for month 9 of OMII-Europe was held in Bologna this time. It was quite a nice and rather eventful trip. I had been to Italy once before, but it was to Venice and apparently each region in Italy is quite different and unique. But they share something, decoration and style, you can see it everywhere.
From the point of view of JRA4, it was quite a good meeting. We got the chance to talk to our Chinese partner from U of Beihang to get more input about CROWN Grid and also had some good comments from the Globus representative from U of Chicago. I also got the chance to get some contact points for performance evaluation teams in OMII-UK and for gLite from people in INFN. The internal timeline and planning meeting for Month 12 was not that good though. I wonder whether it was due to the fact that we were terribly tired or that we feel a bit pressured with all the work that is left to be done before the EU Commission reviews in April.
INFN of Bologna was hosting the meeting. The sessions where held in a fantastic 15th century building called Corte Isolani whose preserved mediaeval decoration was quite interesting. And the banquet was also fantastic, six courses of stylish and delicious Italian food. We had a very short time to go sightseeing but we did manage to see a lot of interesting places. We had a half day of extended meetings at INFN’s CNAF site away from the old center of the city and in more modern sections of Bologna. Over all it was quite a good trip.
I should write more about it if I find the time in the future. At the moment I’m under a lot of pressure with exams and project deadlines closing in.
We are using a layered communication toolkit called Appia for our Distributed Algorithm course. I was reading the FAQ section where I came to a part explaining the story behind the name.
The first of the great Roman roads, the Via Appia (Appian Way), begun by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BC, originally ran southeast from Rome 162 miles (216 km) to Tarentum (modern Taranto) and was later extended to the Adriatic coast at Brundisium (modern Brindisi).
Roads were fundamental to the development of the Roman empire who governed a big part of Europe for several centuries. A huge network of roads was established by that time, connecting all the roman empire, leading to the proverb "All roads lead to Rome". By that time, roads were the only communication channel available. They were used to transport goods and news and helped in the expansion of the empire.
The roman roads were notable for their straightness, solid foundations, cambered surfaces facilitating drainage, and use of concrete made from pozzolana (volcanic ash) and lime. Though adapting their technique to materials locally available, the Roman engineers followed basically the same principles in building abroad as they had in Italy.
The Roman road system made possible Roman conquest and administration and later provided highways for the great migrations into the empire and a means for the diffusion of Christianity.
Note: The above text was partially taken from the entry Roman road system of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Following the previous post Do you have a mirror? I received a comment from my brother mentioning another sample reference to the magic mirror in a (perhaps) religious saying:
"The way that you see (imagine) death, is a reflection of your true self."So if you think of it, may be you can find a few things that could act as such a mirror. A true friend, the imagination of your death, ... what else? There should be more. And it could be different for different people, some may need a true friend; some may find a meditation on their death and after life to see what truly lies inside them. Where do you think your mirror is?It should be a religious saying (not sure though). So, if you see death as a monster, your true self could be monstrous and if you see it as a beautiful angel then ...
I was reading a blog the other day when I came to a post quoting a part of Milan Kundera’s Immortality:
"Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you."
Atreyu (looking at the Sphinxes): Is that the Southern Oracle?
Engywook: No, it's the first of the two gates you must pass through before you reach the Southern Oracle, and get me the final information for my book! Of course, most people don't get that far...
Atreyu: Why?
Engywook: The Sphinxes eyes stay closed, until someone who does not feel his own worth tries to pass by.
Falcor: I knew he would be safe.
Engywook: none sense, you don't understand anything. The worst one is coming up; next is the magic mirror gate. Atreyu has to face his true self.
Falcor: So what? That won't be too hard for him.
Engywook: Oh, that's what everyone thinks. But kind people find that they are cruel, brave men discover that they are really cowards; confronted with their true selves, most men run away screaming….
What is gone, is gone; and what is to come, so where is it? So make the most of the chance you have between the two naughts.
Use C, or not use C, that is the question:
Wheter 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The flags and warnings of a rude compiler,
Or to take arms agains a sea of errors,
And by debugging, fix them? To code, to hack,
No more; and by a hack to say we end
The type-check and the thousand other checks
Pascal is heir to, 'tis a compilation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To code, to hack;
To hack! perchanse to test: ay, there's the rub;
For in that hacker's bliss what bugs may come,
When we have written out this awful code,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes development of such long life.
-- Wes Munsil
(I've taken this nice piece from Richard Levitte's journal)
I have a nice friend who is a very good poet. I really love the way she plays with words and draws beautiful and sometimes shocking images with them. The imagery in her poems is just fantastic and the way she takes advantage of the inherent ambiguity of some words astonishes me. I love two of her poems in particular: The Game and Dual (I'm not sure if that is the right translation for its Persian title "دوگانه"). I'll quote the second one here:
We had a day and a half workshop for joint research activity 3 and 4 of the OMII-Europe project here in Stockholm (hosted by PDC/KTH). The JRA4 sessions went quite well and although we are all quite concerned with the short time we have to prepare the milestones and the deliverable for month 12 of the project, we made a good review of the current state and draw a rather acceptable and manageable outline for the remaining 11 weeks.
I presented a survey of existing approaches to Grid Benchmarking in the first session, which in spite of my being nervous and rather unprepared went acceptable (nobody shouted at me afterwards at least). The interesting conclusion after this brief review was that you can hardly design something as a Grid Benchmark that would really comply with the definition of classic Benchmarking, since we are trying to measure a moving target here! So we should come up with a new definition for Grid Benchmarking, one that would take into account all the complexities and peculiarities of the Grid Infrastructure.
Anyway I guess we have some hectic weeks ahead of JRA4, there is the month 9 all hands meeting in Bologna, Italy and there is still lots to do. I hope this won't deviate me from my course works, the semester starts tomorrow and I really should find a balance between the classic studies and more interesting and intriguing work of this project!
There is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought...
-- Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queene)
