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)

One Piece

It came. We saw. She waits.

1. By ‘It’, I mean the live-action adaptation of the One Piece manga / anime by Netflix. It is a show consisting of 8 (roughly) hour long episodes. I believe 100 or so manga chapters were used for this adaptation.

2. By ‘We’, I mean my Superpartner and I. We enjoyed this adaptation very much. She had no prior exposure to One Piece, apart from me telling her that I read its weekly manga chapters regularly. I don’t think I had even told her it was a manga about pirates. Anyway, this Netflix adaptation was more or less faithful to the original source material. She was impressed by the ‘unique’ premise, various characters, their back stories and their development through the episodes. I felt that the casting of Zoro and Nami was perfect, but Luffy’s not so much. Usopp lost his long nose in this adaptation (given that Arlong’s nose was not, it feels more weird that Usopp lost his) and Sanji feels way more older than the rest of the crew. Also, why is Sanji’s left eye not more prominently hidden by his hairstyle, as God Oda intended?

3. By ‘She’, I mean my Superpartner, obviously. She is waiting for the season 2 of this series on Netflix. I have suggested her to just read (more than) 1000 or so manga chapters available on Viz, which she has declined, for now. Well, that’s the life for non-manga-readers: waiting for something that already exists.

OP on Viz

Yo! Yo! Yo!

The beginning of the end is again upon us. That is, the last volume of Sketchbook has begun scanlation. Four chapters are out and hoping the rest will be out before the end of this year. Enjoy this particular ‘gag’:

Click the photos to go to the MangaDex website where you can read the full chapter, if you so wish! Moving on to the other thing that’s been in the news for the last month or so: “Bing+ChatGPT” or the new Bing. To test out its “Compose” mode (available in Edge’s sidebar), I asked it to “write a blog post about start of scanlation of the last volume of Sketchbook”, and here is the result:

Hello fellow manga fans! I have some exciting news to share with you today. The scanlation group Sketchy Scans has announced that they have started working on the last volume of Sketchbook, the slice-of-life comedy manga by Totan Kobako.

Sketchbook is one of my favorite manga series ever. It follows the daily lives and quirky hobbies of a group of high school art club members, led by the shy and eccentric Sora Kajiwara. The manga is full of humor, charm, and creativity, as well as beautiful illustrations of nature and animals. It's a relaxing and heartwarming read that always makes me smile.

The manga has been running since 2002 and has 13 volumes so far. The last volume, volume 14, was released in Japan in December 2020. However, the scanlation process has been slow and inconsistent due to various reasons. The last chapter that was translated into English was chapter 131, which was released in July 2019.

That's why I was overjoyed when I saw the announcement from Sketchy Scans on their website yesterday. They said that they have acquired the raws for volume 14 and have started working on translating and editing them. They also said that they aim to finish the scanlation by June this year, which is only three months away!

I can't wait to read the final chapters of Sketchbook and see how the story ends for Sora and her friends. I'm sure it will be a satisfying and memorable conclusion to this wonderful manga series. I want to thank Sketchy Scans for their hard work and dedication to bringing us this amazing manga in English. You guys are awesome!

If you haven't read Sketchbook yet, I highly recommend you to check it out. You can find all the previous chapters on MangaDex or on Sketchy Scans' website. Trust me, you won't regret it.

That's all for today's blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let me know what you think about Sketchbook in the comments below. Until next time, happy reading!

Let’s analyze the result, shall we? The first para seems like a good start for a manga blogger, which I’m not. But it has a factual error: there’s no scanlation group named Sketchy Scans. In fact, the last 3 volumes or so have been scanlated anonymously, as far as I know. Anyway, let’s not let such a simple fact come in the way of our enjoying this AI generated post. The second para is good, something that I feel about this manga too. In fact, it feels like the AI understands what kind of people read this manga and what it evokes in them. The third para is again bordering on being semi-factual but the collection of all the elements that would give the history of this manga and its scanlation are there. One just has to do one’s own fact-checking which I’m not going to do here (read my Sketchbook tagged posts to learn related facts, like that number 131 should be 191, and so on).

The fourth para is full of fluff because the Sketchy Scans group doesn’t exist but the tone of this para is so upbeat, I want to believe it whole-heartedly and wait for June with bated breath! The fifth para is again pulling at the heart-strings of the readers of Sketchbook. How does this AI know what I want to write / read about Sketchbook? This is too good! The last two para are typical winding up paragraphs for a blog post but note that the info about MangaDex IS true. So it does know where to find the latest (and older) chapters to read. Man, this is really a cherry on top of the already amazing rainbow cake!

