ramblings

• World Cup 2006
• Diary
• Idle thoughts of an extremely busy fellow

I am not quite sure what to put up in this page. I just left it for something I might have forgotten initially. Now that it exists, I guess I'll fill it up with something. This page was earlier titled "Across the pale parabola of Joy...". To those of you who are fans of Plum, that title may have given some idea as to the contents of this page, but then you would not have ventured beyond the title. Since you are reading this, I assume you haven't had the pleasure of reading "Leave it to Psmith". "Across the pale parabola of joy" is an anthology (Psmith would have said anathema) of poems by Ralston Mactodd, that Singer of the Saskatoon. In short it is grade A bilge from stern to stern. But that is not why I gave this page the title. I've decided to put up random thoughts and experiences of mine in this page. To the uninitiated mind this may be a trifle obscure or convoluted. But worth a casual read, I hope.

World Cup 2006

Statistics show that the number of goals per match ratio is the lowest but for Italia 90. However, the quality of matches was pretty good with some fluid attacking football. I watched many of the group matches and almost all the knockout matches.

My favourite team, Argentina, were a delight to watch. And they had some some really tough matches, with the Ivory Coast (tied for the unluckiest team with Ghana), Holland and Mexico. A dip in concentration after some dubious substitutions in the Ivory Coast game gave them an almighty scare. The Mexico match was one of the best in the tournament. Surprisingly, they stepped down a notch in the Germany game, and showed too much respect for the Germans, who returned the favour. Dubious substitutions, with one wasted on the injured goalie let in the Germans who equalised. The rest is history. Aimar or Messi ought to have been introduced. Argentina played the beautiful game but lack of steel and perhaps an over-reliance on Riquelme in the midfield did them in.

The Germans were lucky to get past Argentina. I was hoping Italy would have more steel in midfield (much less silk than Argentina). Surprisingly, they also seem to be playing one notch below the Germans. The first half was pretty good, but they led me to despair in the second half with hopeful long balls hoping to catch out the Germans. The defence didn't seem too well organised, but Cannavoro was magnificient and held it together. Thankfully, they stepped it up in extra-time and nicked it in the last moment, before having to hand it to the Germans on penalties.

Ballack, the diver, didn't have a good World cup, I think. Klose was much more impressive, dropping back to create chances.

Italy, I think, has the most complete team in the cup, lacking some brilliance in the midfield, which is solid with Gattuso, Pirlo and Totti. I think some 10 players scored the 11 goals for Italy. They also must have made history by making 3 attacking subs (Iaquinta, del Piero, and Gilardino - all strikers); must have been the fear of penalties.

England. I am wondering what I should do with the England T-shirt that I bought; wearing it in public is out of the question. I think England were lucky to be in the quarters, when teams like Ivory Coast, Holland, Mexico, Ghana and Spain went out before they did. Probably the worst team, save maybe for Ukraine. One of the easiest groups, and they made heavy weather out of it. Oh, but they topped the group and thats what matters. They'll surely step up a gear when required. Another simple step in the form of Ecuador who didn't show up (they played with no urgency or ambition). Next up, Portugal, who were not going to roll over and play dead. I was afraid that England might somehow score against a depleted team that was still feeling the after effects of that wrestling match with Holland. Fortunately, they didn't and didn't look like scoring. I think Portugal is a defensive team (4-5-1) with a good defence and not too good at breaking down good defences, especially the English defence which was the saving grace of the team. I think England would have come off worse if Deco was playing. As it was, Portugal would have preferred to play for a shoot-out.

So I'll throw in my opinion on England.

• Lack of strikers. Italy has 5 strikers besides Totti, Argentina has 5 besides Messi. England has 4, to quote Robbo: "a crock, a half-crock, a gentle giant and a schoolboy". One can only speculate the motivation for Sven's master plan, but to me, the words that spring to the mouth is "bizarre".
• Pick the big players and decide the strategy. Contrast with Argentina who left Messi, Aimar, and Tevez on the bench.

Diary

May 21, 2006

This has to be the most neglected page in the website as indicated by the date of the last blog entry. I should probably edit it ruthlessly, but am too lazy and this has historical value as the page that originally had the title now usurped by the website itself: Across the Pale Parabola of Joy.

Feb 23, 2001

Its been quite a while since I've touched anything on this website. I mean, i didn't even stop by to check if some pretty thing had scrawled some nice comments about this page. Not that many have done so. But I prefer to look at it as a half full cup. Coming back to the current scenario, Life is now a waiting game. I've applied to ten universities- now the ball is in their court. Fortunately, as far as things at work are concerned, I have no cause to complain. I'm studying and understanding communication systems. To be more precise, my current project involves error detection and correction- CRC, Convolutional codes, RCPC, Viterbi decoding, BCH and Golay codes. I've implemented most of them in C. What remains is to study the performance in a mobile environment. Very interesting stuff. I've always been fond of coding, and implementing the viterbi decoder in an efficient manner has been a challenge. While there is no need for haste on my part to complete this project, I'm unable to resist a compulsive obsession to head for the office everyday to work on the Convolutional encoder. The bottomline is I'm enjoying working on this project.

