True Love

I was reading a story by Anton Chekov titled “Three Years”. In it, there’s a line that reads: “...before I was in love I, too, knew quite well what love was.” And I reflexively nodded in agreement, uttering “True, Indeed!” And then I heard someone shouting at me, “What the hell are you talking about?”, from within…

Anyway, what I want to draw (no pun intended!) your attention towards, in this post, is the fact that the following picture (which appeared on this blog in August this year) is a sketch hand-drawn by me in MS Paint on my Fujitsu T4410 Tablet.

And so are these two:

Now, just because I sketch shoddy pictures on paper

does not mean I only sketch shoddy pictures!  The above three copyrighted pictures of Sora, Natsumi & Hazuki are testament of my decent sketching skills! Well, ignoring Natsumi’s sketch, the sketches of Sora & Hazuki are indeed pretty… decent.

Even though this is a link-devoid post, I’ll as usual add an

end-of-the-post-link.

Spot the Shuttlecock!

In this post, let’s play a game. All you have to do is to spot the shuttlecock in the following photos, as simple as that! Come on, have a go:

So, what are your answers? Post them as comments and I’ll verify them for you. The first one to spot them all receives a happy-new-year-wishing-call from me!

For those who don’t know , this game is called

Badminton

Wait, WHAT??? Wow!!!

This was all I could muster when one of my sisters (R from the previous post) recently said that Sudoku Solver 6.6 runs on her laptop but AcBook 3.9 does not!

So this post is going to be about MATLAB and Miscellany. Recently, I saw this guest post on Loren Shure’s blog at “The MathWorks”. That post talks about using Speech Synthesis (among other things) functions from .NET library. (You probably know where I’m heading!) So, I commented on the post regarding my own encounter with .NET and its Speech Recognition functions.

My .m files are useless to others as I don’t include comments in them and often I myself (after a respectable span of time) don’t remember how they do whatever they do (one of the many reasons why SS 6.x has not yet become at least SS 7.0!). For example, I don’t understand anymore how the brute force algorithm for solving a Sudoku is implemented in the corresponding .m file. (The full arsenal of SS 6.6 consists of 11 .m files totaling ~2000 lines and yes, ‘end’ takes one line and there are almost no blank lines!)

Anyway, enough boasting! So, I’ll present here (with comments) the code snippet I use in my ‘full-fledged’ SS 6.6 for recognizing the spoken numbers:

%% Import Speech Classes
NET.addAssembly('System.Speech');
import System.Speech.Recognition.*;
%% Initialize SRE
SpRec=SpeechRecognitionEngine;
SetInputToDefaultAudioDevice(SpRec);
ts=System.TimeSpan(0,0,3); %Don’t ask what this does!
SpRec.InitialSilenceTimeout=ts;
%% Create Grammar
words={'one','two','three','four','five','six','seven','eight','nine'};
str=NET.createArray('System.String',9);
for n=1:9
    str.SetValue(words{n},n-1);
end
choices=Choices(str);
GB=GrammarBuilder(choices);
grammar=Grammar(GB);
LoadGrammar(SpRec,grammar);
%% Test the Words
%rec=EmulateRecognize(SpRec,'ONE');
%% Real Speech Recognition
disp('Speak Now...');
rec=Recognize(SpRec);
%% Result
Speaker=System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer;
Speak(Speaker,rec.Text);

The success of the above code depends mainly on your PC and you’ll find that out pretty soon (or maybe not)!

Now, let’s talk about miscellany. Recently, (note to self: used this word too many times, increase vocab) I realized that I’ve nudged many people (over the past few years) to do certain things and statistically speaking, none have done so! Let me give you some details:

I’ve asked a lot of people (friends & family) to use SS 6.x and AcBook 3.x (new releases of both will be made public by the start of new year) over a span of more than 5 years. Here are some disheartening (for a programmer) and funny (for a Sketchbook reader) ‘results’: Shantanu switched from Windows to Linux after I ‘presented’ AcBook to him on his Birthday! R wanted to use it till she developed her own program using .NET, VisualBasic, etc. but her PC won’t run it as mentioned above! S (my brother from last post) will not install Java on his PC! (ohh! Spoiler Alert!) DQ quite reluctantly agrees to beta-test every new version but then forgets they are even installed on his PC! and the list continues…

I’ve asked a lot of people to watch / read Sketchbook but all of them say (in one way or other): “What the hell is this?”

