Perpetually Perplexed

My next book to be read is Renato's Luck by Jeff shapiro. I thought it would come in Italian category. Looks like he is an American author. But how did I select this book to read. By instinct. Like I select the road to travel by instinct. And always get lost. Four days continuosly, I got lost when riding. I select the wrong road. Then think that this is parallel road, so I can somehow reach perpendicular road to both and there take turn back. And no, I would have taken the opposite direction , or the parallel road would end in a dead end or something else would happen. I will end up in a small gulley and realise I am completely lost. I ask someone, and somehow manage to reach my destination. See, great instinct power!!! But this book did not produce the usual result of my instinct. It is light, not being trivial. And good style too. What a relief after Gunter Grass!!

Line is this week's topic in Heads or Tails . A line is a sequence of points ? I am forgetting my school geometry. Or a straight line is shortest distance between two points. Again something must be wrong. Line is not distance. Ok,ok, a straight line is the line with shortest distance between two points. That is straight line. What about ordinary line? Slightly bent here, or a curved line or a completely twisted line like a stretched spring? How do you define them? Let me guess. Line is a series of points who have decided to stand very close to each other in a - line!!!. Or, line a series of continuous pixels of the same color. Now you get it, right? In fact if you zoom, zoom and zoom you can really see the pixels. (Pixels are POINTS ) Let me speak poetically. Line is a point which does a walk or dance (?). When some one says line, you always think of straight line. But as I told you earlier, if there is one straight line between any two points, there can be infinite , unlimited nu

This the most difficult book I have read. Most difficult topic, after h-parameters in electronic ciruits. (Now don't ask me what are h-parameters. I sincerely don't remember). The first part of the book is about Walter Mattern and Amsel, best friends and blood brothers.Mattern is the grinder ie he keeps grinding his teeth. Amsel is a plump boy who sings in a melodious voice and who is half jew. Mattern protects his friend always. Second part tells the story through Harry from letters to his cousin Tulla. And it also describes pre-war years and about Hitler's dog Prinz. War starts and engulfs everyone. This fire does not distinguish whom it burns. Mattern's teacher though he is not a jew, is taken to concentration camp because he is eating vitamin tablets meant for children, but more because he is lacking enthusiasm about the war. Amsel makes mechanized scarecrows wearing SA uniforms. Mattern beats Amsel with other friends and lets him freeze in the snow. In the third pa

Gunter Grass's books are not books. They are epics. How can I ever finish this book :-( But you see, I am not just reading novels - (people pronounce it as if they are lowest of lowest things to be read only by dumb people ) I did also start again exception al reading and trying coding of Java. Why do Java and C++ call the errors as exceptions . We all know from Murphy that errors are normal. Non-errors are exceptions. When I write a language I will write something like try{ ----} catch (exception e) {"I can not believe it. Your program works!!!"). Now I realised at least for this topic Sun Java tutorials are insufficient. But Java World has good article on this. Do you believe I have started relearning Java without having a single printed book on Java. I have "Thinking In Java" and "Sun Java Tutorial " both soft copies. I did have a book which I have lent to someone don't even remember who. It does not mean that if I had a book, I would have read

Kenzaburo Oe is Nobel winning Japanese author. A quiet life is one of his finest creations ( I am lying. I haven't read any other book) The story is told by a 20 year old girl - Ma-chan. She is taking care of the house and her two brothers. Her parents have gone to California where her father has taken up an assignment. And mother has accompanied him because he is in one of his depressions. The elder brother Eeyore is mentally retarded but is very sensitive and composes great music. The book describes the difficulties, anguishes and feeling of nothingness faced by the girl. She wants to protect Eeyore from everyone, but also realises their future as bleak. Family friend Sugeto teaches music to Eeyore and helps them. When Eeyore takes up swimming lessons, the coach Aril tries to seduce Ma-chan but she is saved by Eeyore. At this point of time mother realises how wrong she has been to leave the children and comes back to them. A writer who is self-centered makes the children feel aba

You all tell me flower is the greatest creation of GOD. Flower is beuty, flower is fragrance, flower is nature in its best attire! I beg to differ. Flower is ephemeral, flower is fragile, that is weak and flower is sacrifice which is stupidity. Now you see the flower with its colorful petals and breath taking fragrance. By evening what is left is withered petals fallen to the ground. WHY should it live such a short life? Some of you may argue plastic flowers are eternal. They are not flowers. They are imitation. For that matter even beauty is ephemeral like flower. Today you may be gorgeous Aishwarya Rai. But very soon, you will transform into an old lady - overweight, with a double chin and walking like a penguin ! This week's theme in head or tails is flower. To see more entries click http://headsortailshome.blogspot.com