I had been to Goa a couple of weeks back along with my friends. It was a trip well timed but not perfectly executed. Plans do go awry, especially if they're executed by a bunch of lazy blighters, and it'll take some searching to find a bunch to beat us. Nevertheless we had some unforgettable moments which shall be planted in my memory and hopefully on the films that we had snapped- we are yet to develop them. But I fancy that we'll nurture a lasting regret that we were not able to do justice to the long stretches of golden, luxurious sand and surf of Goa in our itinerary. Those three days took us into a world quite different from the 10-9 sedentary job and brought a whiff of vitality into our physically dull lives. The twin high points of my physical life is a 4-km (each way) bicycle ride to the office. I'm raring to work out at the new gym coming up in the new corporate office in Domlur. I guess I had better stop here and get back to work. I've some catching up to do on the correspondence front too.

TOP

March 14, 2001.

I've been offered financial aid at the University of Maryland, College Park. Whew. Relief. (Not that I had received a string of rejects). Thinking of a Ph.D. - (at least) 5 years away from home...

April 8, 2001

On a flight to Japan. Can't believe this. I'm quitting the company in 3 months and they send me to Japan. Well, I foresee a busy 3 months ahead. Still, got to make good use of the opportunity. Next 3 weeks, that is.

April 26, 2001

I'm impressed. Leave alone the level of automation that these people have achieved, these people are incredibly courteous, helpful and polite. I can't imagine such a place in the chaos that is India. A very eventful, thought-provoking and enjoyable 3 weeks.

June 15, 2001

Got my visa stamped today. Don't foresee any more troubles ahead. Meanwhile am almost living in the office.

July 15, 2001

This is Life. Am comfortably ensconced in the easy chair with the idiot box prattling away a couple of feet in front of me, a cup of orange juice in my left hand and a UNIX book in my right. No, that isn't a typing mistake and I'm sober, it is a book on UNIX. I figure its high time I get an idea of this OS that everybody seems to hold in such high regard. I can move around UNIX but thats about it. Once the nibs start talking about daemons and exporting of displays and all that rot I'm quite at sea. I've been through half the book and already am a convert. (Hold on, thats not quite true. The convert part, I mean. While I have been quite comfortable in windows and DOS I'm hardly an ardent admirer of them. What I mean is, this is the first time I have thought of Linux as a viable alternative to an OS for my PC. Actually it won't take much to convert me).

April 11, 2003

Been a while since I've added anything to this page. I can't believe its been nearly two years since I came to this country. Life just seems to be whizzing past at a ferocious pace. This spring semester has not quite been what I expected it to be. I've just been moving from assignments in one course (CMSC 733) to another (ENEE739J). I haven't even been going to the CRC regularly. Well, these are essential courses for my research. Now that I'm done with my qualifiers, I need to start thinking about my Ph.D. proposal. Scary. I've been checking out some of these Image Understanding/ Multiple view geometry algorithms; the theory is fancy but the algorithms don't exactly give fabulous results on real images. Now, is that supposed to be encouraging or what?

TOP

idle thoughts of an extremely busy fellow

(my contribution to the Sasken Internal Newsletter)

[ Note: KPA - Key Performance Areas, linked to variable pay ]

To begin with, I'll clarify that I haven't completely read the book by Jerome K. Jerome- just some extracts here and there. I remember reading about it at school, and I have been, since, profoundly impressed with the title and by extension the book. "Here, finally, is someone who is on my wavelength", I remember saying to myself with elation. That was some years back. One of these days I'll read the complete book. Coming to the compelling events of today afternoon, I spied an email that appealed to all SASians to let their creative juices flow. "Grab a pen," it urged, "and let your creativity flow". Maybe it was the fact that the last essay I wrote was five years ago, maybe it was the creative streak in me, maybe it was because I had suffered some injury in my head, but the email had touched a spot in me. It had sparked off a burning desire deep within me to write an article. I was hooked. Caught up in the moment, I looked around my 4 by 4 cubicle for a pen with an emotion that was bordering on frenzy. The only two objects that came close to answering that description were a marker and a yellow sketch pen, neither suitable for the noble purpose I had in mind. Not one to be deterred so easily, and belonging to the computer age, I grabbed the next best thing- the keyboard. I don't type so fast, but at least my typing speed is in keeping with the speed at which I think. Having grabbed the keyboard with alacrity and enthusiasm, I realized the next step, viz., the part that mentions "creativity", sort of bunged a spanner in the works. In fact, it stopped me cold. "And thus", I thought with chagrin, "the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action". I put the keyboard down and assumed a sober, thoughtful posture (body language helps) and put in a bit of thinking as to the next step.

