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    You sure are interesting, little ants, crawling around on a largely uninteresting little sphere you honestly believe you control. You do not understand the wonder that surrounds you in this vast Universe, but each and every one of you believes you are the center of it. Most of the time, your tiny tragedies and victories are the only thing that matters. You rush around, acting all serious and important, as though your next wrong step could cause all of existence to collapse around you.</span>
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    <span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"><a href="http://blog.sesock.com/archives/2004/01/30/a-love-song-for-humanity/">Read on</a> &#8230;</span>
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    <span><span><span><span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Reminded me of the famous Smith&#8217;s dialogue from Matrix. I could have repeated that dialogue without referring to it. Its so burnt into my mind for reasons i consciously do not know ! Anyway, here is the beauty for your pleasure.</p> 
    
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        From Matrix : Agent Smith to Morpheus &#8211;
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        I&#8217;d like to share a&#8230; revelation I had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to&#8230; classify your species. I realized that you&#8217;re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but&#8230; you humans do not. You move to an area&#8230; and you multiply and multiply&#8230; until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to.. spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Humans beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet&#8230; and we&#8230; are the cure.
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Well finally, after a long time, my .NET blog over at Dotnetjunkies is back up with an updated version of .TEXT. Not that i would have blogged non-stop with all the work i’ve been having all this time but right now, it really does make sense for me to blog again on some programming tips and tricks.

My bright side of my research, apart from the beautiful physics behind it all, is that it involves loads of programming. And i just recently decided to shift from MATLAB to .NET to get my research going. One of the main reasons behind that decision was ‘Speed’ ! Before you start shouting at me, yes, C++ would have been a more viable option, considering that i have lots of computation involving Matrices and Vectors but my benchmarks with some basic ported code from MATLAB did prove that the speed of C#.NET is good enough for now. I do not think that once the IL is converted into native image, with all the code and compiler optimizations inserted in at the right places, there will be a great difference in performance between C++ and C#.

So coming back to my point, i have learnt lots of algorithms, tips and bumped into some great software on the way while doing my research and believe that i can start writing again on my blog. Eventhough there were butt loads of comment spam before, i guess that the new version has a control over that and would now be a better place to write my programming experience from now on.

So watch out soon for my .NET post after almost exactly a year of hiatus.

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  <span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Phase 1 in my research is complete and i am probably way ahead than the rest of my class-mates in terms of amount of completion. But Phase 2 is a monster on which i am working on currently. It hogs all the time i have. The physics, the math, the software design and the actual coding in both MATLAB and .NET is making me bonkers. Dell was truly a paradise with lots of time to read but ironically, i might have caught up in pace with all the technological advancements i missed out in the past one year by reading blogs, articles and stories, news on .NET and general programming. I am in the process of designing my software code for the computational model and i can clearly see that the old tricks are still in the bag ! Wonderful. </span>
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<p align="justify">
  <span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">My PhD qualifiers are coming up this september and haven&#8217;t even started preparing for the behemoth. I am scared to my bones even thinking about it. I have to clear the qualifer this time, no matter what. Amidst all the chaos that is happening right now, i still need to squeeze in more time for the preparation. Oh well. Another challenge coming up. Need to get more coffee from the grocery store.</span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></p> 
  
