Artificial intelligence came another step closer to reality on this Sunday after a computer came within five percent of passing the Turing Test which evaluates a system’s ability to demonstrate intelligence.
The test is named after mathematician Alan Turing, who in a 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” proposed that the machine can be considered intelligent if enough people cannot reliably differentiate between a human and a machine during a natural language conversation. To pass the test, a computer should hoodwink a minimum 30 percent of the human judges.
At the annual Loebner Prize competition at the University of Reading on Sunday, one system, dubbed Elbot, managed the most successful score yet when it fooled 25 percent of the judges.
Five computer systems were pitted against five judges on Sunday. They were each given five minutes of unrestricted conversation through a terminal to decide which of the entities they were talking to was a human and a machine.
Will Pavia, one of the five judges, wrote in The Times of his simultaneous conversations with the computers and fellow-judges.
Here is an example of the conversation:
Pavia wrote: Are you the human or the computer?
Reply on one terminal: What do you think?
Reply on another terminal: Some of my friends are programmers.
Would you be able to say which if the replies was from a computer and which from a judge? Keep thinking.
Pavia finally guessed correctly that he was talking to a computer when in reply to his question on Sarah Palin - US presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate - the terminal flashed: “Sorry, don’t know her”. “No sentient being could possibly answer in this way,” Pavia concluded.
The Loebner Prize was created by American businessman Hugh Loebner in 1990 together with the Cambridge Centre for Behavioural Studies, and is an annual competition offering a grand prize of $100,000 and a gold medal to the first computer to win the Turing Test.
Professor Kevin Warwick, of the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, said: “Although the machines aren’t yet good enough to fool all of the people all of the time, they are certainly at the stage of fooling some of the people some of the time.”
“Today’s results actually show a more complex story than a straight pass or fail by one machine. Where the machines were identified correctly by the human interrogators as machines, the conversational abilities of each machine was scored at 80 and 90 percent.”
Which only means computers are getting better and better in conversing with ease with human beings, gradually reducing the divide between machine and man.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
All About Navaratri
The Blessed Festival Of Navaratri is here...!!!!
The Navaratri is a festival of the Hindus, considered to be very holy and auspicious... Extremely powerful Poojas and Homas are done all across India...
It is said to be a time of celebration within... and without..
For the spiritually inclined, it is a time to meditate, celebrate and rejoice within....
For the party-animals, it is a totally different kind of treat....
The time for Garba, Dandia - Ras.... Time to experience and celebrate the Divine within through blissfull dance....
(please click on the pictures to see their magnified, readable versions..)
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Jokes
Here are some jokes that had me rolling on the floor with laughter... bit adult but I think the readers (if any!) have already been warned of the probable adult content on my blog...
Talking Italian
A bus in Japan stops and two Italian men get on. They seat themselves, and engage in animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores their conversation at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:
''Emma come first. I come. Dennis come and Dennis come again. I come again. Two asses, they come together again. I come again and pee twice. Then I come once-a-more.''
''You foul-mouthed swine,'' retorted the lady indignantly. ''In this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public.''
''Hey, coola down lady,'' said the man. ''Imma just tella my friend howa to spella Mississippi...''
Viagra Robbery
Our local drugstore was robbed of 500 bottles of Viagra. The suspect is known to be a hardened criminal!
Glazed over
A cop pulls over a guy. "Your eyes are awfully red. Have you been drinking?" "Gee, officer," the man says. "Your eyes are awfully glazed -- have you been eating doughnuts?"
Wrestlemania
Three Americans were up against a very large Russian in a wrestling meet. They were nervous because he had a famous move called "The Russian Pretzel," which often landed his opponents in the hospital.
When the first American caught a glimpse of him, he said, "Coach, he's HUGE. I'm scared."
The coach replied, "You da MAN! Just go in there and tear him up!"
The guy started the match quite confidently, but after about a minute, the Russian picked him up, slammed him into the famous pretzel, and sent him to the emergency room.
The same thing happened to the second wrestler, so the third guy was petrified. He told his coach he was backing out.
The coach said, "C'mon, son. You're our last chance!"
The kid started out pretty well, but when the Russian started to twist him into the pretzel, the coach covered his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the referee holding the American's hand up in victory. The coach, baffled, asked the kid how he did it.
"Well Coach, when that damn Russian picked me up and started twisting my body, it HURT! So when I saw two red things dangling there, I bit them... HARD! You'd be surprised what you can do when you bite your own nuts!"
