Algorithms, Algorithms, Everywhere…

One of my sisters/cousins sent a book to me this year during Dusshera, which is titled “Algorithms to Live by” by Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths. Its subtitle is “The Computer Science of Human Decisions”. I have now finished reading it, which made me think this can be another post for my blog and that’s why we are here.

You might be asking yourself what is this book about and should I get one too. I will answer both of your questions. The answer to the first question is what you might expect. This book discusses algorithms that may be useful during certain events in one’s life. The events can be anything from something special like going to a casino, to something mundane like sorting your book collection, to something regular like parking your vehicle, to something exciting like planning guest seating at your wedding, to something dumb like finding a life partner (or a secretary), to something as practical as scheduling your everyday tasks. The answer to the second question is why not! Here’s a quote from the book that recommends this decision:

We can hope to be fortunate – but we should strive to be wise.

What this seems to mean to me is that we may be fortunate in enjoying certain outcomes once in a while but being wise is something that will guide our approach that will (more or less) guarantee favourable outcomes regularly. This book will make you worldly-wise about which approach to take in various situations to maximize favourable outcomes. Fortune can come and go but wisdom, once acquired, is always there to guide. Through life and death. So it is time for

Your Wise Decision

The Colours Within

It is quite nice that Japanese animation movies are being released in India nowadays with increasing regularity. Last week, we went to watch a “musical” anime called “The Colors Within”. It was a simple slice of life anime with fun and funny elements all the way through. Three kids meet over their interest in music and form a band out of the blue and get an opportunity to perform at their school! That’s the simple plot of the movie and the music is quite catchy. Sakura & Snehil haven’t been able to shake it off yet. Specially the rhyming words used in one of the “rock-ing” songs: Amen & Sōmen!

Anyway, more than the music, I got interested in one of the philosophical discourse between the main character (one of the three kids) and her teacher about a prayer. The main character is shown a few times sitting in a church and reciting a prayer asking God to grant her “Serenity to accept things I can’t change”. In the last of such scenes, the teacher notices her and asks her why does she not recite the full prayer! The teacher then completes the prayer (rather the first stanza) with two more lines whose paraphrasing reads “Courage to change things I can” and “Wisdom to know the difference!”.

That third line makes all the difference in that prayer. I feel the first two lines may be used to justify any behaviour but the last one puts the onus back on oneself. Much like it’s my responsibility to complete the post quota on this blog and I have the wisdom to know that I have the courage to get that done.

One more month to go

Art & Craft

Apparently, my daughter’s English teacher has asked all her students to bring a mini dictionary to school. So, as any sensible father would do, I gave my daughter a dictionary from my own childhood. I had used it during my schooldays and is most definitely (at least) 25 years old. Its plastic cover has suffered a lot of wear and tear but its pages feel almost new. So nothing really hinders its usage.

  

She was all right with her new possession and started taking it to school after her Diwali holidays. She must have introduced it as her father’s and her “friends” must have made fun of that. Anyway, after a couple of days, I asked her if she was using it much during her classes and she said yes. But she also revealed that she found a small piece of paper with a sketch on it. She claimed it must be my work and her “friends” must have made fun of that too! I asked her to show it to me and here it is:

I don’t really remember drawing this sketch of a character from Dragon Ball Z. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a Namekian named Dende. But the background problem of Physics / Maths suggests it must be my handiwork! I am not known to have doodled in my classes but then there must have been some specially dull ones or free ones. Nice one, if I say so myself.

Happy Diwali

Till the bitter end…

As I wrote in this post, Sakura and I had planted 3 sunflower seeds. We were all excited when Sakura got a “grow your own sunflowers” kit as a gift. We opened it carefully, mixed soil & coco-peat pellets, filled this mixture into the included yellow container (which Sakura decorated creatively with stickers & stuff), and sowed the three seeds as instructed. We watered them regularly but only one of those seeds germinated. And after 6 weeks of taking care of it, we bid that sapling goodbye today. Here are some details about this sad journey.

Week 0 (20/07): We were eager to see the 3 seeds germinate into 3 little saplings. On the morning of 5th day (25/07), we witnessed one seed had broken through the soil cover and sprouted two leaves proudly standing nearly 2 cm tall. Sadly, the other two seeds never germinated. The rest of the story follows this single plant.