Overall, the AI has done a good job of composing a ‘Medium’ length ‘Blog post’ in a ‘Casual’ tone. The structuring of the post, laying out the ideas in various paragraphs, striking the exact tone that a Sketchbook reader can connect to, and to top it all off, including relevant facts (even if wishful) that unaware readers would like to know: these characteristics are really that of a grade A blogger like myself. I can see it replacing my superpartner as a collaborator on this blog in the very near future.

Ending this Sketchbook related post on a general manga note. I have updated the list of mangas I’m reading based on this post from last year. Have a look and if you fancy reading any of those, try your luck at

VIZ.COM

More Manga News…

I talked about the revival of my best-loved slice-of-life manga in the previous post. In this post I will talk about three more mangas, two of which are spin-offs of one of the most popular ninja-themed manga ever.

Yes, you guessed it right! That manga is Naruto. It has had a few spin-offs till date. The still-running out of those is, of course, “Boruto: Naruto’s Son”. However, now two more spin-offs have been added to that ever-increasing-list. What a prolific mangaka Masashi Kishimoto is! I would say “hats off” to him but since I don’t wear hats, a simple “congratulations” will have to suffice. Please accept it without any ill-feelings. So what are these two spin-offs I hear you ask. They are: “Naruto: Sasuke’s Story” and “Naruto: Konoha’s Story”. The first one is about Sasuke (& SPOILER ALERT: Sakura)’s quest to find a life-saving cure for Naruto because Naruto is helluva sick due to over-use of sage mode or something. The second one is about Kakashi and Guy’s vacation from Konoha with a new character, Mirai Sarutobi, granddaughter of the third hokage (daughter of Asuma & Kurenai) or some such setup. These seem like interesting stories so I’ll read a few more chapters and decide whether to continue or not. That is, these mangas haven’t yet made it to my list of manga/anime that I’ve compiled here (see the tab above?).

The third manga which VIZ nudged me towards is “Cipher Academy”. A completely new (I guess) manga based around puzzles, riddles, cryptography, and brainy-stuff like that, including mystery-stuff like who are all these characters and what are their motivations in attending this academy! What the hell, man? Who introduces boatloads of characters in just the first two chapters! Who does “NISIOISIN” think he is? Gabriel García Márquez? Elena Ferrante? Anyway, the storyline seems promising and intriguing so once again I’ll read a few more chapters and decide whether to continue or not. That is, this manga has not yet made it to, you know what…

What more to read?

Sketchbook is Revived…

Woo hoo!!! Finally, after 5 years the scanlation of Sketchbook has resumed. I am not sure about the group doing it but here it is: Sketchbook @ MangaDex. It seems to have resumed around 5 months ago but I noticed it only a week or so ago while searching for something else on Reddit! Talk about good luck. I read all the remaining chapters (150 onwards) of volume 11, and v12, and v13 in one sitting on that auspicious day. Now only one volume is left unscanlated, and I hope this anonymous but generous group or person delivers it before this year ends as X-mas present for this whole wide world. Till then, revisit v14 in these posts.

Enjoy this feeling of impending sketchbook while it lasts.

I hope this generous group or person scanlates Scorebook’s remaining chapters too. I hear you ask what is that! Well, ‘Scorebook’ is a one-volume manga by the author of Sketchbook and here it is:

Scorebook

Bleak Futures!

I have not written about Nature Futures in a while because most of the stories have been all right. A weekly good read, but not thought-provoking enough to provoke me to write a post here. But last week has been different. Way different because I had somehow missed stories from the previous week and read all the four unread ones together last week. And one of the previous week’s story stood out. I am talking about the story titled “The Family Tree” by Russel Nichols.

The setup was quite mundane, in all respects: characters, geography, interactions and emotions. Slowly, things started moving towards nothing in particular. So far so dull. Then I reached the last paragraph… and the last long sentence. My reading quickened. My gut felt punched so hard. My heart sank so deep. My jaws dropped so low. My eyes welled up so fast. My brain just couldn’t comprehend what hit it was so incomprehensible… for quite a few minutes! My whole being came to a halt screeching and skidding over very, very cold ice. It started wondering why my body was reacting so weirdly both physically and emotionally while my brain refused to re-read the sentence so that the fog of incomprehensibility could lift.

It was the same sort of reaction that washes over me whenever I even remotely consider of re-watching “Grave of the Fireflies”. I just don’t have enough emotional guts to re-watch that movie ever again. Once was enough. Even thinking about the ending feels like my guts are being knotted, stretched, straightened, and then reassembled but not how they were originally. Something definitely changed after watching that movie.

Similar reactions have occurred after reading Ernest Hemingway’s well-known shortest story: For sale: Baby shoes, never worn. Anyway, enough with my reactions to well-known movie and literature. I am not operating one of those dumb reactionary YouTube channels. Back to the Futures and it’s time to see you react to

That Story

Two Many Ends…

2022 starts… 2022 has started… And what a start!

