Perpetually Perplexed

"I am a Hindu. And my religion doesn't believe in attacking someone because they wear a skull cap or eat beef. Not in my name, not in the name of my religion," said  a student. Protests were held in many cities in namma Bharatha on 27th, opposing the lynching of 19 year old Junaid in a train. In response to a facebook post by a film maker Saba Dewan, thousands gathered in Delhi, Kolkatta, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Thiruvanantapuram simultaneosly. They were all concerned about the violence by cow vigilantes over the past 3 years and silence of the governments. But I was surprised at how the news was not given significance in newspapers. In times of India - Bangalore edition, the news came in second page, not mentioning anything about the fact that it is nation wide protest. I browsed through some Kannada newspapers online , I could not find the mention of the protest. We believe in "Sarve janaha sukhino bhavanti". OK, if not exactly that, we DO N...

Even I take a lot of time to solve this level. See the sum of rows and columns should be some 3 digit number. Not even thousand. Because rounding to zero is easier. And I decline to use a calculator for finding solution. I don't want to use pen and paper either. And I strongly believe that even though I am quite weak in many useful things, in arithmetic I am quite strong. So I shataka it out. Try out and let me know when you clear this level.

So now when I feel like watching TV, I instead start reading a magazine - any magazine. How many magazines do we buy? Zero. But I read them using my own app " Indian newspapers and magazines '. The Indian way - free. :) Most often I read current affairs magazines. India today, Frontline, Tehelka etc. Then some days I even try reading some fashion magazines. But I am not inclined towards them.  Too old to look fashionable    Then I even browse through newspapers, so as not to be seeing only one side of a news-story. If I have some time and I am in calmer mood, I even try to read some Hindi poems. I can say my life is some what enriched by this app. Though not riched :)

 Time to recollect this song and try to analyze it in today's context. Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free  -------- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake - Rabindranath Tagore

For once I have something to blog about. Not just whining and blaming others. Or posting some silly quotes which only I found hilarious, and reposting it. Ok. The day I saw about Arundhati Roy's book "the ministry of utmost happiness" I read more about her and read part of her article in Caravan. I realized we share some common enemies. Isn't that how friendships are formed - based on whom you hate or dislike? OK, why don't I buy her book. Amazon order was prepared. Luckily they had some offer on hardcover book. So that went into shopping cart. Because I did not want to pay 50 rupee delivary charges, I browsed through suggestion Amazon provided and selected "Kafka on the shore" by Murukami - a Japanese writer. Now both books have arrived and I haven't yet removed the plastic cover of Roy's book. Instead I am reading Kafka... And interestingly enough, I am proceeding quite well. Though two other book which I was trying to read few pages a...

I love quotes and I love creating them too. The quirkier the better

I wrote earlier two posts about my two games Shataka and MemoryPro.  Today I downloaded my older and more popular app - Indian Newspapers and magazines  . I am not at all enthusiastic about writing about this app. Because it is free and also ad-free. Very sad, but true. The app has different categories such as science and technology, business, entertainment. It also has a large collection of Indian English magazines and local language magazines. And of course all of these are completely free. Most of them do not even require registration. You can save the articles for off-line reading. So may  be give it a try and download it from here   And the app is less than 1 MB in size. But once I add advertisements, the size will be slightly larger. 

yo maam pashyati sarvatra sarvam cha mayi pashyati | tasyaaham na pranashyaami sa cha me naa pranashyati | यो माम पश्यति सर्वत्र सर्वं मई पश्यति  तस्याहं न प्रणश्यामि स च मे न प्रणश्यति  The one who sees me in everything and sees everything in me, he will never part from me. Such a lofty goal!!

We all love to use emojis or emoticons. Kids nowadays have complete conversations using emojis. Ever wonder what is source of these cute little cartoon faces? Here it is.

