Laptop..

Finally my laptop search has ended and I'm feeling lucky!

Details:

Levono G430 4152 B3Q
Specs:
Core 2 Duo
2gb RAM
250 gb hard disk
14.1" screen
camera, wifi, blue tooth, card reader, essential ports
1 year warranty

Cost: 34,000/-

The story:
D1 and D2 were the two dealers from whom I got quotations. D1 first told me 36,250/- for the same model. While D2 quoted 37,500. At the time I was looking at 3 other laptops. I kept away from the dealers after getting all the quotations to make up my mind about the model. After I finalised the model, I went back to D1, but D2 called to ask what I have been up to :). I told him that I have finalised the model, but I'll buy it from D1 because he quotes lesser price. D2 at this point made me an even lesser offer. Having informed D1 about this, even he quoted lower price. This finally came to an equilibrium. This was the situation about 5 days ago. The price I was going to pay was 35,500. I even went to D1 with a cheque book. Thankfully that day he didn't have the model I wanted.

This is when the second round of bargain started. D2 called again to ask whether now I am willing to buy the model from him. I clarified that I am getting the same thing for 35,500. Out of sheer desperation or I don't know what, he quoted 34,000 with a free mouse! I was stunned to hear this. 1,500.... I could easily upgrade my RAM to 4gb with this, I thought. I called up D1 and told him that I will buy the laptop from the other guy. And it happened all over again! This guy dropped the price to 34,000 with a free mouse!!! I decided to curb my greed and settle to this price. I paid the money and got it from D1.

This morning I got a call from D2 asking what I was going to do. I was rather apologetic and informed him that I have already paid. He tells me, "madam, you should have bought from me. The prices have gone down my 50 rs!" (I sure stopped at a good time. 50 rs, yeah well, keep it!)

The story has yet not ended though. I have paid by cheque and I won't get my laptop till the cheque realises. This post is from some other machine.
Very likely, the next post will be written from my own laptop. Yay, I own a laptop now. This is amazing!

Acknowledgements:

A big thanks to (in alphabetical order) Arpith, Neel, Padma, SPS a.k.a LKG, and UKG for helping me select the laptop. (And a few more who won't want their names put up on the web!)

The "What next...?" demon

What next?.... When I was a kid, I always thought that there is a certain age till when this question will bother me and after that, like for my parents, things will be in order. Life will fall into a routine and I will never again be confronted with this demon called "what next?". But turns out, for our generation, there is no point of rest. The demon is a part of our life like stability was for the generation before us. This realisation is also stale by now. In fact, it has been more than a few years since I even resigned to this way of life. The time period between such a realisation and resignation was hard, I must confess. But not anymore! The confrontations with this demon are a reassurance of life itself! (feels embarrassed after having said such things....)

My childish philosophies may be sounding hilarious to you (reader). (Thank me for the entertainment! You are welcome!)

What I wish to announce is: for a while, I do have an answer to one such "what next...?". I will be going to TIFR for my post-doc for the next academic year. I will be in Bombay (hurray) again. I will see the sunset again. I will travel by trains again. I will hang out in Colaba again. I'll eat homemade food again. (I mean, I have been doing this during last six years whenever I visited Bombay. But now I will do all of this much more often.) What bliss!

But may be I forgot to mention something....Did I mention that I have fallen for Chennai after all these years? Did I mention that I fear Bombay may have changed in six years? Did I mention that I am apprehensive about leaving MatSc which has been academically very fruitful? Did I mention that I am scared of starting a new phase of my life? Did I mention that there is still so much I haven't figured out about the days to come at Bombay? Did I mention that my lack of planning is making my parents perturbed? Did I mention that the demon fails to scare me but bothers my parents enormously? Did I mention that there is nothing I can to do to put them at ease? Did I forget to tell you that my apprehensions are not letting me enjoy my last few days at Chennai? Did I mention .....?

Looking for a perfect match

The task is a difficult one. Like I told you already, I am about to finish my PhD and now I will go to another stage of my life. This is when I need to make serious decisions and take charge of my life, so to say. People seem to perform this task of decision making much in private. But I am going to use this forum effectively to make certain important decisions of my life. It goes without saying, suggestions are most welcome. And more importantly, your views and opinions do carry a lot of weight and I am willing to listen to any suggestions, from anonymous or known readers.

Having said this, let me tell you my criteria.