One of my weekly staple manga “Dr. Stone” has ended after 232 chapters on 6th March this year. It was a great run for the last 5 years or so. I tried to summarize the manga in this post years ago. It was that and more, touching geoscience, food science, computer science, and even, rocket science towards the end. The last few chapters tied up the loose ends with an incredible twist. What a reveal! What an ending! What a sci-fi story at the very heart of it! Incredible.

One of the blogs that I follow is ending this month. More precisely, Loren Shure (author of the blog) is retiring from MathWorks at the end of this month. I feel like I have been following her MATLAB blog since my undergraduate days. Though, that might not be possible on grounds of reality. But it must definitely be somewhere between 10-15 years that I have been regularly following her blog. Her posts were fun to read, easy to follow and overall, taught something new, always! The same style showed in her YouTube Live Stream videos that she hosted a few times in the last year. Apparently a dozen, according to this playlist!

Given the imminent end-of-the-world, let us end this post with a great Sher from Dr. Nawaaz Deobandi.

दिए की लौ ने ऐसी बद्दुआ की
हवा बिखरी पड़ी है रास्तों में

Diye ki lau ne aisi baddua ki
Hawa bikhri padi hai raaston mein

The lamp’s flame has put such a curse
That the air lies scattered on the roads

–नवाज़ देवबंदी (Nawaaz Deobandi)

What a collection of words! What a Sher! Waah!! WAAH!!!

Nawaz Deobandi - All India Mushaira 2015

September, End of.

Warning: Filler post begins. Well, when one is writing a post per month, one does not have the liberty to tag a post as a filler willy-nilly. But that should not stop one from getting disappointed as the end of this month approaches and only a quarter of the current year remains. Also the time left for Nokia to update (my) Nokia 9 PureView phone to Android 11! So whether or not this post qualifies as a filler, we will talk about a lot of stuff in this post, like Anime, Shers, Movies, TV shows, etc. Wait a minute, that amounts to just two things, once everything is said and read…

Anyway, to the first topic of Shers (I recently learnt that ‘Ashaar’ (अशार) is the plural of ‘Sher’ (शेर) but old habits die hard as old dogs say!). The following two are from poet Mukesh Aalam:

अब तो सारा आलम ही इन रंगों से शर्मिंदा है
मज़हब वालों ने कुछ ऐसे फर्क बताए रंगों के

Ab to saara aalam hi in rangon se sharminda hai
Mazahab waalon ne kuch aise fark bataae rangon ke

Even the whole world is now ashamed of these colours
The sectarians told such differences among the colours

मुझे दुनिया के तानों पर कभी गुस्सा नहीं आता
नदी की तह में जाके सारे पत्थर बैठ जाते हैं

Mujhe duniya ke taanon par kabhi gussa nahin aata
Nadi ki tah mein jaake saare patthar baith jaate hain

I do not ever get angry over the world’s taunts
All the stones sink to lie down on the riverbed

–मुकेश आलम (Mukesh Aalam)

The first sher is a Maqta (of course) where the word ‘aalam’ (आलम) is the poet’s (pen)name but also means the world, as required by the Sher to make sense. The second sher got chosen not just because it was easy to translate but also because it tries to weave an allegory in the two sentences. It also involves the world but with another word ‘duniya’ (दुनिया). I struggle to come up with synonyms for ‘world’ in English. Words like ‘cosmos’, ‘universe’ sound too grand whereas ‘Earth’ sounds too flat (no pun intended; in fact, there is none). The full video, where the above snippets of Ghazals can be heard (in the poet’s own voice), follows:

That leads us smoothly to the second topic of Audio-Visual stimulations. I finished watching an anime series on Netflix a few weeks ago. I had started it sometime last year, no idea why. It was/is titled “The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.”. It is a ‘slice of life’ anime about a psychic high-school boy who is an all-powerful being able to use psychokinesis, teleportation, and whatever the author needs him to be able to do to get out of situations where his powers are in the danger of being discovered by people around him. Only his parents (Spoiler alert: and his elder brother {more Spoilers: and a couple of his classmates [Spoilers keep coming: and later his grandparents too!]}) know about his powers. The whole series is then about him trying to hide his powers from the whole ‘world’ and seem as an average high-school guy (literally average, as in class rank, athletic abilities, etc.) but he keeps getting into situations from which he ‘always’ escapes unscathed. Enough with the summary of the series, let me tell you about what it feels like watching Saiki K. It is fast-paced with incessant gags/jokes after jokes/gags, full of parody of other manga/anime, parody of its own source manga, consistent breaking of the fourth wall, hilarious and ridiculous pandemonium. The only other manga/anime (among the ones I know) that surpasses such chaotic pandemonium is ‘Nichijou’ and I’m not even going to try to describe it (because I didn’t dare to describe it here either). But both are highly recommended viewing/reading for this year, or any other time for that matter.

