My country

I love my india but till recently I used a crib a lot about it.. I occassionally thought wrong things about india.. my country is poor, people don't follow law, politicians are corrupt and what not..

Come to think of it, I can only laugh at the silliness of my thoughts back then.. I must be blessed to be born in such a wonderful country. What's so wrong with my india? Some people do not follow traffic rules, Some politicians and officers are corrupt and there is some poverty. THAT'S IT. This is a country where your family stands for you what may happen, your relatives take leave and spend time with you when you visit them and you are sent off and received with a lot of warmth. This is the place of love. This is a country where lots and lots of wisdom is incorporated in holy scriptures. The lifestyle , the philosophy in it, allows the mind to wander in higher planes.

Lakhs of people shed their lives and freedom to make sure that I have freedom. I should be worthy of all those sacrifices. My words and actions should reflect my freedom. The only way I can do justice to everything that is given to me is to make best use of it. I will make sure that I grow enormously and let others grow along with me. I will leave a much more wonderful country for the next generations. Just because there are a few people who doesn't recognize the happiness of a rightful and successful life, I will not become one of them. I will set an example for everyone around me just like many people from this wonderful country have done. I will carry the torch handed over to me and will make sure that it is brightest while I hold it.

Global warming....

Grave danger?
http://www.ecobridge.org/content/g_dgr.htm
As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill. -Helen Keller

A study, by scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO) determined that 154,000 people die every year from the effects of global warming, from malaria to malnutrition, children in developing nations seemingly the most vulnerable. These numbers could almost double by 2020.
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Fake/spoof?
http://www.rightsidenews.com/200811052492/editorial/the-great-global-warming-swindle.html
Getting electricity is a matter of life and death for about a third of the world's population. Africa has coal and oil, but the greens say these must be left untouched. This is barbaric. To try to restrict the world's poorest people to using the most expensive and unreliable forms of electrical generation (wind and solar) is effectively to tell them they can't have electricity.

http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2008/11/05/editorial/opinion2.txt


Well.. I don't know.. both sides of the coin..
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_4387552
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/207774/the_global_warming_controversy_.html

One thing seems to be sure.. The earth is heating up..
The discussion is whether human activity caused this or not.. This discussion is critical as this leads to what we can do to prevent global warming (if at all this needs to be prevented, which again is a point of discussion)..

All said and done, global warming aside, no one can deny the fact that man induced greenhouse gases are doing no good to the earth or it's inhabitants (even if they do not cause global warming). It would be a good initiative if we consider carbon footprint as one of the parameters judging our progress.

Less Facilities: More Enjoyment

A passage from one of the papers of the great Knuth.. This certainly seems to be a practical way to arouse passion for computer science among students..

One rather curious thing I've noticed about aesthetic satisfaction is that our pleasure is significantly enhanced when we accomplish something with limited tools. For example, the program of which I personally am most pleased and proud is a compiler I once wrote for a primitive minicomputer which had only 4096 words of memory, 16 bits per word. It makes a person feel like a real virtuoso to achieve something under such severe restrictions.

A similar phenomenon occurs in many other contexts. For example, people often seem to fall in love with their Volkswagens but rarely with their Lincoln Continentals (which presumably run much better). When I learned programming, it was a popular pastime to do as much as possible with programs that fit on only a single punched card. I suppose it's this same phenomenon that makes APL enthusiasts relish their "one-liners." When we teach programming nowadays, it is a curious fact that we rarely capture the heart of a student for computer science until he has taken a course which allows "hands on" experience with a minicomputer. The use of our large-scale machines with their fancy operating systems and languages doesn't really seem to engender any love for programming, at least not at first.

It's not obvious how to apply this principle to increase programmers' enjoyment of their work. Surely programmers would groan if their manager suddenly announced that the new machine will have only half as much memory as the old. And I don't think anybody, even the most dedicated "programming artists," can be expected to welcome such a prospect, since nobody likes to lose facilities unnecessarily. Another example may help to clarify the situation: Film-makers strongly resisted the introduction of talking pictures in the 1920's because they were justly proud of the way they could convey words without sound. Similarly, a true programming artist might well resent the introduction of more powerful equipment; today's mass storage devices tend to spoil much of the beauty of our old tape sorting methods. But today's film makers don't want to go back to silent films, not because they're lazy but because they know it is quite possible to make beautiful movies using the improved technology. The form of their art has changed, but there is still plenty of room for artistry.

How did they develop their skill? The best film makers through the years usually seem to have learned their art in comparatively primitive circumstances, often in other countries with a limited movie industry. And in recent years the most important things we have been learning about programming seem to have originated with people who did not have access to very large computers. The moral of this story, it seems to me, is that we should make use of the idea of limited resources in our own education. We can all benefit by doing occasional "toy" programs, when artificial restrictions are set up, so that we are forced to push our abilities to the limit. We shouldn't live in the lap of luxury all the time, since that tends to make us lethargic. The art of tackling miniproblems with all our energy will sharpen our talents for the real problems, and the experience will help us to get more pleasure from our accomplishments on less restricted equipment.