 

Week 1 (27/07): We watered regularly and by regularly I mean everyday, keeping the soil wet but not soggy as instructed. We kept the sapling in the sunshine during afternoons for nearly 3-4 hours daily. (We do not have a place that gets enough sunshine during the morning hours and which is suitable for keeping the plant too.) It sprouted two more leaves and had grown half an inch taller but I forgot to take a photo for this week to document its growth.

Week 2 (03/08): We continued to water the little sapling, keeping it in sunshine, etc. It had sprouted two more tiny leaves between the two newer leaves of the past week and had grown half an inch taller.

 

Week 3 (10/08): Very much like week 2. It had grown half an inch taller and the tiny leaves had become a bit more prominent. These were exciting times but we also started seeing the oldest two leaves turning yellowish. We were a bit disheartened and started wondering how to increase the sunlight hours or if decreasing the amount of water would help too.

 

Week 4 (17/08): We started watering it on alternate day as the soil was remaining wet longer and the weather was mostly cloudy. Sunshine hours had decreased drastically too! No new leaves sprouted and the older leaves started looking unwell too. This crashed our hopes of seeing the plant grow any further and even impossible to see any sunflowers blooming on this plant.

 

Week 5 (24/08): We kept up watering on alternate days and showing it the Sun whenever possible during the cloudy & rainy days of this week. The plant was definitely not doing well and we wondered what had gone wrong. Did the sand not have the right nutrients to start with? Were the seeds not good enough? Did we mess with the water? Or sunlight? We will never know the full answer.

 

Week 6 (31/08): Nothing much will happen regarding this plant now so here’s the log book which we kept during the last month or so.

In the aftermath, we have bought some indoor plants (Aglaonema Commutatum / Silver Queen), which apparently require no maintenance and need to be watered only once in 10 days. Let's see how these plants fare and whether we can see them around for long.

Get Your Own Plant

Snail as a Pet?

We noticed a small creature crawling away from the area where all the BigBasket delivered stuff had been present just a while ago. It was barely a centimeter in length and half of that in height. It was our first time seeing a snail this small! We placed it on a spinach leaf (which was one of the items just delivered) and moved it out to the balcony.

Snapped quite a few photos and a video. These were then edited to make 2 videos each via two video editors: GoPro’s Quik Video Editor (on my Nokia G60) and Microsoft’s Clipchamp (on my Surface Pro 7). Enjoy these videos and let me know which one(s) you liked the most!

   

Edited by Quik on NG60

   

Edited by Clipchamp on SP7

Snail

Encore! Encore!! Encore!!!

I wonder. I respect.

तुझे सोचें तो फिर सोते कहाँ हैं
हम इतने बे-अदब होते कहाँ हैं

Tujhe sochen to phir sote kahaan hain
Ham itne be-adab hote kahaan hain

Sleeping while thinking of you, never so
Am I being that discourteous, never so

बयाँ करते भी हैं तो दिल की हालत
ये आँसू आँख के होते कहाँ हैं

Bayaan karte bhi hain to dil ki haalat
Ye aansu aankh ke hote kahaan hain

They do describe but the state of the heart
Do these tears belong to the eyes, never so

बनाना पड़ते हैं हिम्मत से अपनी
सफर में रास्ते होते कहाँ हैं

Banaana padte hain himmat se apni
Safar mein raaste hote kahaan hain

Our own courage has made them possible
Else this journey and such roads, never so

तेरा होने का वादा कैसे कर लें
हम अपने ही कभी होते कहाँ हैं

Tera hone ka waada kaise karle
Ham apne hi kabhi hote kahaan hain

How do I promise of being yours
Have I ever been one’s, never so

–वसीम बरेलवी (Waseem Barelvi)

I’m speechless. I’m overwhelmed.