The mist cleared anon, and an image of a screen with instructions rose before me (in my minds eye). It listed three simple steps to writing an article.
- Think of an attractive title.
- Write an essay.
- Pull a few strings in the editorial team to get it published.

I perceived, with my usual keen intelligence, that the important points were one and three. As some wise guy said, "Well begun is half done". The title has to be something catchy, I decided. In other words it should grab one's attention. Keeping the attention is another issue, which can be taken care of later. It was then, in a moment of inspiration that can be described only as, er, momentous, that the title of this book by old Jerome struck me. If you remember it had had a profound effect on me. It ought to have a similar effect on other mortals, I reasoned, and pinched it without a second thought. I typed in the golden words with a flourish, sat back, and examined my work with not unwarranted smugness. It set the right tone, I thought. A nice blend: a spot of literature and a dash of suave self deprecating humour. The best part, of course, was that writing an essay with this title was going to be childishly simple. Having thus finished 40% of the work (as I saw it) in no time I took a break. A couple of emails, (containing directives about the KPA and KRA) and a cup of coffee later, I was back at my article. I re-read the title, gloated a little more and floated off into a reverie (in search of subject matter for my essay, of course). I must have spent some fifteen minutes in the stratosphere before a horrid thought brought me back to earth. There was a good chance that the boss was going to read this, and maybe it wasn't such a good idea to employ the adjective "idle" to describe myself. Suppose he didn't get the subtle humour of it all? I realized with a rude jolt that it was performance evaluation time. No, I decided with rising apprehension, "idle" must go. It was too risky - bound to put the wrong ideas in the boss's head. A catchy title to my essay was fine, as long as it didn't interfere with my variable pay. I crossed out "idle" and substituted the word "busy". The title wasn't so catchy now, but infinitely safer. Or was it? I went one step ahead and inserted "extremely" before "busy". Then I stepped back and critically examined the new title. It had lost some of its charm, but now.... It was original! That brought some cheer to me- now Jerome can't accuse me of having pinched it. "That's that with the title", I concluded, "Onto the body next!".

At that point I realized that writing this article was taking a heavy toll on my not inconsiderable mental resources and also that it was office hours. I looked around furtively to check if anybody had seen me employed in unofficial work. The coast was clear: the optimistic souls were probably watching India go down for the second time in the First Test against the Aussies at Wankhede. Nevertheless, I decided to postpone it to the evening and got down to work with my project. It is not everyday that I decide to write an article and thoughts of this article lingered in my mind throughout the length of the afternoon. On second thoughts, make that in the background recesses of my mind. I'd like to state, for the record, though it is perfectly obvious, and, I fancy, common knowledge, that I'm a conscientious person and during office hours only official thoughts occupy my mind. (That's the second close escape! This damn KPA-KRA-variable pay thing is stifling my creativity and interfering with the plot of my essay with frustrating regularity). That brings me back to the present. Its half past nine in the evening and I'm seated at my desk, listening to Nirvana Unplugged, after having jotted down my thoughts of this afternoon. Speaking of shifting the reference time frame from my school days to my thoughts this afternoon and then back to Now, I think that this flashback technique I've employed in this article is pretty effective, what? Nifty work, don't you think? Weaving back and forth between the past and present lends an element of style to the article, I convince myself. It has taken me some time to type all this and it suddenly occurs to me to check how many words I've typed. 1138 words, not including the title. My facial features, until now creased in thought, rearrange themselves into a look of relaxed contention. Not bad at all. In fact, I think that if I go on in this vein for some more time, the article will reach such proportions as to necessitate a supplementary newsletter. In the interests of space, I conclude that its time I started thinking about concluding my ramblings. Besides, I'm hungry.

In the words of Jerome K. Jerome, "There are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow-coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. He is not a man who slouches about with his hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most startling characteristic is that he is always intensely busy". As I read through my article, I'm delighted to discover that I've done precisely that. I've filled an article with absolutely nothing and it has taken me two hours of considerable activity to do it. What's more, nobody can argue that the title is not relevant to the body. I rest my case.

PS. For those who are offended by the sheer uselessness of this article, I've only one retort: when you read a magazine named "SIN" you are positively asking for it. For the kindred souls stirred by my profound article, do visit http://www.bralyn.net/etext/literature/jerome.k.jerome/jjidl10.txt . Its not blocked.... Oops!