Potpourri

I recently got a critic that my blog has become a movie blog. And I have taken it very very seriously. Aa ha!! And as you would see, I will henceforth make sure such comments never come this blog's way. Far from it!!.. So question is, its like a survey, what among the following can make maximum impact on your life, your way of thinking and your perception of the world: books, movies, interactions and social life, loss or gain of a relations, news papers, teachers, schooling and bringing up (parents and family etc), music, profession... The impact each of them can create, does change with the age. At 16 probably what changed your personality may be far different from what can make you think now. There are more things one can list down here. But above could be few things that have made impact on me. But above mentioned things are really a mixed bag. And I give a clear preferance to few over the others in the following sense: It could be very natural that, the things that happen sp...

when i was a little kid the chocolate bunglow i had build and stoll near it a little pretty garden a bed of roses and the toffies in the carton.. i thought thats all there is to it and thats all there would be.... how was i to know this is where i will end up and this is where i shall be.... all the pain and all the sadness seems so much away from the real... wish the life as a kid.. would last me longer than myself... lovelessness....lifelessness.... the walk of things the change of course.... the emptiness and the laugh... the clarity and the pain.... there is no end to diversion in the past... it totally leaves me aghast...

Instead of writing about a movie, here is a small movie puzzle for horror movie lovers: Hope you like it!!

Well, basically this Friday I saw movies instead of writing about them. So here is a movie for you: Its Hollywood version is called Vanilla Sky. But the version I saw was a Spanish one with English subtitles. Its called "Open your eyes" or "Abre los ojos. " Its a Sci-fi movie, if you wish to call it so. But among the good ones. So the story line is: There is a guy, about 25 years old. He is handsome and he is quite proud of the fact. But an accident disfigures his face completely. The movie is about the drama that follows. The narration of the story is very intriguing (gets 9/10). It repeated switches between dreams and real life. Finally to an extent that its really hard to tell one from the other. I will avoid spoilers as far as possible. But in the most abstract sense, the theme is about, how even after having given free hand to choose any parameters of life, human beings end up choosing misery and create a cloud of sadness, a hell, around themselves. How can I n...

day passes by and another starts i get up from the bed and it feels like yesterday i see a fan rotating and seems like i am looking at myself... as if i am not there and i am also there.... people walking up and down... but where am i to go am i following myself or i hear somebody else's foot steps... i hate to walk along.... but lethargy takes over... doing anything else will need more work than just going on walking forever..... a day comes and a day passes by.... and see myself standing outside.....

Ok, here is a romantic comedy for you. Good part about it is, its available on Google Video . So all of you can watch it for fun(and free;). Its a movie made as an experiment. And I feel for a small scale, low budget movie, its pretty good. The story is really simple: a boy and a girl next door- kind of thing. The boy is a underconfident fellow who has serious problems about talking to girls. Fortunately/unfortunately for him, he has couple of crazy friends who try to help him. If the story doesn't attract you, it may be because I am not jazzing it up or that story is really this much. However, if you wish to sit back and enjoy and don't mind romantic nonsense, go for it. Its short, about 50 minutes and has pretty good sound track. All bands are small and need to be promoted. Also sketches are used in an innovative way in the movie. The movie is made by John Gibson and he urges you to write to him your replies at john.gibson@gmail.com. Oh! by the way, name of the movie is: Ever...

Another friday going past me. Writing about movies is what I should be doing as promised. But, but... Don't feel like it. May be I could mention a good movie. But whats it worth, if I don't say anything about it. Well, everything about the movies could be read from IMDB anyways. Well, then whats it worth starting a friday for movies session?... Well, I am going back to "whats the use" mode. But that way, whats what any use. Ok, so here is movie: Its called Junebug. Its a independent movie. Its a very well shot, really understated movie. Its about a typical family from southern USA. Attepmt of a son and his wife to get closer to his family and a failure at it. Pretty well made. Music is by Yo la Tengo , they make really good music. They are quiet popular in the independent music world. You could listen to lots of their song on Hype Machine . Go listen and go watch... !