नहीं बदलेगा, बदला कुछ नहीं है
मचाओ शोर, होता कुछ नहीं है

Nahin badlega, badla kuch nahin hai
Machaao shor, hota kuch nahin hai

Won’t change, nothing has changed
Make noise, what’s done is nothing

मैं शर्मिंदा हूँ, आज अपने किए पर
मगर कल का भरोसा कुछ नहीं है

Main sharminda hun aaj apne kié par
Magar kal ka bharosa kuch nahin hai

I am ashamed for what I’ve done today
But what about tomorrow, it is nothing

उसी के पीछे पीछे दौड़ती है
जो दुनिया को समझता कुछ नहीं है

Usi ke peechhe peechhe dauDti hai
Jo duniya ko samajhta kuch nahin hai

It keeps running behind them
Who think the world is nothing

कनारे तक ही अंदेशे हैं सारे
उतर जाओ तो दरिया कुछ नहीं है

Kanaare tak hi andeshe hain saare
Utar jaao to dariya kuch nahin hai

All doubts come till the shore
Get in and the river is nothing

–वसीम बरेलवी (Waseem Barelvi)

I’m in tears. I’m in ecstasy.

Waseem Barelvi at Shabd 2024

How about the previous one?

Stories of Future

Future of Stories.

Stories of Past.

Past of Stories.

How do stories evolve?

Do they? or Are they always the same?

Who knows?

Otoyomegatari. Kaoru Mori.

Story of Brides. In Central Asia. Manga. Beautiful, Detailed Art.

You forget it’s a sketch. It feels so real. Such reality.

So deep. Such depth.

Maigret. Georges Simenon.

Rowan Atkinson. Michael Gambon. Bruno Cremer.

Suave. Patient. Borderline Comical.

The Secret Adversary. Partners in Crime. Agatha Christie.

Francesca Annis. James Warwick.

Crush. Envy.

Some of the recent “stories” I’ve read/seen with my superpartner.

Sakura has been reading some of the books in the Adventure Series by Enid Blyton.

She asked me today, "Can one be called brave if he picks up a snake whose mouth is sewn shut!?"

I just laughed. That was my answer. Did she understand? Or Did I not understand! Was she being rhetorical?

Fun Times. Funny Days.

She planted three sunflower seeds.

One germinated today. After 5 days.

Will we see them bloom someday?

We will have to wait and see.

Finally, the one story you have been waiting for

Every Part of You (nature.com)

Half-Year-End is Upon Us

Since the last post, a few interesting things have happened. And you guessed it: I will list them here and call it a post for the day month.

I have been constantly refining my program AcBook 9.0 over the last couple of months and the code has become more polished, less buggy, a little faster and most importantly, the program behaves as expected most of the times. Also, two more rows of the Widgets setting table are now properly working (which means the work on file data structure is more or less complete for that purpose). The last row still requires a bit more work and will (probably) be activated in the next proper version upgrade. For now the version number stays the same but the release number gets an extra letter, so something like “24B”. [Update(1/7/24): All rows of the Widgets settings table properly work in Release 24C without any proper version upgrade!] Listing out all the minor bugs & improvements & enhancements is not at all worthy of anyone’s time so let me stop here with this topic. Just one more thing: A demo video is now live on YouTube and you can view it in full glory on this webpage.

I saw for the first time a double rainbow in the sky with my own eyes! Well, not really… I noticed the secondary rainbow in the photo I took of the primary rainbow that I was delighted to see in the evening a few days ago. Here is the proof:

I visited the website Anubhuti after a long time! It publishes Hindi poems monthly now (back in the old days, they published weekly!) and the latest collection of poems is on the topic of “Summer”. I mostly read Ghazals which can be found under the section “अंजुमन (Anjuman)” and they didn’t disappoint, especially the last one by Vinita Tiwari. It felt nice… Enjoy!

I wrote a blog post on my ‘Physics blog’ last month about disappointments and failures. If you are interested in that sort of thing…

Here you go

Comeback?!

I haven’t written for a while and sometimes when you haven’t done the writing for a long time, it becomes difficult. It becomes difficult to write which reminds me of that episode from Sandman where authors keep the Greek Goddess in captivity for inspiration. Here in India, we pray, we pray that we can get inspired, we pray that we forever stay kind and be helpful to others, we pray that we do well and do the right things in life. On that note, I’m happy to announce that our little daughter who turned 6 in March started her classes last week after a 2-month long summer holiday and it was indeed Summer and hot in Bengaluru (more on Climate change and tips and tricks later). I will request Sakura to write 10 sentences of her time during the holidays and maybe that can be the next post from my side.