When the first American caught a glimpse of him, he said, "Coach, he's HUGE. I'm scared."
The coach replied, "You da MAN! Just go in there and tear him up!"
The guy started the match quite confidently, but after about a minute, the Russian picked him up, slammed him into the famous pretzel, and sent him to the emergency room.
The same thing happened to the second wrestler, so the third guy was petrified. He told his coach he was backing out.
The coach said, "C'mon, son. You're our last chance!"
The kid started out pretty well, but when the Russian started to twist him into the pretzel, the coach covered his eyes. When he opened them, he saw the referee holding the American's hand up in victory. The coach, baffled, asked the kid how he did it.
"Well Coach, when that damn Russian picked me up and started twisting my body, it HURT! So when I saw two red things dangling there, I bit them... HARD! You'd be surprised what you can do when you bite your own nuts!"
The Perfect Husband
Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker- function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen.
MAN: "Hello"WOMAN: "Honey, it's me. Are you at the club?"
MAN: "Hello"WOMAN: "Honey, it's me. Are you at the club?"
MAN: "Yes."
WOMAN: "I'm at the mall now and found this beautiful leather coat. It's only $1,000. Is it OK if I buy it?"
MAN: "Sure, go ahead if you like it that much."
WOMAN: "I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2007 models. I saw one I really liked."
MAN: "How much?"
WOMAN: "$65,000."
MAN: "OK, but for that price I want it with all the options."
WOMAN: "Great! Oh, and one more thing. The house we wanted last year is back on the market. They're asking $950,000."
MAN: "Well, then go ahead and give them an offer, but just offer $900,000."
WOMAN: "OK. I'll see you later! I love you!"
MAN: "Bye, I love you, too."
The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are looking at him in astonishment. Then he smiles and asks: "Anyone know whose phone this is?"
The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are looking at him in astonishment. Then he smiles and asks: "Anyone know whose phone this is?"
Chicken & Egg
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face. The egg is frowning and looking very frustrated.
The egg mutters, to no one in particular, "Well, I guess we answered THAT question!"
The egg mutters, to no one in particular, "Well, I guess we answered THAT question!"
Ex-Lax, Don't Do It
Why are men like laxatives?
Because they irritate the crap out of you!
Because they irritate the crap out of you!
Not-So-Dumb Blonde
One day a blonde is sitting on a plane next to one of those annoying, pushy businessmen. He asks her if she would like to play a game. She politely declines, but the man explains the game to her anyway.
He says, "It goes like this: I will ask you a question and if you get it wrong you will give me $5, and vice-versa."
She says no again, and tries to fall asleep.
The man tries harder, saying, "Aw, come on. I'll give you $50 for each question. Or how about $500?"
At that number, the blonde agrees.
The businessman explains again, "If you get my question wrong you give me $5. And when you ask the question, and I get it wrong, I will pay you $500.
"Got it," she replies.
He asks, "Who was the sixth president?" She admits she doesn't know and gives him $5.
Now it's her turn, and she says, "What has purple legs, five arms and only two yellow teeth?"
The businessman doesn't know - he uses his laptop, checks the Internet, e-mails his friends. No one knows the answer. So he gives her $500.00.
Then, as they're landing he asks her, "What was that thing anyway?"
She thinks a few minutes, hands him $5 and walks off the plane.
He says, "It goes like this: I will ask you a question and if you get it wrong you will give me $5, and vice-versa."
She says no again, and tries to fall asleep.
The man tries harder, saying, "Aw, come on. I'll give you $50 for each question. Or how about $500?"
At that number, the blonde agrees.
The businessman explains again, "If you get my question wrong you give me $5. And when you ask the question, and I get it wrong, I will pay you $500.
"Got it," she replies.
He asks, "Who was the sixth president?" She admits she doesn't know and gives him $5.
Now it's her turn, and she says, "What has purple legs, five arms and only two yellow teeth?"
The businessman doesn't know - he uses his laptop, checks the Internet, e-mails his friends. No one knows the answer. So he gives her $500.00.
Then, as they're landing he asks her, "What was that thing anyway?"
She thinks a few minutes, hands him $5 and walks off the plane.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
My Birthday & Engineers' Day (in India)
Today is my birthday...