I’ve asked a lot of people to watch / read Rurouni Kenshin following ‘my sequence’ and none of them have ever successfully done it! Shantanu did come close to doing that but then he ‘lost interest’ around VizBig Vol. 2!

I’ve asked a lot of people to read Hindi poems, whose links I post on Google Buzz and most of them do read them. I feel really glad about that especially when Shantanu ‘thanked’ me for sharing those links!

अनुभूति

COME and GONE… (III)

Biratnagar (1-night stay over): We were joined by ‘them’. They were my father’s nieces (father’s sister’s daughters), i.e. two of my ‘many’ sisters (let’s call them B & R). I find it quite irritating that in Hindi (or Nepali), almost everyone (at least of your own generation-al level) can be referred to as your brothers & sisters with a prefix (specifying whose sons or daughters they are) if needed but in English, they are cousins, nephews, nieces, etc. and you’ve got no clue what the relation is at the higher generation-al level. I don’t think that made any sense and that’s precisely my point! Anyway, the following day, we (after an ‘expected’ delay) boarded the smallest plane, I’ve ever had the fortune of boarding, and landed after half-an-hour or so at

Kathmandu (13-days stay): The first week was the week leading up to Diwali / Deepawali, about which I’ve talked about in an earlier post. I also met one of my brothers (father’s brother’s son, let’s call him S) after a long time. He pointed out that I’m fat and I pointed out that it needn’t be pointed out! We obviously went to Pashupatinath temple and also to Panchmukhi Balaji temple* (Google maps can now show the exact location of this temple. You get near it by searching for ‘tinpiple’ and zooming on a 360° turn in the ‘Arniko Highway’.) like last time but did not go to the Garden of Dreams, which I do regret.

Apparently, B & R were lucky enough to visit it after I (& S) left. I’m also told that in their 3-weeks stay at KTM, they took nearly 750 photos which is quite astonishing but when I think about it, it’s not that impressive. They are wasting a lot of ‘time’ & space on the memory card! Here’s why: After their 2-weeks stay, they had nearly 420 photos, which I brought with me. As I’m ‘fond’ of organizing my photos on ‘Windows Live Photo Gallery’ (or ‘wasting time’ as B & R put it!), I started sorting through their ‘mess’ and after I was done with that, I was left with 253 photos ‘only’! This huge reduction is due to two reasons: (i) Their Sony Cyber-shot takes dual shots if it ‘realizes’ that the lighting conditions are unfavorable like when indoors which was most of the time and when there is strong backlight outdoors which was also most of the time at KTM while we’re there! So one can safely delete one of those two snaps; (ii) One of them (R) does not press the shutter-release button half-way to check if the ‘subject’ is in focus! She just presses the button all the way taking the phrase ‘point-and-shoot’ a little too literally! So some of the snaps she ‘shot’ were out of focus and ‘had’ to be ‘pointed out’ of my laptop(s)!

So, to summarize my stay at KTM: I got some shopping done, ate sweets, met with other relatives, got my eyes checked, ate sweets, postponed my wedding, celebrated Diwali @ Home, watched Sketchbook with B & R (they were neither impressed nor repulsed by it!), ate (pieces of) a huge heart-shaped cake that somehow reminded me of sweet potatoes, attended a picnic, played badminton, tweaked AcBook & Sudoku Solver, ate sweets, taught something new (like how to convert feet to inches and there are 8 planets now!) to a kid, gave my mother ‘golden jewellery’ as a gift for the first time and ate ice cream labelled ‘Blind Love’ after a long time. After having so much fun, I had to leave KTM due to my ‘doctor’s’ advice: “Too much fun is injurious to my well-being”. So I left for