Moving on to the touchy topic of Movies and Movie theaters. The latter are starting to open up again after a long break (who knows why?) and we are starting to cautiously venture out in search of ‘good’ movies to watch and eat bucket loads of popcorn. (The latter is just my superpartner but since the bucket gets loaded, I also dig in more often than I’d like to admit.) The first movie we watched (since the re-opening this year) was “The Green Knight” because we went to watch “Reminiscence”. The second movie we watched was, of course, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” because why not! The third movie we watched was “Free Guy” because we haven’t watched “Deadpool”. The fourth movie we will watch will be “No Time to Die” because it features Nokia phones… WOW! The fifth movie we will watch will be “Eternals” because I haven’t read any Marvel comics. The sixth movie we will watch will be “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” because I have no idea what this movie is about but the name sounds familiar! The seventh movie we will watch will be “Spiderman: No Way Home” because it has Spiderman and Dr. Strange. The eighth movie we will watch will be obviously “The Matrix Resurrections” because what’s the point of life, otherwise!

Showing some restraint, I now move on to the funny topic of (British) TV Shows. The new seasons of “QI”, “The Russell Howard Hour”, etc. have started this year. A new show “The Complaints Department” is also funny enough to be watched weekly. Another ‘new’ show “Late Night Mash” is also watch-worthy. The hardest quiz show “Only Connect” is also running along. VCM is particularly funny this series. But DM has yet to feature, maybe he will in some of the upcoming episodes. “HIGNFY”, “Question Team” and the year-end specials are (of course) the things to look forward to in these stressful times. Especially, Charlie Brooker’s take on 2021. What the hell is he doing these days, anyway? I get that he’s now a father of a few kids but then one 2 hours show at the end of each year along with Barry Shitpeas and Philomena Cunk isn’t asking too much, is it? Sadly, one person who is being/will be missed in the panel shows is Sean Lock. He died recently (16 August) of lung cancer and “tears can’t be written down, Jimmy”.

July was the month when the world lost two great (particle) physicists: T. Maskawa and S. Weinberg. Not to be outdone, September turned itself to be the month which took away two more physicists: Antony Hewish, an astronomer and Thanu Padmanabhan, a cosmologist. To be frank, I did not know about Prof. Hewish due to massive ignorance on my part. He had discovered pulsars and was awarded a Nobel Prize for that. Prof. Padmanabhan’s research contributions include cosmological structure formation, dark energy, and quantum gravity. I have a slightly more close connection with him (though, I never met him personally) as I started learning about path integrals from one of his many books when I was an undergrad at IITKGP. It is a bit strange that my initial exposure to General Relativity was from a particle physicist and to Quantum Field Theory from a cosmologist!

Last Words

Random May…

With the world spiralling to its annihilation faster than ever, my motivation to write a monthly blogpost has understandably spiralled out of the physical realm. Not just my motivation, many other things have also spiralled out of my control. So for this month, let me do a filler post and just write down from memory what all has happened since the last post.

I have reinvested my investment along with the gains for the near future. Though, this time, in an open-ended scheme. Not that you need to know that, but let’s give the previous post a proper ending. Right?

Speaking of investments, my body’s investments in fats, cholesterols, triglycerides, etc. have reaped great gains but not so much for Vitamin D. It turns out this investment portfolio does not bode well in the long run, specifically, it puts me in pre-diabetic category. I have changed my lifestyle drastically by exercising a bit more and eating cakes a bit less. That should be enough to squeeze out a few more years I guess. We’ll see…

I have a paper out on arXiv with a collaborator from IMSc (let’s call him AM). Well, two versions already in less than two weeks because we didn’t realize in the first version that the symmetry transformations were really Z₃ and not Z₂. But it doesn’t change any of the main results so all is well and good.

I have bought a domain name just to get a feel of what it’s like. It’s ‘jkmsmkj.fyi’ and click here to go there. And I can reveal that it’s over-rated. Well, because I’m not a business so doesn’t really make much sense but whatever.

We watched the award-winning animated movie Soul. And it was so ul-species-ist. Do animals not have soul? The whole movie showed just one cat soul, like an untouchable going up that escalator thingy all alone! And how the hell did that cat come back alive at the end of the movie? I realize not everyone / everything needs to have a purpose as Richard Aoyade says in the movie but then I recognized Richard Aoyade’s voice near 70 minutes’ mark when he says “So Basic!” like no one else can. With the correct combination of sarcasm, condescension, disgust and deadpan delivery. Liked the music too. 3 Stars. And ∞ stars to RA for brightening my soul with that single phrase.