And coincidentally it coincides with engineer's day in India... :)
And coincidentally it coincides with engineer's day in India... :)
Saturday, June 14, 2008
My YES!+ TTC invite :-) B-)
I received a invitation to attend The Art Of Living Teachers' Training Course today... A day that I've been waiting for so many years now....
I could have waited till eternity.., or even till the next Life..., to become an AOL teacher..... but Nature had other plans... I got it in this Life only..!! :-D I'm sure by this date next month, I'm gonna be an AOL teacher!!!
I have seen this sense of Lion-like self-esteem in very few people in this world.... It is supposed to be uncool, impractical, hypocritical(and GOD knows what not..) to be genuinely associated with a social service, spiritual organization... I tell you, once somebody has actually experienced the sincere concern for this world, the society, and the Love-All attitude in the AOL people, even hardened antagonists will be forced to changed their opinions...
The Art Of Living has touched more than twenty million lives and spread to over 152 countries in a mere 25 years... Its Sudarshan Kriya has transformed the lives of millions across the world... Sudarshan Kriya has this power to flush out and heal all emotional and physical stresses and their negative repercussions... 17, 18, 19 February, 2006 saw the biggest gathering of people meditating together in the History of entire mankind - The Art Of Living Silver Jubilee Celebrations... some 1 million people meditated together on these three days ....
THE IMPACT - Some little-known(at least here in India - because we proudly lag behind the West in this - STRESS!) research institute keeps a daily record of "Worlds' Stress"... It surprisingly recorded its lowest ever reading in its history.... They traced it back to this particular event......
Guess this should be a reason enough for anyone reading this blog and not having done an Art Of Living course, to do ASAP!! :-) Just keep in mind that stress is more mental-emotional than physical - the end result being the same in both the cases... A NICELY BAKED MIND...!!!!!! :-D
Stress makes you crib, complain, angry, lazy, introverted, (over)aggressive, unfriendly, rude, wild, mad(genuinely:D), obsessive, LOSER....... The list is endless... So if you've ever experienced any of these... An Art Of Living workshop can work miracles for you.....
AND IFF, BY-ANY-CHANCE, you're young physically/at-heart and have not done YES!+... All I can say is.. "May GOD bless you - you have NO IDEA what F.U.N. you're missing in Life..."
I could have waited till eternity.., or even till the next Life..., to become an AOL teacher..... but Nature had other plans... I got it in this Life only..!! :-D I'm sure by this date next month, I'm gonna be an AOL teacher!!!
I have seen this sense of Lion-like self-esteem in very few people in this world.... It is supposed to be uncool, impractical, hypocritical(and GOD knows what not..) to be genuinely associated with a social service, spiritual organization... I tell you, once somebody has actually experienced the sincere concern for this world, the society, and the Love-All attitude in the AOL people, even hardened antagonists will be forced to changed their opinions...
The Art Of Living has touched more than twenty million lives and spread to over 152 countries in a mere 25 years... Its Sudarshan Kriya has transformed the lives of millions across the world... Sudarshan Kriya has this power to flush out and heal all emotional and physical stresses and their negative repercussions... 17, 18, 19 February, 2006 saw the biggest gathering of people meditating together in the History of entire mankind - The Art Of Living Silver Jubilee Celebrations... some 1 million people meditated together on these three days ....
THE IMPACT - Some little-known(at least here in India - because we proudly lag behind the West in this - STRESS!) research institute keeps a daily record of "Worlds' Stress"... It surprisingly recorded its lowest ever reading in its history.... They traced it back to this particular event......
Guess this should be a reason enough for anyone reading this blog and not having done an Art Of Living course, to do ASAP!! :-) Just keep in mind that stress is more mental-emotional than physical - the end result being the same in both the cases... A NICELY BAKED MIND...!!!!!! :-D
Stress makes you crib, complain, angry, lazy, introverted, (over)aggressive, unfriendly, rude, wild, mad(genuinely:D), obsessive, LOSER....... The list is endless... So if you've ever experienced any of these... An Art Of Living workshop can work miracles for you.....
AND IFF, BY-ANY-CHANCE, you're young physically/at-heart and have not done YES!+... All I can say is.. "May GOD bless you - you have NO IDEA what F.U.N. you're missing in Life..."
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
IBM Roadrunner - The Fastest Supercomputer!!!
The Roadrunner
IBM built the computer for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). It is a hybrid design with 12,960 IBM PowerXCell 8i CPUs and 6,912 AMD Opteron dual-core processors in specially designed TriBlades connected by Infiniband.