New Delhi (in transit): This is the last one at least on this trip! I came up from the Arrivals Terminal to Departures Terminal and stayed for nearly 6 hours in an enclosure named ‘Visitors’ Lounge’ just besides the check-in counters. But I had to go out of the building and come back in through a different gate for check-in! Anyway, no hassles this time around when I boarded the flight to

Abu Dhabi (in transit): “Wow! Didn’t we take our shoes off when we entered this terminal?” exclaimed a guy when we were asked to take them off once more to enter the waiting area for gate xx, from which we were supposed to board the plane. He seemed pissed but I just found it amusing! We boarded the flight to JFK and after 14 hours in-flight, the ordeal was not over yet. We had to stand in a queue so long that it took us nearly 90 minutes just to enter the immigration area (we’re still in queue) and then it took me half an hour more to get to a counter and get cleared. After that, I fished around for my luggage and made a beeline to the AirTrain, to LIRR Train (in spite of two faulty ticket machines: one didn’t let me select my destination and the other didn’t accept cash!) to

Stony Brook (14^th Nov): Railroad Route bus to Chapin Apartments was running on that (Sun)day and I’m back safely and soundly to tell you about whatever I’ve told you in the last three posts! I present to you now the final album that captures almost every aspect of my

Nepal Tour 2010

*Two albums linked in this post are not accessible to / by everyone. If you don’t see the photos, try logging into Picasa using your Gmail ID. If you don’t see them even then, tell me and I’ll send you a personalized link after assessing your eligibility! Thank you for your understanding…

BACK and FORTH… (II)

Amet (5 days over): After 5 days of neck-high ‘spirituality’, where I realized that the main ingredient of Jainism is ‘inevitability’ similar to the concept of ‘hitsuzen’ in xxxHolic(!), we left for our hometown,

Shri Dungargarh (7-days stay): It was hot here. My definition of hot is that temperature where spontaneous sweating occurs!

CAH (Charbhuja Road, Railway Station for Amet) to Shri Dungargarh

A simple question: When does a car cruising at 120 Km/hr starts moving at a snail’s pace of 20 Km/hr? A complicated answer: When you switch from a national highway at Bidasar to a state highway connecting Bidasar to SDGH. Now, when I say state highway, I might have given you a image of a road with ‘frequent’ potholes but no, the reality was that there was no road there, just loose gravel! The driver was really pissed at my father’s choice of the route but my father’s (valid) excuse was that it was OK just 6 months ago! It is also worth-mentioning that Nokia / Ovi Maps do a good job at (re-)calculating highway routes (while offline) in India. Had a nice time playing around with its navigational features. Well, after taking at least an hour more than necessary, we finally reached our hometown. I met a lot of relatives here after a span of at least 3 years. The stay here was ‘interrupted’ by two one-day trips to

Lunkaransar & Sardarshahar (1-day each): These were also  trips ‘to get blessed’ but on the latter one, someone stole my sandals so it was more of a ‘cursed’ trip!

SDGH to Lunkaransar(L) & Sardarshahar(R)

When we got down from the bus at SDGH, I was wearing my father’s sandals and he was walking barefoot. Our house was 5 minutes walk from the spot we de-boarded the bus. Two minutes later, someone (from behind us) shot a wisecrack at him (paraphrased): “So you are also training to be a Sadhu?” The general reference is to sadhu’s barefoot walking and the specific reference (highlighted by the use of ‘also’) is to the fact that my mother’s only nephew is also going to become one next year! My father shot back almost instantly (in Marwari, as was the original question), “के Ke कराँ karaan, कोई koi भावना bhaawana भायाँ bhaayaan बिना bina ही hi बैरा baira ली li!” This is hilarious in a Sketchbook-ish way, let me explain why. The humour comes from the facts that a explicit reference to the sandals was never made and his reply (which basically means, ‘someone stole them!’) is brimming with sadhu references! ‘भावना भाना’ is a verb meaning to inform the sadhus what one is going to offer them and ‘बैरा लेना’ refers to the physical act of accepting by the sadhus. So literally, the reply translates to, “…, someone accepted without us offering!” (I never quite ‘believed’ my mother telling me once in a while that my father is a good writer but after this short exchange, that has changed to: I quite ‘believe’ her now!) Anyway, after two more days, we left for

Bikaner (in transit): Had never seen ‘so many’ foreigners / tourists in this part of India(?).