THis is what I should have named my blog. Whatever I attempt is always messed up. :-( I tried as simple thing as finding the size of integer in c++ compiler. It just said 4 bytes. I was sure it will say, 8 bytes because Intel core@ processor is 64 bit processor. VC++ 6 said 4 bytes. OK old compiler. May be it does not have 64 bit support. Downloaded VC++ 2008 express edition. It took me SOME time to figure out how to compile program there. Then A great disappointment. Still 4 bytes. I tried google in vain to see how to set 64 bit support. Left it. OK. Linux is always better. I was confident my Linux C++ compiler will give me 8 bytes. Again a disappointment . The answer was 444(sizeof(int),sizeof(long),sizeof(p) - p in int *). Posted a question regarding this in Linux forums. Funny thing is /usr/include/bits/wordsize.h defines __WORDSIZE as 32. Now where does sizeof(int) come into picture ? I was supposed to read perl? Ok moms are meant to be multitasking. The p

May last week a lorry skidded and fell into a ditch in Hassan District in Karnataka when the driver tried to avoid a live wire hanging on the road. 40 people died and 40 other injured. The lorry was carrying a marriage party. Now who is to blame? The driver? No it is the govt! Villagers have complained about this wire with no results it seems. We Indians do not value the lives of fellow human beings. So the government and officials have the attitude 80 in a billion is nothing!! The best part is nobody bothered about this incidence. Most probably that wire is still hanging there waiting for its next victim. Look at this discussion http://mboard.rediff.com/newboard/board.php?service_name=&boardid=news2008may29kar&from=story

Scanned through Indiblogger list for Bangalore bloggers. Luckily Got Pratima's mind over matter. And got this competition. The orbis terrarum challenge http://exlibrisbb.blogspot.com/2008/03/orbis-terrarum-challenge.html ? ... . We have to complete reading 9 books in 9 months and review them in our blog. But here is my tentative list of books to be read. 1> Dog years - Gunter Grass (Germany) 2> Marble Faun - Nathaniel Hawthorne (USA) 3> Good Earth - Pearl Buck (China) 4> The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Khureshi (Pakistan) 5> Some book by Taslima Nasreen (Bangla Desh) 6> Some small book by Dostovesky/Tolstoy (Russia) 7> English August - Upamanyu Chatterji (India) 8> A room with a view - E.M.Forster or any other book by him(UK) 9> Yet to be decided Now Good Earth I thought would qualify as chinese. But it may not. 2,4 and 7 I have already read. A re-read is necessary to write a review. First book I am reading but very very slowly because every w

Yesterday I was on top of clouds for achieving the set up of internet on Linux. The joy was more because had taken so many days. But as always, the happiness did not last long. Son came in the evening and told now net is not working in Windows XP. And he told make it proper NOW. Husband adviced him to study more rather than wasting time on net. And the tussle went on. I tried to connect to net and always the message was could not connect to broadband phone line is busy. The next step is customer support. If you have ever tried BSNL customer support you will empathise with me. I went through the steps "press 1 for kannada 2 for English" "press 1 for broadband 2 for init" and finally "press 9 for talking to our customer support executive". Here the recorded voice kept on playing "Your call is important to us Please hold on". I held on but soon realised that if I do that without having my dinner, I will have to starve to death. So dinner over.

I was under the dilemma whether to blog this or not. Ok, anyways. Atlast I was able to configure my ethernet adapter and then internet and now I am switching over to linux. So I can work on perl while referring at its tutorial in the internet . Imagine I don't have to store a page in pen drive reboot the system and then try those lessons in Linux and reboot to windows again for next lesson. Hopefully I can even learn php or python. Bye for now. Got to go and perl!!!

A headlines - A dog howls everyday when there is mangalarathi going on outside the temple. The story. It was late in the evening. I wanted to purchase a packet of curds. Suddenly it started raining. I ran and ran with all my might to the temple. See! This is called dramatization. It was evening but did I say it was dark? Nor was it lonely. It was a busy street. And I did not run a kilometer. Temple was just across the street. Then why did I run ? It was raining, right. I did not want to get drenched completely. Why temple? Why not? Though I have not made up my mind whether to be an atheist or a budhdhist or a plain hindu, waiting for the rain to subside in a temple is better than waiting outside a grocery shop for the crab I am (Less people in the temple you seee. If you don't include the Gods!) I made one round of God (pradakshina) or rather gods. There are 3 of them. I did one big namaskara as . See Ramdev says it is a good exercise. Then I saw smal