The Roadrunner uses the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system and is managed with xCATdistributed computing software. Roadrunner uses 3.9 megawatts of power, which is enough to power 39,000 100-watt light bulbs. It takes up 6,000 square feet, uses 57 miles of fiber optic cable and weighs in at 500,000 pounds. What is even more astounding, it uses enough power to bake 20,000 medium 4-topping pizzas per hour, navigate Yahoo for 3 weeks before becoming clogged with spam, porn and adware, and find truly interesting and useful content on AOL in under two weeks. An anticipated upgrade will give Roadrunner enough computing power to boot Microsoft Vista in two out of three attempts without crashing... It became operational in 2008... (Curious techies like me may try peeping into the numerous links I've provided for details.. ;-D)
DOE plans to use the computer for simulating how nuclear materials age and whether the aging nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States is safe and reliable. Other uses for the supercomputer include the sciences, financial, automotive and aerospace industries.
Roadrunner will be housed at NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory(DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration). The laboratory worked collaboratively with IBM, the manufacturer, for six years to deliver a novel computer architecture that can meet the nation’s evolving national security needs. The result has redefined the frontier of supercomputing, not only by crossing the one petaflop threshold, but also by introducing a new paradigm for the future.
Most nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile were produced anywhere from 30 to 40 years ago, and no new nuclear weapons have been produced since the end of the Cold War. Since US President George H.W. Bush ended underground nuclear testing in 1992, the U.S. has relied on science-based research and development to extend the lifetime of the current weapons in the stockpile. NNSA’s ability to model the extraordinary complexity of nuclear weapons systems is essential to maintaining confidence in the performance of the aging stockpile.
A “flop” is an acronym meaning floating-point operations per second. One petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second i.e. 1015(try putting 15 zeros after 1 and count the number.. :D) floating-point operations per second... To put this into perspective, if each of the 6 billion people on earth had a hand calculator and worked together on a calculation 24 hours per day, 365 days a year, it would take 46 years to do what Roadrunner would do in one day...!
But just an afterthought...While I agree this is a major accomplishment in the world of computing it seems to be a waste of an incredible tool. I am an IT professional and I am in awe of this computer, but to have the US government spending $100 billion to run more nuclear explosion simulations is irresponsible at best... With the gasoline prices skyrocketing, shouldn’t we be using this computer to help us figure out how and if we can make cold fusion work? Sounds like a lot of "good-use" of this computer to me....
ps: Credit again to Wikipedia and the various links on its Roadrunner page that gave me all the info I needed to create this post...
Saturday, June 7, 2008
The making of a fire-kiln: Playing with F.I.R.E.
This happened a long time ago in my ancestral village when I was about 10 years old... We had this gang of kids about my age and we were playing some game which required us to cook with "toy" utensils.. such as little kettles, ladles etc. Half way into the game we discovered that we were terminally short of certain utensils and there was no way the parents of any of us would give us the money needed to buy a new "kitchen-set"... So our game was in jeopardy...!
Gunjan, a very naughty local lad, decided to "offer his skills and resources" for the project and suggested we make our own from the mud we could easily dig from our orchard.. he even volunteered to get us the equipment needed to dig up the ground, mix the mud etc. as well as teach us how to make the utensils themselves, an art which he had learned from his minute observations of the village potter...
Sounded like a lot of adventure to us kids.., and in a couple of minutes all my minions(I was the gang leader - the naughtiest of all..) were busy digging furiously with me and Gunjan supervising the progress of the work... Finally, after a lot of dirt had been kicked-up(we had dug up more than half of the orchard..)... Gunjan decided that he had "enough mud" to build the utensils... So a couple of kids were sent off to fetch several pails of water from a nearby well... The gang got together and under Gunjan's supervision(my role in the act had not yet started..), we mixed enough mud and water to build the Wall of China... Effectively, we had turned the entire orchard into a little marsh.... Then we did a pretty good job at building life-sized utensils instead of those little toy ones... somewhere down the line we had decided to "actually cook" in those utensils....