I will try to start a Friday for movies session. I am not sure how much it will run, given that in this city hardly any new movies are released 2-3 months after the world releases. Anyhow, I will keep to old as well as new movies for this session to run a bit longer than my enthusiam. So let me start with a movie called "The saddest music in the world". The movie released in 2003. The original screenplay is by the Japanese author Kuzao Ishiguro. (Author of Remains of the day.) It is set in Canada, at the time of the American Great Depression. A leg-less business woman, having business of beer, arranges a international contest of saddest music. Many countries are encouraged to participate in the contest and to perform a music piece. This is a great business move for her, because in middle of depression, when everybody is suffering, the saddest song contest wins her a great business. Many people come to watch the contest and ofcourse buy her beer. She announces at the beginnin...

I had started writing about Arvind's class that I am attending this semester. Well, I hardly said anything about it. But let me reopen the topic. We are almost 3 months down the course and arvind covered a good number of topics. In error correcting codes he discussed about Varshamov's bound, Reed-solomon codes, concatenated codes, Justesen codes and decodings of these. As he kept reminding, the theory of error correcting codes has proved very useful for complexity theory. He proved the Impagliazzo-Wigderson '97, theorem as a corollary to the theory built here. He introduced list-decoding of Reed-Solomon codes and proved Madhusudan '97 theorem (if it can be called that) using this technique. With these two applications of error correcting codes to complexity theory, he moved on to the extractors. To motivate extractors: Think of a random algorithm A. Say on input x, of length n, it makes r random coin tosses. Say A gives a correct value with probability greater than two-...

Web draft of new book on complexity by Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak is available here .

I saw recently a silent movie. It is called, "Film". And its about a man who is trying to get away from all the eyes. Eyes of everybody and then he realises that how much ever he tries he can not escape his own eyes. Reminds me of Cypher as a counter example. A man who has understood something about oneself and the world. But the unbearable reality doesn't suit him. He doesn't mind hiding away from one's own eye and live, go on living. I wonder how Cypher (in the movie matrix) would have evolved if he went back to Matrix. Knowing all along that its a lie. Reminds me of another phenomenal movie called "Fight Club". Where the main character goes into a dream and he keeps getting reminded that "its a lie". The more he realises this, more he wants to fabricate lies around himself. Takes me to the point of undoing, rather a convenient undoing, of knowledge. The knowledge about self or the world almost always is unbearable. To realise one has failed ...

Things falling at place, really reminds me of one line V says in the movie V for Vendetta: "There are no coincidences, only an illusion of coincidences." I stumbled upon a fantastic music blog called everybodycares.blogspot.com. Do visit it and check out the great music posted every day here. That was around January '06. At that point, I discovered the whole world of music blogs, however, this was the only one which I kept visiting the most. And I still do. At that point, the "About me" part of the blog read as follows: " After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." Aldous Huxley , Music at Night and Other Essays. I felt it suited his blog. Recently the About me section changed to a quote from a movie called Joe Vs. The Volcano. I got curious about the movie and read about it on imdb . Today I watched the movie and realised the picture on the blog is also a scene from ...

This semester, Prof. Arvind is offering a lecture series on the issues related to randomness and hardness, extractors, expanders and error correcting codes. Last 5 lectures he has been talking about randomness and hardness. For the first time I have had such a great introduction to the topic. I shall now write a small summary of few issues discussed during these lectures. But only techinical issues are infact from the lecture. All the other junk is self cooked, so please excuse Arvind if any errors below. First of all why should one try to relate randomness and hardness? Lets eavesdrop on the following conversation. A: You are always doing something unexpected B: Why what happened...? A: I mean, "knowing you so long" I felt you would have said 'yes' to join for picnic...but you are "truly random" B: truly random?? A: yes, very very "hard" for me to predict.. As is evident, 'random' and 'hard to predict' are almost synonymous phrases...