As is well-known, W. Bengal is not under lockdown or curfew but just a lot of very specific restrictions, like no public movement between 9PM and 5AM and no educational institutions, offices, etc. to open for the next two weeks. Almost no restrictions if you deal with essential items like groceries, sweets, jewellery, sarees and medicines. Enjoy these restrictive times till they last. They might not be around long till the next pandemic, which may appear next after 5 years on 06-02-26! Who knows? [Hey, this is my prediction for the next world-changing catastrophe… please someone bring this post to limelight appropriately if and when required.]

Amid the pandemic, W. Bengal was hit by a cyclonic storm named Yaas. As in, Yaas, thaa’s whaa’s we do. It caused havoc near the Odisha-Bengal coastline. The inland areas were spared this time. The most damage it did near our house was stripping the nearby Gulmohar tree of most of its flowers because not even the road in front of our house was water-logged at any time during the two-days of the storm.

Wars! Battles! Skirmishes! Yes, the fun topic of China-Taiwan, Israel-Palestine, Delhi-W. Bengal, Black-White, Allopathy-Ayurpathy, Idiocy-Stupidity, Intelligence-Learnedness, Real-Fake. As I see it, the resolution to all this is the annihilation of the whole world. Not just those two things, but everything. A clean slate or plate. The story of Noah’s ark without Noah or his Ark. The story of Dr. Stone without Senku or Dr. Xeno. That would be so soul fulfilling. I can’t wait enough for it to happen. Maybe leave Japan out of all this, just because Eiichiro Oda can complete One Piece, even though I won’t get to see that finale. But then, this is not the time to be selfish.

I believe that’s all that happened in the past month or so. I am reminded of one of Dr. Indori’s Sher about giving advice:

शराब पी के बड़े तजरबे हुए हैं हमें
शरीफ़ लोगों को हम मशवरा नहीं देंगे

Sharaab pi ke bade tajarbe hue hain hamein
Shareef logon ko ham mashwara nahin denge

Having wine has granted me great experiences
I won’t be giving any gentlemen my suggestions

–राहत इंदौरी (Rahat Indori)

Let us end this post with a grand recital of Ghazals by

Shakeel Azmi

A Millenary of Chapters

As 2021 rolled in, the world of manga witnessed the 1000th chapter of One Piece. Yes, you read that right: One Thousandth chapter. More than 2 decades worth of weekly anticipation, sprinkled with nearly 3 years worth of (un)expected breaks by Eiichiro Oda, rolled into 1 giant realization that I’m not going to see the end of this marvellous adventure. But as people say, it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. To those people, I say, hell with you all. Because you have definitely not read One Piece.

Anyway, that is all I want to say for now. I feel this year will be big for mangas and we will talk about them once in a while as this year unfurls. Wishing Totan Kobako a complete recovery from his hand injuries and hoping this year finally sees his new work published. Meanwhile, I hope those lovely people who translated Sketchbook in the past can restart scanlating the rest of the chapters covering the last 3½ volumes. If everything else fails, I guess Google Lens will have to do the job. It’s a sad state of the world considering that “real-time translation” was one of the most promising features of the “MS Translator” app on Windows Phone 8/Mobile 10, which never materialized for Japanese in the 5 or so years of the OS’s existence/relevance.

Viz.com

Sketchbook Ends.

After going through all the nine stages of disbelief, I have finally accepted that Sketchbook had ended. Seriously and utterly accepted that fact. So this is the final mention of Sketchbook v14 on this blog. The previous one is here. But this is the final one. Totally last one where I share some pages from the second half of the volume and my guesses at what they’re all about.

Juju, Nagisa and Sora are discussing the crawling curve of a caterpillar and comparing it with the Greek letter Ω. Also it seems that’s how a futon should look when used properly!

Sora and Ao in the kitchen with their food related antics. At least, Sora seems to be enjoying them.

Asaka is trying to showcase usage of a gourd that she made… As a container for a genie?

Just for the Hazuki’s serene pose and obviously, also for how a lint roller should not be used!

What little scenes of everyday life. Sheer brilliance! I’ll miss these in my everyday life. Also, this is from the last comic-strip-style chapter of Sketchbook. It is followed by 3 normal-manga-style chapters. The “first” page of the first such chapter.

Finally, Kei and Takane seem to have decided to join the Art Club, officially. This chapter then goes on to welcome them with a party where everyone tries to cook something or the other in the club room… I guess.

This chapter ends with Sora sketching “everyone” as the party ends with the usual approval from Ooba-senpai. The second regular-comic-style chapter is of course about the Cats. And I will leave the third chapter a mystery.

Well, that’s all. No mention of Sketchbook from now on here. Yes, not at all.

Apart from the pending

Scanlations

First Two Months…

This post is just going to be a list of updates. Sorry but if I elaborate, these will be a few posts at least.

1) I’m learning how to take care of Sakura Jain on my own. Sometimes it is overwhelming, sometimes tiring but mostly just fine and heart warming.