The utensils were left out to dry and meanwhile we created more nuisance of ourselves by successfully launching a commando operation aimed at setting free our neighbor's herd of cows which then stormed through his courtyard out into the fields and with the poor guy chasing them around.... I was the leader of the operation with Gunjan playing second fiddle.. We had scrambled a ladder at the back of the cow shed, had entered the shed from an opening in the thatched roof, freed all the cows, tied a rope around the gate and yanked it open from the cowshed-roof lest we fell into the hands of the "enemy"... We then dispersed and ran into a huge bamboo grove that was supposed to be haunted... I'm sure the ghosts, if any, had fled when they saw our "battle group" advancing towards their hideout...
It was almost two hours and so we kids decided to go to our homes, quickly have lunch, or people would have been sent out on a search and destroy mission to hunt us down(we also had to provide alibis as an evidence of our innocence in operation holy-cows), and regroup in the orchard at the end of 60 minutes...
Sooo... we regrouped at the end of the hour and found that though the utensils had dried up well enough in the blistering June afternoon, we faced with another problem - a couple of girls in our gang attracted our attention to the fact that the "utensils" were unbaked and could not be used for cooking...!! Now it was my turn to take charge of the affairs... I told them that if baking is what is needed, we're going to bake them... But HOW??!! was the question... We thought of taking our stuff to the brick-kiln in the vicinity but there was a danger of the owner informing the families of one of us and that could land us into deep-$#!T... Also, it takes several days for a brick kiln to "open up" and we were in no mood to put off the adventure until then... So we decided to build our own.. right in the middle of the orchard where we had already dug up a gorge of sorts - we only needed to dig it a little deeper....
Gunjan helped me with a few "design optimizations" which enabled us to do away with the need of a chimney, to build which, we didn't have the necessary "technological advancement"... We got our minions to dig up the hole deeper and lo! our kiln was ready!!! Next was the issue of "fuel" to get the kiln going... So each of us stole some coal from his house, coupled with some firewood.. we were still short of firewood, so ventured into the nearby fields which were stacked with freshly harvested crop awaiting sifting... The entire area around the orchard(as well as the orchard itself..) was an arsonist's heaven.. and we were about to turn into really dangerous ones!!
The firewood and the coal was stacked tightly into our kiln and the utensils placed at strategic locations... Gunjan did the honors of "lighting the fire" with a matchbox he had thoughtfully acquired from his home...A strong Loo(a searing hot wind that blows in summers in North India..) was blowing from the direction of our kiln towards the closest field, which, well.. had not yet been harvested, was dry and was perfect "firewood".. We were smiling....
In a couple of minutes the coals attained a reddish glow.., and despite being "tough" kids, we were beginning to "feel the heat"... The fire had turned from the size of a kitchen fire to that of a Holi-Bonfire touching the lower leaves of the mango tree above it... to make matters worse, The #@^&* Loo was carrying burning splinters straight towards the unharvested wheat field... Thick, black smoke was billowing from the top of the fire - which was grazing the lowest leaves of the mango tree above it and fast turning into the funeral pyre of our cherished utensils...
Me and Gunjan were staring aghast at each other and the rest of our gang was looking at us with doubtful eyes, questioning our worthiness as their "able" leaders....
Then I shouted, "Quick! Run!! Every man for his Life... Hide just anywhere and don't-dare-tell-anyone-we-did-it...". It was the best commons-sense crisis management I've ever done!! "Help" was pouring in fast from corners of the village - the word was out - "The orchard is on fire... Save the crops at all costs!"
We all ran and disappeared into weird places... I clambered up high on a very tall mango tree till no one could have seen me from below... Gunjan went and hid himself in the attic of the cowshed we had stormed earlier in the morning.. it backfired very badly as his folks knew very well that he hides there quite often... was nabbed... And you can easily imagine what followed... his grandfather was a cane-brandishing school headmaster, and his father a similar maths teacher....
But even to this date, I am proud of my fidayeens who participated in our misadventure: "Revolutionaries if unsuccessful, are declared traitors!!!" - nobody revealed(all) the names of their other "accomplices" so everybody in the village had a different story to tell... even ghosts of the nearby bamboo shrub were held responsible - with one person claiming to have seen a lady-wearing-a-black-Saree near the bush an hour before the disaster...
I was perched precariously atop the top-branches of my mango tree... I was feeling like an Avian... The fire below was finally put out by the people of the nearby houses - I was glad that I-did-no-crime-ultimately... I stayed there until it began to get dark near the top shoots of the tree enjoying the cool shade, eating raw mangoes, hitting any birds who came to munch on the mangoes around... By then, another trouble had come up(at least for my family..)... "I" was untraceable... Rumors were I had "burned" in the fire, abducted by the witch-in-the-black-Saree and so on... My maternal uncle was a man of logic - he was about to inform the police... Just then I walked in, with a hanging face... Everybody gathered around me, taking turns at hugging and petting me.... I was ready with another cooked up story... "I had followed that lady-in-black to a far off Shiva temple where she suddenly vanished and I had been lost until I found my way back....."