1. cost: about 35,000/-
2. ram: 2 gb
3. hard disk space: about 200gb
4. dvd drive
5. weight: about 2 kg (lesser the better, but budget is also important)
6. support anywhere in India.
7. drivers readily available

My queries:

1. Is there any parameter I have forgotten to add?
2. Which company is better?
3. Do you know whether any offers for students are on?
4. Are there any useful links? (other than first 5-6 in Google when searched buying laptop etc)
   

In another month or so I will go buy my perfect match. Till then, I'll keep looking :)

Hats Puzzles

Recently, I have created a one hour talk about three puzzles and how they can be solved or understood using some concepts of computer science.
The title of the talk reads: Hats off to theoretical computer science.

Before starting the talk, I make a point to make the following disclaimer:

This is not a theoretical computer science propaganda talk. It is simply aiming to solve/understand solutions of three puzzles. The title is a bit catchy. But the "hats off" part of the title comes simply because all the puzzles are hats puzzles.

Here is the talk. (Special thanks to S. P. Suresh for introducing cool fonts.)
You may want to download and view it. Try solving the puzzles. Let me know if you find another approach to solve them.

The last puzzle alone can be material for a one hour talk. Here is a link available on Google for the last puzzle alone. What is amazing about these slides is, they have solved the last puzzle using Nim games. (google to find out what Nim games are). I haven't yet seen the solution. Lets see if we can figure this out.

A rant

हत्ती गेला अणि शेपूट राहीली.

(Translation: The elephant is gone only the tail is left.)
Almost five and half years of my Ph.D. are over. Just another few months before I finish. This is now the wrapping up time. Now I am almost done. But for this one last thing. Thesis typing!

And believe it or not, this seems to be the hardest part of my Ph.D. years. Mainly because it is boring. But also because it is always at the back of my mind. I wake up and and I am sipping a cup of coffee and there it is, the half finished chapter 3, standing in front of me and asking me why I slept off the previous night when it had been in a middle of a sentence. I am checking my email or writing the blog and it comes and taps on my shoulder and says, "time to get back buddy". It almost yells in my dreams "I need attention!" It's like a person in my life now. And no, I am not a schizophrenic. It is really there everywhere! You won't believe this, but I am literally sneaking out to write this rant. I am looking over my shoulders and I suspect I need to hurry up else I'll be caught whining about it behind its back!

This new attention seeking forced friend in my life is however failing miserably at getting me to do what it wants me to do. The more it asks for attention, the more I go out of my way to do to some other things. Recently, I have been engaging myself into a whole lot of activities. I have been sleeping like no man's business. I am watching movies, writing in my blog very often, cooking, learning an art form and what not. Just to escape the company of this relentless buddy. But ironically, the only way to get rid of this pal is to spend more time with it.

Is thesis typing as boring and as tiring for every one? Clearly, not. See for example this thesis (I have only read the non-technical parts). It has enthusiasm written all over it. How!?

I can rant forever, but at the fear of getting caught by my friend, I'll end my post here.

New blog

I came across a theory blog started by Lipton. Here is the link to the blog.

I found a pointer to one of the articles of this blog through Lance Fortnow's weblog.

In the first part of the post, Lipton mentions that the result regarding the closure under complement for space bounded classes was open for a really long time and the fact that people believed that it won't be true was one of the main reasons why it remained open. Lance in his post commented on Lipton's remarks about conventional wisdom regarding NP=P question.

But in any case, thanks to this discussion on the weblog, I got to see a nice informal description of Immerman and Szelepcsenyi's result (which is the second part of Lipton's post). The exposition is useful if you have already seen the result and the proof. It is explained assuming many things and hence it may not be a good read for someone reading the result for the first time.

I would like to stress the fact that the question was first raised for Linear Bounded Acceptors in order to understand closure under complement property of context-sensitive languages.

I do not understand one comment here:

"One interesting note is that for their counting method to work they do not need to get the sets exact cardinality. Even a coarse approximation would suffice. This suggests some ideas that might work in other contexts."

Can anyone help me?

Pune special

Every city has its own specialty. Pune is of course famous for its colleges, for its food and many more things. But undoubtedly, wacky notice boards give Pune its identity.

Here are a few gems (courtesy Amaresh) found in the by-lanes of Pune.

A lot (the tone and the attitude filled in these lines) is lost in translation:



The bungalow is empty. There is nothing worth stealing. Don't bother.












Outsiders are not allowed to use the lift. Society won't be responsible if they get stuck.















Do not stand or park under the coconut tree. If coconut falls, the owner (of the coconut tree) will not responsible for the damages.

















You will have to pay for asking the address.
If the place is within ten km, you will have to pay 50 paise. If more than ten km, then
you will have to pay Rs 1/-
-- Thank you.


(the second board-) If you ask "why have you written this?" then you will be charged Rs. 200/-

To those who can't read, the address will be told for free.











No one has been given the responsibility to paint the building. We request you to not take up the responsibility of painting the building with your spit.

-Thank You-