There is this song which I got reminded of again after a few years. “I want it that way” – a song from the legendary Backstreet Boys, which some of us played in a loop while growing up. It reminds me of good old times, reminds me of all the good memories with a dear friend whom I have lost along the way.

Yeah
You are my fire
The one desire
Believe when I say
I want it that way
But we are two worlds apart
Can't reach to your heart
When you say
That I want it that way
Tell me why Ain't nothin' but a heartache
Tell me why Ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why I never wanna hear you say
I want it that way
Am I your fire?
Your one desire
Yes, I know it's too late
But I want it that way
Tell me why Ain't nothin' but a heartache
Tell me why Ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why I never wanna hear you say
I want it that way
Now I can see that we've fallen apart
From the way that it used to be, yeah
No matter the distance, I want you to know
That deep down inside of me
You are my fire
The one desire
You are (you are, you are, you are)
Don't wanna hear you say Ain't nothin' but a heartache
Ain't nothin' but a mistake (don't wanna hear you say)
I never wanna hear you say (oh, yeah)
I want it that way
Tell me why Ain't nothin' but a heartache
Tell me why Ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why I never wanna hear you say (don't wanna hear you say)
I want it that way
Tell me why Ain't nothin' but a heartache
Ain't nothin' but a mistake
Tell me why I never wanna hear you say (don't wanna hear you say)
I want it that way
'Cause I want it that way
~ Andreas Carlsson and Max Martin

If you think about it and re-read the lyrics, you will realize that some of it doesn’t make sense and that’s the best part, that’s the beauty. A lot of things in life don’t make much sense, not everything should be straightforward and deriving meaning, they are beautiful as they are, and they should be left like that. You might like to read the Wikipedia page as well. And now if you have come to this point in the post, then it’s time to play the song and listen to it a few times. Heavenly 😊

Latest from Waseem Barelvi

It has been a while since we had some Shayari on this blog. So who better to feature here again than the legendary Prof. Waseem Barelvi. What follows is one of his recent Ghazals I guess. [I do not have to remind the seasoned readers of this blog that my translations are not to be taken very seriously and if it has been a while, you may want to remind yourself what I (& by extension, you should) think about them by reading the relevant tab above.]

आँखों आँखों रहे और कोई घर न हो
ख्वाब जैसा किसी का मुकद्दर न हो

Aankhon aankhon rahe aur koi ghar na ho
Khwaab jaisa kisi ka mukaddar na ho

Staying eye to eye and no house
Let no one’s fate be like dreams

क्या तमन्ना है रोशन तो सब हो मगर
कोई मेरे चरागों से बढ़कर न हो

Kya tamanna hai roshan to sab ho magar
Koi mere charaagon se badhkar na ho

What a wish to illuminate all but
Let no one be better than my lamps

रोशनी है तो किस काम की रोशनी
आँख के पास जब कोई मंज़र न हो

Roshani hai to kis kaam ki roshani
Aankh ke paas jab koi manzar na ho

There is light but what is light worth
When there’s no view before the eyes

क्या अजब आरज़ू घर के बुढ़ों की है
शाम हो तो कोई घर से बाहर न हो

Kya ajab aarzoo ghar ke budhon ki hai
Shaam ho to koi ghar se baahar na ho

What a weird desire of the home’s elders
Come evening and no one be outside homes

जिस को कमतर समझते रहे हो, ‘वसीम’
मिलके देखो कहीं तुमसे बेहतर न हो!

Jis ko kamtar samajhte rahe ho, ‘Waseem’
Milke dekho kahin tumse behtar na ho!

They have been believed to be lesser, ‘Waseem’
Meet and see, they may be better than you lots!

That’s all for this Ghazal and here is Prof. Waseem Barelvi reciting it himself:

Prof. Waseem Barelvi at 4th Deccan Literature Festival 2023

He recited a lot more obviously in this 2023 gathering. That full video along with more videos of other poets who recited there can be found on

This Channel!