2) We (me and my Superpartner) are watching ‘Black Mirror’ on Netflix. Sharing my favorite episode, feels like we have this system with Ola & Uber drivers already.

3) I recently completed a few specializations on Coursera – a good brush-up after University. These were specializations on hypothesis driven testing, confidence intervals, sample constructions, and the like.

4) I now speak in the voice of Shin-chan [the Hindi dubbed one that we see on Indian channels] 50% of the times with Sakura-chan.

5) Lastly, I’m hearing a lot of sad news of people falling ill or falling through life itself.

A point outside the points above – Sakura has gone from saying ‘uh-goo’ to ‘dee-mu’ [I thought it would be ‘muh-mma’ or something similar but thanks to my luck, Greek letters come first].

Many Things…

Many things have happened since the last time We/I posted on this blog.

Like the end of scanlation of Detective Academy Q.

Like the appearance of a paper of mine on arXiv after quite a delay.

Like the publication of another paper of mine in NPB after quite a lot of delay.

Like the Birth of Our Daughter Sakura.

On that note, let us read some great Shayari…

क़हक़हों का तिलिस्म टूट गया
दर्द ने जब हंसी उड़ाई है।

Kahakahon ka tilism toot gaya
Dard ne jab hansi udaayi hai.

The charm of cackles faded away
When the pain laughed out loud.

अनसुना करने से पहले सोच लो तुम एक बार
खामोशी का शोर है ये, बेजुबानी का नहीं।

Ansuna karne se pahle soch lo tum ek baar
Khaamoshi ka shor hai ye, bezubaani ka nahin.

You should consider it once, before ignoring
It is the scream of silence, not of muteness.

– मदन मोहन दानिश (Madan Mohan Daanish)

मंज़िल समझके बैठ गए जिनको चंद लोग
मैं ऐसे रास्तों से गुजरता चला गया।

Manzil samajhke baith gaye jinko chand log
Main aise raaston se gujarta chala gaya.

Some people stopped, thinking it’s the destination
While I, on such roads, kept walking continuously.

दुनिया समझ में आई, मगर आई देर से
कच्चा बहुत था रंग उतरता चला गया।

Duniya samajh mein aayi, magar aayi der se
Kachcha bahut tha rang utarta chala gaya.

I understood the world, albeit a little late
The fake dye kept fading continuously.

– वसीम बरेलवी (Waseem Barelvi)

More Shayari from Dr. Waseem Barelvi

New Manga

I have started reading Dr. Stone… which can be labelled as being a “Science-based” manga. Chemistry for most of the time, in my ‘opinion’. One ‘Arc’ worth 42 chapters is over and another is to start next week with more action I guess! Have a look at it if you can find it somewhere.

This blog is going to get infrequent updates from now on for reasons known and unknown.

See you some other time and place in some future post.

End-of-the-Post-Link

What the… Bleach?

More than a decade… all gone poof in one chapter numbered 686. That is just another way of saying: One of the greatest, long-running manga ‘Bleach’ has ended!

And what an end that was. I can’t say I enjoyed the ‘end’ of Bleach as much as I’d have liked… It’s not that what was covered in this last chapter was underwhelming. It was more about what was not covered and shown that overwhelmed me. It was shown that things have settled down and people have moved on… (I was also disappointed when I couldn’t recognize the main character when he first appeared in this chapter as his ‘moved-on’ self!) But given that a couple of chapters earlier, there were fierce Battles (yes battleS, with a capital B and capital S) raging on, it seemed quite a jump-cut-paste to “everything turned out fine” ending.

Everything turned out fine in ‘InuYasha’; everything turned out fine in ‘FullMetal Alchemist’; things turned out well in ‘Scrapped Princess’ (recently re-watched with my Superpartner); hell, even it turned out well in ‘Naruto’ but that ‘fine’-ness and ‘well’-ness was introduced after the ongoing ‘conflicts’ were dealt with in reasonable detail. Their endings seemed to fit in nicely with the previous build-up and resolution of conflicts. But in Bleach, the build-up was excruciatingly detailed as much as the resolution was swift. And that threw me off my balance. That made me think of open-ended stories. That makes me expect more of Bleach next week.

And most importantly, that makes me no more wiser as to why the hell is this manga titled ‘Bleach’? or…

Is it ‘Breach’?

Up & Coming 2016!

Do we have what it takes to start another year of blogging? We have… that’s the assumption for now, anyway. But seeing that we have not got any concrete thing to write in this pre-prologue post, I wouldn’t keep my hopes up. (As to you, our dear reader, do fill up that poll on the right side if you have hopes. If you’re reading this on a mobile… slow down your hectic lifestyle and look this up on a proper browser, for your family’s sake!)

First we may talk about our visit to Hot Springs at XinBeitou during the first few days of Jan. Here’s a teaser:

   

But on second thought, let’s not. Here are more pictures including some of our earlier visits to other Museums, Parks & Temples in Taipei.