Gunjan, a very naughty local lad, decided to "offer his skills and resources" for the project and suggested we make our own from the mud we could easily dig from our orchard.. he even volunteered to get us the equipment needed to dig up the ground, mix the mud etc. as well as teach us how to make the utensils themselves, an art which he had learned from his minute observations of the village potter...
Sounded like a lot of adventure to us kids.., and in a couple of minutes all my minions(I was the gang leader - the naughtiest of all..) were busy digging furiously with me and Gunjan supervising the progress of the work... Finally, after a lot of dirt had been kicked-up(we had dug up more than half of the orchard..)... Gunjan decided that he had "enough mud" to build the utensils... So a couple of kids were sent off to fetch several pails of water from a nearby well... The gang got together and under Gunjan's supervision(my role in the act had not yet started..), we mixed enough mud and water to build the Wall of China... Effectively, we had turned the entire orchard into a little marsh.... Then we did a pretty good job at building life-sized utensils instead of those little toy ones... somewhere down the line we had decided to "actually cook" in those utensils....
The utensils were left out to dry and meanwhile we created more nuisance of ourselves by successfully launching a commando operation aimed at setting free our neighbor's herd of cows which then stormed through his courtyard out into the fields and with the poor guy chasing them around.... I was the leader of the operation with Gunjan playing second fiddle.. We had scrambled a ladder at the back of the cow shed, had entered the shed from an opening in the thatched roof, freed all the cows, tied a rope around the gate and yanked it open from the cowshed-roof lest we fell into the hands of the "enemy"... We then dispersed and ran into a huge bamboo grove that was supposed to be haunted... I'm sure the ghosts, if any, had fled when they saw our "battle group" advancing towards their hideout...
It was almost two hours and so we kids decided to go to our homes, quickly have lunch, or people would have been sent out on a search and destroy mission to hunt us down(we also had to provide alibis as an evidence of our innocence in operation holy-cows), and regroup in the orchard at the end of 60 minutes...
Sooo... we regrouped at the end of the hour and found that though the utensils had dried up well enough in the blistering June afternoon, we faced with another problem - a couple of girls in our gang attracted our attention to the fact that the "utensils" were unbaked and could not be used for cooking...!! Now it was my turn to take charge of the affairs... I told them that if baking is what is needed, we're going to bake them... But HOW??!! was the question... We thought of taking our stuff to the brick-kiln in the vicinity but there was a danger of the owner informing the families of one of us and that could land us into deep-$#!T... Also, it takes several days for a brick kiln to "open up" and we were in no mood to put off the adventure until then... So we decided to build our own.. right in the middle of the orchard where we had already dug up a gorge of sorts - we only needed to dig it a little deeper....
Gunjan helped me with a few "design optimizations" which enabled us to do away with the need of a chimney, to build which, we didn't have the necessary "technological advancement"... We got our minions to dig up the hole deeper and lo! our kiln was ready!!! Next was the issue of "fuel" to get the kiln going... So each of us stole some coal from his house, coupled with some firewood.. we were still short of firewood, so ventured into the nearby fields which were stacked with freshly harvested crop awaiting sifting... The entire area around the orchard(as well as the orchard itself..) was an arsonist's heaven.. and we were about to turn into really dangerous ones!!
The firewood and the coal was stacked tightly into our kiln and the utensils placed at strategic locations... Gunjan did the honors of "lighting the fire" with a matchbox he had thoughtfully acquired from his home...A strong Loo(a searing hot wind that blows in summers in North India..) was blowing from the direction of our kiln towards the closest field, which, well.. had not yet been harvested, was dry and was perfect "firewood".. We were smiling....
In a couple of minutes the coals attained a reddish glow.., and despite being "tough" kids, we were beginning to "feel the heat"... The fire had turned from the size of a kitchen fire to that of a Holi-Bonfire touching the lower leaves of the mango tree above it... to make matters worse, The #@^&* Loo was carrying burning splinters straight towards the unharvested wheat field... Thick, black smoke was billowing from the top of the fire - which was grazing the lowest leaves of the mango tree above it and fast turning into the funeral pyre of our cherished utensils...
