just another day

the most difficult part in writing a blog is trying to remember the day's events. i dont mean to say in minute detail. the poignant moments, the nice thoughts, the birlliant ideas, etc., are crowded out by the present. the currents of thought and time are ethereal. and that is after making an effort.

all i can remember from today is a girl sitting on the opposite bench from me in the bus. she was smiling to herself. and i remember wondering what she was smiling about. the other thing i remember is seeing a bare bones tree right in front of a lush one, and wondering how quaint life can be. of course i remember the tardy interview for a GA post on campus. didn't go very well and needless to say i didn't get the job. i remember rushing around madly trying to find a few quarters to take a printout of my resume in the library, and my subsequent frustation at not finding any. i remember standing at the bus stop pacing impatiently for the bus. i remember feeling very lonely at the time. i remember eating lunch while watching a movie. i remember feeling sad even though it is a weekend. i remember sitting in front of the computer staring idly at the screen for quite some time.

but for the life of me i cant seem to remember my feelings at these points in time. not as lucidly as i did when i felt these moments. the mirth of the trees, the mysterious wondering about the girl's smile, the hunger, the sadness, the impatience; i do remember all that. but nothing besides a memory. are we, or rather i, given to emote in the present only? what is it that takes away the capability to empathise with our memories?

this leads to something much more significant. am i given to be a singularity of the present, and not a sum total of my past?

i dont see any answers for now. maybe these are questions better left for another day.

but what?

sitting here in my room on an idle thursday evening i just realised that all my posts, all my thoughts, must certainly mean something. but what? there must be something beyong existentialism. but what? i have a recurrent dream in which an endless stream of blocks that take the shape of "b u t w h a t ?" run past me. they have legs and eyes too. they stare at me as if from an infinite coldness. and no matter how fast i run, i can never catch up with them. its worse than counting sheep believe me. ok i hear my friend shouting from the other room, "so what?"

i think i'll follow that up with a cold bath.

Word-O-Matic

life just has a way of putting words in their right places. things just fit... words just click. i dont think people use words; words use them. we dont choose to use the words. words choose to fit the situations and thoughts of people. wrapping themselves around our tongue ever so seductively, enticing the sounds of disaster from our mouths. the words of men are the vain arrows of cupid alike... not knowing who they hit and how their life changes in the aftermath.

unrealized unuttered thoughts rush through our minds. thoughts, ideas and judgements shaping themselves around the people who live inside. daily apocalypses running in our heads. we have all been judged and condemned. and thus the chosen have spoken.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind

i saw eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. a delightfully endearing film to those who have seen it, and a delightfully endearing film to those who havent.

for those who havent, i found 2 quotes quite interesting and contemplative that i would like to share with all:

1. "Blessed are the forgetful; for they get the better even of their blunders."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

2. "How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd"
- Alexander Pope (poem written by him named "Eloisa to Abelard")

and now i will go and spend some time thinking up ways to think about these quotes so that they dont affect me for the rest of my life. dont want the aphorisms of great men echoing through the bylanes of my life and times.

ciao.

back in black

went on a trip to India. this trip was hugely educational. or maybe i had my mind closed the last time, and all the time i lived in desh. anyhow, i wouldnt really know the difference.

the roads that lead to nowhere are often the ones that one can enjoy without the knowledge of an end, of a gain. and nowhere, i found out, is a pretty good place to hang out in.

i will summarise my short philosophical lesson with these famous words from a book thats so weird that it says "dont panic" on the front cover; "You live and learn. At any rate, you live."

please spend some precious and invaluable moments of your limited time to ponder over this piece of profound inanity(?). i would be hugely disappointed if i dont at least have your mom shout at you for wasting time over worthless pursuits, or your dad wondering yet again if you will amount to anything.

ciao for now. keep on rockin in the free world.

Canesta Equinox 3-D Sensor

Canesta has announced a new 3-D image sensor that could have applications in machine vision and robotics. What's it do? According to Canesta, the Equinox chip resolves a scene into pixels, as does an ordinary camera chip, but instead of simply providing the brightness of each pixel, Equinox additionally provides the distance from each picture element to the sensor chip. On the downside, the device only provides a 64x64 pixel image and only MS-based, proprietary development software is available at present. Canesta claims it will be a "low-cost" sensor but there's no word yet on a price. At present the sensor is only available as part of a development kit for $7,500. For more technical details, see the developement platform data sheet (PDF format). You can also read more about the sensor in CNET and EE Times articles.

Ingres Million Dollar Challenge, Technology Solutions

Ingres Million Dollar Challenge, Technology Solutions

CA is offering cash awards with a total purse of $1 million to the members of the open source community that develop applications to convert, transform and migrate data from the selected databases to the Ingres database. Applications will be reviewed and selected by a panel of judges from CA and the open source community, and the winners will be announced during caworldsm 2005 in Orlando, Florida.

(ed: wanna be a millionaire? can it be done? wat the hell r they talking abt?)

Amplified Intelligence

Amplified Intelligence

A new Astrobiology Magazine interview with Ken Ford of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition discusses robotics, AI, and whether better machines will make humans smarter or just more dependent on the machines. Researchers at the institute think of AI as a computational prosthesis for the human brain that could extend our intellectual capacities in the same way eyeglasses extend our visual capacity.

storm in a nutshell

the storm did come... virile and torrentious rains screamed down with reckless abandon on the rooftop of our car. heaven and hell were belting it out in another dimension... and the grass was suffering down below. the road snaked away into the unseen horizon in front of us. the miles rolled away beneath the newly shod car. weeping is such sweet sorrow.

awe inspiring lightining. and benjamin franklin turning in his grave. arcs of photons racing through the sky, charged up with the emotions of billions upon billions of bio mass on this 3rd rock from the Sol. does my chair think? does my table dream?

unrated thots pass through my mind... flickering and wavering. time spent in the grocery store, flitting from here to there, sitting, standing, walking, staring. a nod and swipe of a credit card. a push and roll of the shopping cart. a step and a swing of the doors. a glance and a storm. a butterfly flaps its wings and a string of random prime numbers click their way thru infinity. a passing car splashes muddy water into my face. blink. gone.

yes, a storm did come.

Phil, Sophie, and other short stories...

there was a lil boy once, named phil. he was a melancholic boy. given over to malaise. one dat wuld generally be called in popular terms as a "lost cause". he would spend days brooding over nothingness. a brown study enveloped him.
then there was a lil gurl called sophie. bubbly, cheerful, frothing over with the ingredients of a joyous broth. a perfect caricature of joi de vivre. they used to go to the same school.
their teachers name was life. calm and serene; she was the embodiment of tranquility and peace. she was a silent observer of phil n sophie; their guide and mentor. she would often wonder about the world divide between phil and sophie. she befriended the two. she would sit for hours and talk about wat she was all about.
(directors input: cut to 20 years in the future) phil and sophie have grown up. both have matured... or at least tried to. but life never did change. age had not touched her. the passing years had not blemished her countenance. the vagaries of existence had not disturbed her composure. she showed them a glass.. the prism of life. light culd change its appearance depending on which end you looked at. it could at once be holistic... or defracted. but in any form... it was beautiful. phil and sophie heard all this and went back to their own worlds.

moral of the story: i dont know wat philosophy is all abt. i dont know wat crap i write. life is a stranger to me. and i totally believe in cogito ergo sum.