SDGH to Bikaner

New Delhi (in transit:) Once more but not the last yet! This time also (like last year), I was summoned by the Customs Office but the one interviewing me was confused when I said I was going to

Kathmandu (2-days stay): This was more of a transit than a stay because we were not done with visiting India yet! So after two days, we left for

BKN to DEL to Kathmandu

Biratnagar (in transit): ‘Fearing’ the land customs officers, I did not take my laptop with me on this trip to

KTM to Biratnagar

Forbesganj (4-days stay): Amazingly, no one bothered us on both sides of the border and the trip!

BIR to Forbesganj

This was also a ‘spiritual’ trip and by the end of it, I was starting to get bored. But there were a few distractions that helped me to carry on like meeting a few relatives that I’d never met before (or had met ages ago) but had only heard of. Also, there was a debate (topic is irrelevant) organized by the ‘जैन Jain महिला Mahila मण्डल Mandal (Jain Women Council?)’ where there were quite a few ‘good’ participants. But listening to them throwing in ‘common’ English words in a ‘formal’ Hindi event, irritated and embarrassed me so much (was referring to their oratory skills earlier, not their vocabulary!) that I came to a ‘profound’ conclusion: “Uttering English words every now and then in a formal Hindi event, doesn’t show you know English; it shows you do not know Hindi!” Apparently, my mother disagrees… We started our journey back with a resounding flat tyre (once-in-a-lifetime event!) to

Biratnagar (1-night stay!): We were back in Biratnagar at my (eldest) uncle’s house and we were joined by ‘them’. They will be introduced in the next (and last) part of this series! For now, check out all the photos (or a carefully sampled set) of my India Tour 2010.

To be continued…

TO and FRO… (I)

Stony Brook (3^rd Oct): This is going to be more or less a geography lesson but I’ll throw in some interesting stuff as we move along!

Abu Dhabi (in transit): The airport’s terminal 3 has 60-something PC terminals with free internet access!

SB to Abu Dhabi

New Delhi (in transit): There’s a free shuttle service from international (T3) to domestic terminals and vice versa!

AUH to New Delhi

Nagpur (4-days stay): Stayed with my Didi; ate lots of sweets every single day; bought some clothes; slept more than necessary; enjoyed the time but did not take any photos!

DEL to Nagpur

Back to New Delhi: Rendezvous with my parents (who arrived from Kathmandu) at the domestic terminal to go to

Bhilwara (in transit): I did not know that we were now in Rajasthan!

NAG to DEL to Bhilwara

Amet (5-days stay): Surprisingly, it was not that hot even when the temperatures were supposed to be between 30-35°C!

BHL to Amet

As an appetizer to what happened here and what will happen next, check these out.

To be continued…

Happy Diwali / Deepawali

It has been 8 years since I’ve been at home for Diwali – the festival of Sweets & Fireworks (for me at least, others usually say festival of lights & sounds!).

Now, people may ask: “So how was this year’s Diwali like?” and I’ve one word for them: ‘Lackluster’! This word should rightly convey the message that I did not get to light any fireworks! They are quite rightly ‘banned’ in Nepal but this year (compared to 8 years ago) was ridiculous. I could only rarely hear fireworks exploding around me after sunset. Even at night, when all the rites / rituals / prayers (associated with the goddess of wealth – Lakshmi) were done with (around 8PM), I could hear only the sounds of a few ‘harmless’ crackers going off here and there and could see the lights of a few ‘flower pots’ blooming once in a while from my house’s roof. I did not see any aerial displays of fireworks during my stay on the roof for about half an hour. I really wanted to test out the ‘Fireworks’ mode of the camera! Lastly, when I tried to sleep (after 10PM), I could actually sleep without the ‘sounds’ of Diwali’10 ‘piercing’ my ears!