Me and Gunjan were staring aghast at each other and the rest of our gang was looking at us with doubtful eyes, questioning our worthiness as their "able" leaders....
Then I shouted, "Quick! Run!! Every man for his Life... Hide just anywhere and don't-dare-tell-anyone-we-did-it...". It was the best commons-sense crisis management I've ever done!! "Help" was pouring in fast from corners of the village - the word was out - "The orchard is on fire... Save the crops at all costs!"
We all ran and disappeared into weird places... I clambered up high on a very tall mango tree till no one could have seen me from below... Gunjan went and hid himself in the attic of the cowshed we had stormed earlier in the morning.. it backfired very badly as his folks knew very well that he hides there quite often... was nabbed... And you can easily imagine what followed... his grandfather was a cane-brandishing school headmaster, and his father a similar maths teacher....
But even to this date, I am proud of my fidayeens who participated in our misadventure: "Revolutionaries if unsuccessful, are declared traitors!!!" - nobody revealed(all) the names of their other "accomplices" so everybody in the village had a different story to tell... even ghosts of the nearby bamboo shrub were held responsible - with one person claiming to have seen a lady-wearing-a-black-Saree near the bush an hour before the disaster...
I was perched precariously atop the top-branches of my mango tree... I was feeling like an Avian... The fire below was finally put out by the people of the nearby houses - I was glad that I-did-no-crime-ultimately... I stayed there until it began to get dark near the top shoots of the tree enjoying the cool shade, eating raw mangoes, hitting any birds who came to munch on the mangoes around... By then, another trouble had come up(at least for my family..)... "I" was untraceable... Rumors were I had "burned" in the fire, abducted by the witch-in-the-black-Saree and so on... My maternal uncle was a man of logic - he was about to inform the police... Just then I walked in, with a hanging face... Everybody gathered around me, taking turns at hugging and petting me.... I was ready with another cooked up story... "I had followed that lady-in-black to a far off Shiva temple where she suddenly vanished and I had been lost until I found my way back....."
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Techies' Moments!!!
Microsoft "Options"
MS Excel...
My ideal bootleg...
IRC Keyboard
Techie Lingo!!!
Cyber Mom!Keep Laughing!!!
Mrigank :-D
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
"On Dealing with "Rogue" Swamis"
My spiritual master or Guru(as we call them in India..) H.H. Sri Sri Ravishankar (I call Him Guruji..) recently wrote an article was published in various parts in many newspapers around the country... however not one newspaper published it in its entirety... probably because it also talks about the gimmicks played by the media as a part of their publicity stunts.... I don't like to edit anything Guruji says :) so here it is, complete and unabridged, at Bawa's blog... please follow the link below... makes a very interesting read!! :-)
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
NASA's Phoenix Spacecraft Lands At Martian Arctic Site
May 25, 2008 -- NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander's robotic arm.
Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light..
Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The scientists conducting the mission will use instruments aboard the Phoenix lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there. The multi-agency program is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA. The program is a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the aerospace industry.
Phoenix launched on August 4, 2007, and landed at 23:38 Orbiter UTC on May 25, 2008 in Mars' water-ice-rich northern polar region of Vastitas Borealis at 68.2°N 234.3°W. It will now use its robotic arm to dig into the arctic terrain. Phoenix is the sixth successful Mars lander and the first since Viking 1 & 2 in 1976 to use powered descent.
During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels during the spacecraft's cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries will provide electricity until the lander's own pair of solar arrays spread open.
Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.
Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.
Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light..
Phoenix is a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The scientists conducting the mission will use instruments aboard the Phoenix lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there. The multi-agency program is headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA. The program is a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the aerospace industry.
Phoenix launched on August 4, 2007, and landed at 23:38 Orbiter UTC on May 25, 2008 in Mars' water-ice-rich northern polar region of Vastitas Borealis at 68.2°N 234.3°W. It will now use its robotic arm to dig into the arctic terrain. Phoenix is the sixth successful Mars lander and the first since Viking 1 & 2 in 1976 to use powered descent.
During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels during the spacecraft's cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries will provide electricity until the lander's own pair of solar arrays spread open.
Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.
Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.
Rock strewn surface imaged by Mars Pathfinder
Cryoturbation polygons due to the Martian permafrost.
A labeled look at NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.
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