In a similar vein, we shouldn't shy away from "art for art's sake"; we shouldn't feel guilty about programs that are just for fun. I once got a great kick out of writing a one-statement ALGOL program that invoked an innerproduct procedure in such an unusual way that it calculated the mth prime number, instead of an innerproduct [19]. Some years ago the students at Stanford were excited about finding the shortest FORTRAN program which prints itself out, in the sense that the program's output is identical to its own source text. The same problem was considered for many other languages. I don't think it was a waste of time for them to work on this; nor would Jeremy Bentham, whom I quoted earlier, deny the "utility" of such pastimes [3, Bk. 3, Ch. 1]. "On the contrary," he wrote, "there is nothing, the utility of which is more incontestable. To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?"

lyrics by sirivennela.. - click to watch video

eppuduu voppukovaddura votami..
eppuduu vodulukovaddura vorimi..

vishraminchavaddu ye kshanam
vismarinchavaddu nirnayam.. appude nee jayam nischayam ra..
eppuduu voppukovaddura votamiii..

ningi entha pedda daina rivvumanna guvvapilla rekka mundu takkuvenu ra..
ningi entha pedda daina rivvumanna guvvapilla rekka mundu takkuvenu ra..
sandramentha goppa daina eedutunna chepa pilla moppa mundu chinnadenu ra..

paschimana ponchi vundi ravini mingu asura sandhya vokkanadu neggaledu ra..
gutakapadani aggi vunda saagarananeedukuntu tuurupinta telutundi ra..
nishavilasamentasepura.. ushodayanni evvadapura..
ragulutunna gunde kuda suryagolamantidenu ra..
eppuduu voppukovaddu ra votamii..

noppi leni nimushamedi jananamaina maranamaina jeevitana adugu aduguna..
noppi leni nimushamedi jananamaina maranamaina jeevitana adugu aduguna..
neerasinchi nilichipothe nimishamaina needi kadu bratuku ante nitya garshana..
dehamundi pranamundi netturundi sattuvundi intakanna sainyamunduna..
dehamundi pranamundi netturundi sattuvundi intakanna sainyamunduna..

aasha neeku astramaunu.. swasa neeku sastramaunu.. aasayammu saradhaunura..
nirantharam prayatnamunnada.. nirasha ke nirasha puttada?
nirantharam prayatnamunnada.. nirasha ke nirasha puttada?
aayuvantu vunnavaraku chavu kuda neggaleka savamu paine gelupu chatura..
eppuduu voppukovaddura votami..

Nandankanan

Recently I have visited nandankanan zoo in bhuwaneswar. It was indeed a real feast to my eyes. We had to travel for around an hour from bhuwaneswar to reach nandankanan, but it was worth the effort..

Be it the large barn owl staring at you inside the cave(I was very reluctant to leave it.. It was the first time I loved the sight of an owl.. The only time it blinked it's eyes is when the flashlight from my camera filled it's eyes), handsome lions or flamboyant elephants(they are moving everywhere and always ready to bless u with their trunks), the place is an amazing spectacle. I loved the macau(very beautiful but got a ear-breaking harsh voice). The guide explained that this zoo is filled with happy families(sukhee) (chimpanzee) as well as sad families(dukhee) (orengetton, spectacle monkey, hirans). Initially I ignored his comments but upon seeing the animals, I had to believe it :))

Coming to birds.. dancing peacocks (white and green), ostriches, numerous kinds of parrots and pigeons (I liked the green pigeon), love birds, ducks.. while your eyes savour on their beauty, their chirps and quacks will definitely put your hearing device to test..

The crocodiles breeding ground (oh my god.. so many crocodiles),elephant bathing centre, cunning hynae, rattle snakes and pythons, tigers(white and bengal), big bears, small bears, black buck (guide explained as the one salman khan shot), large numbers of beautiful birds flocking on the trees around crocodile breeding ground, leopards (u don't need to be a poet to appreciate their elegance).. It was indeed an experience which will stay with me for long..

Introdutory sentences from David Copperfield..

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.

nothing more needs to be said about the style of charles dickens.. Go grab the book if you haven't read it already (Don't complain I didn't warn you that it is a classic and contains a lot of melodrama in it..)

Digital library of India

Digital library of India is a great abode for telugu(for that matter any indian regional language) lovers.
Though the interface is very lame and unfriendly, the books compensate for that. Some great regional books are scanned and uploaded here for online reading.
You can find some all time greats listed here. Be it the wisdom of SriSri guiding you, chalam questioning you through his musings or the wit of chilakamarthi amusing you.. you can find some nice telugu stuff here. Some of the books that belong here are published back in 1850 s.
There are also books on different subjects, newspapers, journals and manuscripts.