Scorebook

It’s for keeping scores obviously. But right now, I’m talking about Sketchbook’s author’s one volume endeavour: Scorebook. A new scanlator has appeared and its 6^th chapter has been uploaded here.

There is nothing much to say about this chapter. A new ‘rude’ guy appears, who also wants to be a baseball team manager but there’s no actual game of baseball to be seen anywhere. That’s because it has been already established that the author doesn’t know any rules of baseball! HaHa... hahaha… *cough*

Anyway, I just wanted to post my (5^th) new sketch of one of the Sketchbook characters. This time it’s Nagisa Kurihara with her cute cat-mouth-smile:

This sketch has been the most easiest to draw. It still took more than an hour, though! But somewhy I didn’t use the usual ‘Natural Pencil’ drawing tool in MS Paint as it didn’t feel right; instead I used the ‘Brush’ tool. That’s why the lines are much darker than earlier sketches  (search for them if you like by clicking on the ‘Sketchbook’ label below) and so overall this sketch has a different feel to it. A warm & fluffy feeling! Basically, the word / phrase Minamo uses to describe Sora’s sketches in 8th episode of the Anime. I’m definitely not claiming to be as good as Sora… When you start feeling inferior to fictional characters, you know you’ve hit rock-bottom! Anyway, find the original photo

here to compare.

Physics & Lyrics

How many times have you read a poem (or listened to a song) about Scientific terms and concepts? Maybe 2 or 3 or for some, it may even be a negative number. So, this post is dedicated to making that number increase by 1.

You must know about Initial Value Problems (IVP) & Boundary Value Problems (BVP), right? You don’t? Ohh… then the following sher will define these for you:

वो अंजाम की इब्तिदा चाहता है
मैं आग़ाज़ का इर्तिक़ा चाहता हूँ

Wo anjaam ki ibtida chaahata hai
Main aagaaz ka irtika chaahata hun

(S)He wants the beginning of the end
I want an evolution of the beginning

-शीन काफ़ 'निज़ाम' (Sheen Kaaf ‘Nizaam’)

For Urdu-illiterate people like me, the main four words appearing in the above sher need to be translated to simpler terms, which I do now:

अंजाम = अन्त (End)
इब्तिदा = प्रारम्भ (Beginning)
आग़ाज़ = प्रारम्भ (Beginning)
इर्तिक़ा = विकास, प्रगति (Development, Progress)

Everything above in Hindi is reproduced from the following book, which has inspired a few posts (actually, this cover image should have already appeared in earlier ones!):

Now it should be obvious that those two lines define IVP & BVP. IVP is defined by the second line, which basically means give me the initial conditions of the system and I’ll predict what happens next or in passive voice: how does a system evolve given its starting configuration? That means BVP is defined by the first line, which tells you to give me the initial and final conditions and I’ll find a ‘path’ which connects those two or in passive voice: how does a system go from a given starting configuration to a given final configuration?

Isn’t the sher beautiful & profoundly deep? Wait… What? You want real, physical examples of such problems now? Oh come on, don’t ask a theoretical physicist for physical examples, I’m not a phenomenologist! Anyway, that was just a joke I’ve been trying to get out of my system for a long time. Then, let me give a very simple example… IVP: You earn X amount of money, so what will you do with it? BVP: You earn X amount of money per unit time and you want to buy something that costs Y(~3X), so how’ll you go about the purchase? Hope that helps!

The eternal question a human faces over the duration of his lifetime (or even after-lifetime) is “What does one want?”. And in my view, the following (un-translate-able) sher captures that emotion very well:

दुआ को उठा तो दिये हाथ लेकिन
ख़ुदा जाने क्या मांगना चाहता हूँ
-शीन काफ़ 'निज़ाम'

The answer simply is “Nobody knows!”. If someone wants to give the above Sher’s translation a try, be my guest and comment. I leave you with another beautiful Ghazal regarding

Love, Pain & the Likes

End of a Lifetime…

…or so it seems. Yes, the last chapter of volume 7 of Sketchbook has been finally scanlated and it is a collection of usual themes with Asakura-Sensei in focus.

We start with a thumbs-up by Asakura-Sensei and a panel with Sora about Imitation. Then we move on to Frugality of Hazuki (a typo on that page: ‘on’ → ‘one’), Strength of Asaka (Hilarious reaction of Kokage’s), Magic of Asakura-Sensei (& Kasugano-Sensei just being herself over 2½ pages), ‘Analytic abilities’ of Kate (with help from Juju, Nagisa, Negishi, Kokage & Natsumi over 1½ pages), Revelation of Negishi (that Asaka dislikes peas Spoiler Alert) and Ryou & Fuu being the ever-wonderful SuzuKaze Combo!

Since volume 8 will be released in Jan’12, it will most probably reach the scanlators in Feb’12 and they will probably start in March’12 to do their ‘job’ and if I’m lucky, we may be able to see the new chapter(s) in April’12… Wow, ≥5 months wait! Not that bad, considering there are authors who go on hiatus for months / years like Hayao Miyazaki did with his manga ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’! A personal translator would also be not that bad! Anyway, here’s the full chapter:

Sketchbook V7Ch101