  <p>
    The other day, I saw a bunch of Indian guys playing cricket on a nearby field. Fragile as i am, the feeling more intensified with the monotony, with strong desires to play, i walked away. Ironic. Confusing. But that&#8217;s how weird my mind is working these days. So then, i forced myself to play soccer at the recreation center and midway through the game i realized that i had no stamina left to run anymore. I had to bail out and watch the rest of the match from the stands. It was worse than pathetic. At the end of it all, there is just one conclusion. I need to take more time out and play something daily or am not gonna last my target of sweet 32, no matter what 😉
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  <p>
    And oh yeah. Forgot my other recent addiction these days. &#8220;Unreal Tournament&#8221;. I remember back in those good old college days, when night out was just another regular day in &#8216;Octagon&#8217; &#8211; the computer lab, playing Unreal on the network with an alias &#8220;HellRaiser&#8221;. That sure as hell was fun 😉 Now, after almost 4 years, the memory haunts and the mind fell for it. So i installed Unreal and started playing online, using my unlimited DSL connection, and life has taken a twisted turn.
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    Sleep which i once so dearly loved, for which i bunked so many classes in college, so many morning hours with meetings in Dell, has become just another triviality. I don&#8217;t have to go to my office daily, and i do most of my work at home. But i still don&#8217;t have enough time to do lots of stuff i have wanted to do. It ain&#8217;t stress management or work management. That&#8217;s bull given by managers in a Dilbertish environment. There simply isn&#8217;t enough time ! Does anyone understand that ? Again. I ain&#8217;t cribbing my ass off here. That&#8217;s not the point. The fact i am pointing out is that either there simply isn&#8217;t enough time to go around in a day or i am surely becoming slower at what i do best. God i hope it&#8217;s the first one. Or maybe i just need more sleep.</span>
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You have to see it to believe it. This is so amazing. I can actually see an aerial view of the exact place I live, in College station using Google Maps. So all my friends who are still wondering on what kind of a village i’m living in, here is something that’ll feast your eye.

Check out this link to get a real time look at the place. You can move around, check the map or the satellite feed and can zoom out and see where it fits in the bigger picture. Definitely lot of fun to waste my time this way in between breaks.

Saw this comment on /. recently about Microsoft’s Personnel Puzzle. Although i would’ve commented strongly against whoever wrote that, it seemed really funny at the moment !

Here it is. No offense B-Gates !

Hey hey, Microsoft’s great,
They forcefeed bullshit onto your plate.
You’ll be working for Gates, that iconic dude,
Crooked marketer through and through!

Oh oh, you better watch out,
Someone installed IE, so don’t you pout.You’ve got a job with this mega-firm,
We’re spyware enablers from stem to stern!

Hey ho, heed our call,
And then we’ll have you by the balls.
Write some shit, there’s no remorse,
So long as you attack Open Source!

Yay yah, Microsoft’s great!
Come on in, let’s have a taste,
Now’s the time, no time to wait,
Time to bend over and take it for Gates !

Finally, after a long wait, i decided to get a new phone. I still do not know why i waited so long.

The Audiovox SMT5600 Tri-band GSM Smartphone arrived by mail yesterday and is active and rocking ! The features in this phone are great and it kinda eliminates a need for a new mp3 player for now. Its got a built-in 32 mb memory (not much, i know) which can store videos, songs, pictures and docs ! There is also a SD card slot to upgrade the memory, if i want to ! And you know what’s great even more ?? Its freakin free with the service ! Cingular 450 daytime min with rollback and a free phone. Neat huh ?!

It works great but hasn’t changed my life much. Before i start cribbing more, here is how it looks.

So if you are someone I know, and if you dont have my number, drop me a mail.

Just stuff i’ve been reading through in between my code runs. Makes some interesting read. Here are some of them.

• A neat site with lots of links and lots of junk news and trivia. Nice site to spend some time.
• Live, Jobs Tells Stanford Grads – I’ve seen a similar talk of his before but this one makes me think that he’s going nuts. Well but thats just me !
• Jackie and the Brain – A neat story about the evolution of an AI being !
• Who Will Google Buy Next? – If you are one of those people who love Google and are interested in what they are going to do next, then check this story. Nevertheless, it gives you lots of links to many other interesting services, free and paid which could be very helpful.
• ScienceMatters@Berkeley, June issue – Not much but if you are scientifically motivated, then watch the issues regularly. The boys at the Big school do post some nice research material here.
• The Simnuke project – Sheer craziness if you ask me but oh well, who isn’t ???
• Why We Need Friendly AI – Nice site with all the Asimov laws. Frankly, i’ve got to confess that i was blown away by the book(I Robot) and there are some other interesting perspectives in this site which are weirdly cool !
• Toll Free 800 Directory provides information about 1-800 numbers, reverse lookup and tracing 1 800 numbers – Well if you are stuck in the US, like I am, this could be a handy reference at times you never expect !
• Cool Fractals @ freaky-fractals.com – Its all about Fractals. I’ve always loved the idea behind them. Nice site.

This is a complete marking of all the states that I visited in India till date. I wish there were no white states and that I had seen them all. But oh well, time is a rare commodity. Anyway here goes..

Check out this cool site to generate a map of your own.