On third thought, let’s wrap this post up. I will leave a cliffhanger though, so that you come back, by announcing that there will be a huge commotion here in Mar-Apr following release of MATLAB 2016a.

See you!

Travelogue: Asia Pacific - Part 3

Let me start this post with a grand statement. Japan, the land of Manga & Anime (as far as I’m concerned), is where I was during early August and I didn’t enter even one manga store while I was there. But I saw manga volumes even in convenience stores like Family Mart. Boy, are they popular there!

Anyway, I was visiting Dept. of Physics at Kyoto University for roughly a week, attending a 2-day conference and giving a talk. There were some interesting talks and I got some work done too. But that’s enough Physics for this blog… let’s get back to the theme of travelogue like the last few posts’ theme has been.

First of all, let me get this burden off my chest. Japanese people ARE ‘polite’. One ordinary sounding instance is that the shopkeepers speak all those flowery (sonorous) sentences / words ending with ‘-masu’ & ‘-sai’ even to foreigners who (most probably) have no idea what’s being said! And they do not just mumble the phrases as if performing a routine task but stress all the words clearly as if speaking to locals. I’d expect they would give themselves some slack in front of foreigners but they don’t. Another not-so-ordinary scene demonstrating ‘politeness’ is when a driver doesn’t honk at a tourist who’s standing in the middle of the road photographing an arch (torii)! He just waits there for 10-15s for the person to move without –did I say– honking… No, I don’t think I made myself clear: the driver turns the corner, stops and DOESN’T HONK at the tourist blocking the road and his way for 15s! Where the hell did you ever read or hear such a sentence?

Second of all, Kyoto is a clean and calm city. Even the busy portions of the city somehow felt calming. I felt as if there’s no background noise. What was I smoking there I don’t remember! About cleanliness, the stream near Philosopher’s Path is crystal clear and I’m not exaggerating. How is that humanly possible? Only the fish living in that stream make it muddy.

  

Third of all, Kathmandu may be a city full of temples but Kyoto isn’t slouching with their abundance of shrines either… and vending machines. I mean, come on… shrines are ok (great actually) but vending machines? Who decided that? Ok, our city is full of shrines and we’re very proud of that but let’s make it full of one more special thing so people can talk about it far and wide. Ya, let’s… Let’s install vending machines on every street. Huh? Vending machines? Ya, for drinks and stuff? Oh yes… I thought you said something else… Yes, vending machines. Because why not? And there you have it. My take at writing comedic dialogues. No wonder I didn’t get anywhere above 70% in English during my school days.

   

Fourth of all, ‘Kimono’s are helluva expensive! What people usually wear in daily life are called ‘Yukata’s. I bought one for my Superpartner. That set even has wooden sandals. Only thing missing was an wooden umbrella, which were also quite expensive so got a small ‘spreadable’ fan instead to ‘complete’ the set.

Fifth of all, Kyoto is a great place to indulge in photography:

  

  

Last but not the least of them all: Great bakery products (like Taipei). Tough to find vegetarian options in general (unlike Taipei but better than Busan). Buses have ‘change machines’ so you can pay exact fare without any worries (unlike Taipei)! Buses constantly display stops’ info in English (unlike scrolling texts in Taipei).

Enjoy this album!

So Long 2014!

That’s it then. But before we bid you good bye this year, we thought we would write about something worthwhile. Since this blog mostly focuses on photography, poetry and general rantings, we thought we would write about all these three subjects in this post! Let us start with photography.

On this fine sultry day, let me show you what MICE is good for. Even those who suffer from the genetic disorder that makes their stomach upset at the mention of the word ‘Microsoft’ – so severely that they have to replace ‘s’ by ‘$’ in order to continue living in this world bombarded with MS softwares / products / services / news / ads – have to be aware that MICE is one piece of software that doesn’t have ‘s’ in its acronym. Even the hugely popular Photosynth ‘app’ now uses the advanced MICE stitching engine to generate panoramas.

Moving on with the tutorial now, let us take this scene as an example.

Do you see something wrong here? Yes,  of course! There is that long antennae (outlined  in red), dish & tank (blue) and the roof (green), which shouldn’t be there in the photo as they obstruct the view of the otherwise ‘pretty’ landscape in the background. In order to correct that we zoom in, and take shots of the scene from different angles while avoiding the problematic elements. In the above example, I took these 6 shots:

   

4 from left side of the tank and 2 from the right. (I didn’t have much room to move around so the roof couldn’t be avoided.) After that I let MICE do its magic on these 6 shots and generate this pretty landscape ‘panorama’.

I leave the blank space at the bottom to stress that some parts of the scene may not be totally avoidable! But in most cases, it should be possible to crop sensibly and showcase what is important.