AcBook 9.0

Finally, the most-awaited migration from GUIDE to AppDesigner has occurred. That of my beloved program: AcBook... and as expected, the new version is numbered 9. This latest version of AcBook could have been easily numbered 10, just like Windows 10 came after Windows 8(.1) by completely skipping 9. The reason that could have happened is because this new AcBook is completely redesigned from the ground up (as Microsoft is so fond of saying for almost everything every couple of months) in AppDesigner with only bare bones of GUIDE code surviving the transition. The reason that did not happen is because I like (even love, if that’s possible) the number 9 and there’s no way I would have skipped it.

We start at the start screen, of course. The Menubar and Toolbar have been stripped down with only “essential” items being in these two places. The toolbar duplicates the File menu, more or less. Below these is a collection of tabs. The first tab is obviously the Home (🏡) tab. It contains the welcome area with sign in buttons and load/save button. Below this fun area are three sections where you can enter transactions, view/edit recent transactions, and get an overview of your transactions via 5 (or less, if you want) “widgets”.

The second tab is the Transactions (💳) tab. This tab allows you to view all your transactions. You can do all sorts of actions on your transactions here: edit, filter, delete, search, sort, etc.

The third tab is the Accounts (📚) tab. This tab shows you information about all the existing accounts as well as an overview of the transaction data in those accounts. In addition, you can create accounts here as well as perform actions on them: edit, merge, remove & reorder. I am proud of implementing the last action in the way that I have done it, because MATLAB does not have a straightforward way to reorder rows of a table!

The fourth tab is the Groups (📑) tab. This tab shows you information about all the existing groups as well as an overview of the transaction data in those groups. In addition, you can create groups here as well as perform actions on them: edit, merge & remove.

The fifth tab is the Budgets (💰) tab. This tab lets you create multiple budgets and see their details right there. In addition, this tab harbors the currency converter (which used to be a part of the start screen in previous versions) and explicitly shows the exchange rates for various currencies.

The sixth tab is the Charts (📊) tab, which allows you to visualize your transaction data in various ways. This tab has changed a bit from the previous versions with some new charts for certain options, new behaviour for certain combination of options, and an explicit transaction data table present which shows the transactions used to plot the charts!

The seventh tab is the Settings (⚙️) tab, which is itself split into two tabs. Its first tab contains global settings for the user of the program (🧑‍💻). Sadly, the widgets settings do not all work in this version. In fact, only the “Show Widget” setting is currently implemented and working well. Other widgets settings will be completed in the next version (hopefully) because some more work on the structure of the file data (as it is stored & manipulated in the background) itself needs to be done for these settings to work properly or even be properly implemented! For the first time in two decades, I have implemented the “auto-save” feature against my own wishes and I like it. I even got used to it for a few weeks but then debugging errors (unrelated to this setting!) with this option checked is not a good idea, so I’ve turned it off for myself for the time being.

Its second tab contains local settings for the currently open file (🗄️). This tab is self-explanatory but let me know if you think I have missed some settings that should be included here (or the previous tab for that matter!).

Well, that more or less wraps up the changelog post for this version. But before I end with the link to the installer, I want to introduce you to a “similar” app: Cashew (available on Android and Desktop as a webapp). It is a well-made app with a gorgeous UI, intuitive workflow, truckloads of useful features (even has some version of ExpenSplit in it!) and frequent updates dealing with bugs, enhancements and improvements. It feels pleasant to use and works smoothly. I know that none of my readers will ever use AcBook (because there is huge potential well to even install it and it is available only on Windows 11) but I urge you to give Cashew a try at least for a week. I am pretty sure it will redefine for you what an app should be like. I am even willing to say that a couple of years back when I dabbled into Xamarin to make an AcBook app, I had a vision which was similar to what Cashew is. But I had neither the expertise (in other words, familiarity with the “app paradigm”) nor the patience to see it through. Anyway, enough with praising Cashew, let me praise its lead developer now. James (from Canada) replied promptly and politely to my emails about bugs in his app and fixed them on priority (it seemed so to me). He even took one of my enhancement requests in the same spirit and implemented it in the next day’s update! So a great person and a great app… what’s stopping you to use it!

Finally, let us get back to AcBook. The webpage from where you can download the installer follows.

AcBook Page