Wachowski brothers never say anything for the heck of it. They say something only when they have some concrete thoughts. Its amazing how they can bring in entertainment and philosophy together. In this god forsaken city-Chennai- the movie never showed in the theatre. But I got my hand on it, and that was it. I loved the movie. The movie gives us another way to look at terror, and the government. Few days back there was terrifying incident of blasts in Mumbai. Two days back, there was news about explosives found in the air planes at london. The war in Isarael is being covered by the media. What you and I hear are the reports from the media. The 'truth' they say is covered. However, we all know what we hear is not simply the truth but the interpretation of truths. If today's government wants us to know that blasts happened and certain community was involved in it, we will definitely get to hear that from the media. Where as, if government didn't wish to tell us, media wil...

Following are some really important things my friends have told me. Some of them I agree (a) with some I disagree(d) with and some I fail to grasp(?). Thoughts follow a train ..one links the other.(d) Tomorrow is a dillusion one lives today with.(a) Though our current knowledge may be insufficient to understand the reasons behind our actions, there is always a reason. (d) Most of the people are dead. (?) There is no global meaning to things. There is supposed to be no meaning.(a) There has to be orientation to achieve anything in life. (d) Trying to say that- inspite of complete knowledge one can't deduce everything- is like not believing in science. (D) There are greater causes, one just finds them. If you haven't yet, you may. (d) Being hopeful is delaying torment. (?) Many great artists were schizophrenic. (?) My blog sucks. (?)

My finest discovery on the web: Hype Machine You all are welcome!

there is a very dark room.. with a small hole in the door really thick walls and with a wooden floor i didn't know about this room for a long long time ingorant of its existance i lived a 'quiet' life... but one day i did see the room... put the ear too close to the walls i hear voices some really funny calls peep into the hole i see a small figure i wonder who that is but just can't see her she must be calling me trying to tell me... but what did she just say 'you ain't what you think you are'! may be she is crazy... let me ignore... she is the one who's trapped... i am free to go anywhere coming in contact with her is very agitating... she seems to talk to herself.. but she knows all about me... trapped inside a small dark room she claims to make me free i try to ignore her.... revert my route how i fail, in the 'quiet' life's pursuit... she tells me i could go back... ignoring her forever... i am free to "choose", however..... sh...

room said to a vent good you are there vent said, you give me reason... room always wanted things to flow in vent knew that its good at absorbing incompatible together incomplete without each other

There was a movie called Office Space. Quiet a nice movie where there is a funny character. He has an idea for making million dollars. He says he would sell a mat which will have various "conclusions" written on it and when spread out on the ground people could jump to conclusions! Though literal jump like this to conclusions may not be too harmful, in true sense a jump to conclusions (even well-thought conclusions) might really shake the grounds. What I wish to say is the following: Today whatever I stand by, I find it wrong tomorrow. This transition may seem extremely absurd. To reason it out may be impossible. The more I feel strongly today, the more I am likely to suffer a disillusion as nothing really is a absolute truth or otherwise, nothing really is absolutely right or wrong. When today I beleive that I stand by something it just means that I assert certain things to be true/right/justified/appropriate. But what if nothing is really true/right/justified/appropriate? ...

I -a(the) big(gest) fan of Aamir Khan - watch each of the Aamir movie in the theatre since I have started getting pocket money/ some form of income. I remember the time when I was going to see Sarfarosh in the theatre and everybody had warned me against it being bad. And I was so thrilled to see Aamir in wonderfully made movie. Then I got bold, and decided to see even Mela on the big screen. Went for first day first show!!! And it was a great disaster. I can recollect clearly where, with whom all, when, how many times I went to see each of his movie on the big screen. Ok before I get carried away, lets cut the scene there and cut to right now. Fine. When Fanaa released I was traveling from Bombay to Chennai. Oh ok, lets cut it even shorter. Great! I said here I come Aamir and went to Sathyam theatre to watch Fanaa. Snow Fall. Well, thats how the titles start coming on screen. Aamir Khan's name on screen. I started whistling. Not loud enough for Aamir to hear, but anyways. Well well...