Now let us talk about poetry. Poetry is an integral part of ‘Hasya Kavi Sammelan’ (for those who are not familiar with this Indian tradition, it is a grander version of ‘stand-up comedy shows’) and there are poets who recite as well as sing their creations. A decade or two ago, there used to be a great supply of audio cassettes of HKSs. One such cassette is owned by one of my uncles and I like to listen to it whenever I visit them in SDGH. During my last visit, we were listening to it and a suggestion cropped up to record and make a digital copy of the cassette. Somehow, making an audio CD was not feasible so we recorded 2 (out of 9) performances and we share one of them below. This is the last recital on that cassette by Prabha Thakur, which emphasizes the irony in our struggle to survive. The first two lines sum it up as follows: Our desires lead us throughout our lives as if enchanted by mirages, this madness is so strong that our hunger is never sated. For the first time we try to embed an audio on this blog via SoundCloud… let’s see how it goes (the usual Hindi text for the poem follows after that).

भटकाती रहती हैं तृष्नाएँ जीवन की
फिर भी हसरत बाँकी हद है पागलपन की

सुख बोया दुःख काटा हर सौदे में घाटा
सारा विष खुद पीकर मैंने अमृत बांटा
अनजानी लगती है देहरी भी आँगन की
फिर भी हसरत बाँकी हद है पागलपन की
भटकाती रहती हैं ⋯

मन को समझाऊँ तो तन बागी हो जाएँ
और तन सिंगारूँ तो मन बैरागी हो जाये
आँखें ही बरसे तो कीमत क्या सावन की
फिर भी हसरत बाँकी हद है पागलपन की
भटकाती रहती हैं ⋯

जितना सुख सौरभ था किस्तों में दे डाला
मुरझाईं जाती है रिश्तों की वरमाला
अर्थहीन लगती हैं बातें अपनेपन की
फिर भी हसरत बाँकी हद है पागलपन की
भटकाती रहती हैं ⋯

– प्रभा ठाकुर

Finally, we do a big fat quiz of the year… err… general rantings regarding the last year. As in that TV show, we will talk about things that made our anxieties bearable, weekends merry and kept us looking forward to the next week, month and year.

1. TV Shows: We followed a great number of British shows – 8o²10C, HIGNFY, MTW, NMTB, OC, QI, Sherlock, WILTY, ⋯ Apart from these, we also watched a Swedish show, few stand-up shows of various comedians like Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Eddie Izzard, Trevor Noah, ⋯. We prefer these shows because their humour is subtle, deep, has a way with wordplay such that once you get used to it, everything else feels amateurish.
2. Movies: We tried watching some of the movies that made it to top of the ‘charts’ (and also some that did not) – From Up On Poppy Hill, Gravity, Guardians of the Galaxy, How to Train your Dragon 2, Interstellar, Transcendence, The Wind Rises, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Chennai Express, Highway, Queen, ⋯. We like these movies not just for the entertainment they provide but also for how they make you think with their portrayal of various aspects of life like dreams, emotions, relations, survival, technology and so on.
3. Music: Some of the songs we liked in no particular order – Hamdard & Banjaare ko ghar (Ek tha Villain), Main tenu samjhavan ki (Humpty Sharma ki dulhaniya), Sunona Sangemarmar (Youngistaan), Bang Bang & Meherbaan (Bang Bang), Tum Naraz Ho & Nadiya par par karke (Coke Studio), London thumakda (Queen), Kashmir to Kanyakumari (Chennai Express), Baby doll (Ragini MMS 2), Hangover (Kick), ⋯. We did not discover another A.R. Rahman in the Indian music industry this year but there were definitely many new Playback singers and some of them are truly brilliant.
4. Books: We read some old and new books this year like The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Half Girlfriend, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Nature’s Futures 1, The Devil and Miss Prym, Moving Day, ⋯ (in some order that you need to figure out).
5. Mangas: The major event in this year was the completion of ‘Naruto’ and what an end it was! (I’m not going to divulge anymore, you are welcome to discuss in the comments…) I also read the reboot of Rurouni Kenshin manga and watched its first live action movie, which is quite enjoyable. Though different from the original manga at significant story points, it doesn’t leave a sour taste in one’s brain as watching just the first 2 minutes of ‘Dragonball: Evolution’ does. For other ongoing manga, look at the relevant tab above.
6. Programming: MATLAB got on to a new start by updating its graphics engine ‘drastically’ and in the process broke almost all of my programs. I have restored all of them except Polorama Generator for which I have a different plan, like incorporating the Keystone Correction that I demoed here. Let’s see if PG v3 sees the light in the new year.

That’s all for now. To all those souls who made this year enjoyable, Merry X-mas and a Happy New Year (in advance). Since this is a month full of festivities,

Happy December