Q: Hi, My name is somesomeka, I am talking from abcd TV. Do you have few minutes A: No, no. I am not buying anything. I don't want any insurance. Nor do I want any loan or credit card. Q: No maam, you are mistaking me. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes. A: Ya, shoot out. Q: I heard that you are one of the important bloggers in Rajarajeshwarinagar. Can you tell me about your background ? A: OK. Let me see I studied electrical engineering in Bangalore 30 years ago. At a time, when every road, every village and every house was not flooded with engineers. But then I did not take my career seriously. I just taught computer languages in institutes. Q: So you are an Engineer by education. How nice! And you did work in a company. How interesting! A: Ya, ya. I was working as an embedded faculty even after coming to this RR nagar. My neighbors tell otherwise. Q: Now you are not working? A: I am developing android apps. Q: Then where do you find time for bloggi...

Instead we do this  and saddening of all,  this image from: psychcentral blogs Some of us do another thing - searching images for blogging :) :) :)

While we are talking about my games - android games I have developed, we need to talk about memorypro . Most of the memory games show you some images in a grid and you need to match them. But I remembered the memory game we played as children (I am still a child at heart) using playing cards. Here the combinations are large. 4 suits, 13 numbers. So remembering is difficult and I was bad at this game. So I added this feature to the game - play memory with cards(ispeet if you want). Most of us are not good at remembering faces. So I added a face memory game. Show some faces. Change one of them. And the player will have to recognize the changed face. But here copy rights is a problem. You can not use faces of people without their permission. May be you can use film stars' photos. But I do not like the idea. So I took cartoon faces. Most of them are from "The Simpsons". Who does not love them? And the the third one is pattern memory. In a grid, with blank...

It has been a long time since I played my game Shataka Shataka is a number game which all brainy geeks will love. Aim of the game is to place numbers in cells like sudoku. But the difference is you need to place the numbers in such a way that the total of a row and total of a column is 100. Here is an example. In this image, first column needs one number. Can it be 2? It can not be. Because then the sum will be 61. Not 100. Can it be 9? No. The correct number in first cell is 41. This completes first column. 41, 23, 36. The total is 100 For first row, now we have 41 and 43. To complete 100, we need 100 - 41 - 43 which will be 16. So we drag and drop 16 in first row second column. You continue this way until all cells are filled. Currently I am at level 20. Ha. In this level, the total of rows and columns should be 1000 instead of 100. Way to go, genius!! You can download the shataka app here  .

Morning, I tried continuing the binary tree deletion program. I wrote some code and gcc-ed it and executed it. To get segmentation fault. I got up and went straight to kitchen, telling myself "I do not have time for segmentation faults now". Of course, I do not have time for segmentation faults, but I have time for googling for funny quotes to be set as my whatsapp dp. I have time to watch "Friends" millionth time. And I have time to sit and ruminate past, present and future bad scenarios. And my spouse will be wishing me more segmentation faults so that I will spend some time in the kitchen. On a relevant topic, segmentation fault is renamed as null pointer exception in Java. And we get these a lot. So much so that, after I make any small changes to my android program and I run it, and I do not get null pointer exception, I start searching on my desk. Where did NPE go? I relish these errors. I savor them. Because, unlike in C, where program crashes wi...

In the 2011 movie "The Help" about racial abuse in 1960's , a nanny tells a white child whom she is looking after. "you is kind, you is smart, you is important" and the child repeats after her. And she teaches this fact to the child each and every day. We never had such a nanny. So we never learnt this fact that we are smart and we are important. It is never too late. We can use this very good self affirmation each day. Because if some one praises you, you feel happy. Why can't that some one be yourself?

The map above is by an website called geostata.com. It shows world population without showing country borders. Ha. We are blue! Clap clap clap - thumbs up. We stand out along with china is very densely populated country. But there is another map, we need to be really proud of. (But we are proud of everything.) That is the number of billionaires in the country. This map below shows the population of billionaires in different countries. I was surprised to know that  there are only 1810 billionaires in the world   India has 84 billionaires according to an article in Forbes magazine. And the richest person in India is Mukesh Ambani. According to that article, in this list of 25 countries having highest number of billionaires, India is in 4th position, preceded only by Germany, China and US of A.

This is not posted because it is a professional quality photo. It is not even my   good photo in my own diy standard. It is posted because, it is a magic or a mystery! You see the shadow of a lamp (deepa) here. But I do not have such a deepa with long stand in my puja room. It took me a while to realize that the shadow is that of etched picture on the glass door of puja room.