Due to such a shortage of real fireworks, I had to make myself content with burning Camphor on a betel leaf in the ‘Aarti Plate’ shown in the picture above and the virtual fireworks of

Sketchbook ~Full Color’s~ Ep-03

Bugs, Bugs Everywhere!

Once more, walking in the footsteps of Nagisa Kurihara,

I bring you three snapshots of different (species? of) bugs!

Disclaimer: I assume no responsibility for your humiliation arising from the serious use of the bugs’ identification I’ve provided as a tooltip text (the text which appears when you hover over the photos).

For better identification, you should indulge in some

Study of Bugs

What is !Love?

The correct way to read the title is, “What Is NOT Love? !!!”. The title is inspired by the third sher (couplet) below. It is mandatory for me to include a link to this post here for those who are reading posts like these for the first time. This ensures that they get used to the format incorporated in these ‘special’ posts dedicated to (translated) Sher(s) / Ghazal(s). (Who am I kidding? But at least such ramblings increase the word count of my posts! )

Here’s a Ghazal by none other than the greatest of them all (modulo the degeneracies!), the Great Dr. Waseem Barelvi:

जीते हैं किरदार नहीं है,

नाव तो है, पतवार नहीं है!

Jeete hain kirdaar nahin hai,

Naav to hai, patwaar nahin hai!

Alive with no character,

Boat’s here, but no oars!

I may have misunderstood the sher or in my attempt to keep the translation brief, I may have distorted the original meaning beyond recognition!

कोई नज़र पे भार नहीं है,

राह में अब दीवार नहीं है|

Koi nazar pe bhaar nahin hai,

Raah mein ab diwaar nahin hai|

Sight is no longer muddled,

Road has no more walls.

I’m not sure even of the original sher (actually the word ‘भार bhaar’ in the first line), forget the translation… though, the second line is accurate!

खोना पाना मैं क्या जानूँ?

प्यार है, कारोबार नहीं है!

Khona paana main kya jaanun?

Pyaar hai, kaarobaar nahin hai!

Why consider gain or loss?

It’s Love, not a Business!

This is the sher I love (and understand) the most in this Ghazal and I’m proud of its translation. However, I would like to insert ‘I’ in the translated version since the original one has ‘मैं main’!

सजदा वहाँ एक सर की वर्जिश,

सर पे जहां तलवार नहीं है|

Sajda wahaan ek sar ki warjish,

Sar pe jahaan talwaar nahin hai|

Exercising mind bows down,

Without swords over heads.

Ignore this translation… I am not even sure I can explain the meaning of this sher in one full paragraph! (If you understand Hindi, watch the video below and form your own opinion about its meaning!)

जहनों में दीवार ना हो तो,

मिलना कोई दूसवार नहीं है|

Jahanon mein diwaar na ho to,

Milna koi duswaar nahin hai|

If consciousness is not walled,

It’s not difficult to rendezvous.

मैं भी कुछ ऐसी दूर नहीं हूँ,

तू भी समंदर पार नहीं है!

Main bhi kuch aisi dur nahin hun,

Tu bhi samandar paar nahin hai!

Neither am I that distant,

Nor you across the seas!

These last two shers are to be read together since WB recited them together. I love these shers as much as the third one and am also somewhat proud of their translations!

-वसीम बरेलवी (Waseem Barelvi)

वसीम बरेलवी (Waseem Barelvi)

I also acknowledge some help in translating these shers from a friend who goes by the name DQ in our coterie. So now that you know what is NOT Love, make yourself ‘worldly wise’ by indulging in some of DQ’s

HYPERBOLE