Journey of the Journeyman

Interesting Warren Buffet video on his views on the financial crisis.

As I was telling you earlier, I conducted a Quiz at the GE Research Center in Bangalore, where I also work. So here are the questions. This is best viewed in "fullscreen" mode.

When I enter a bookstore, I am like the proverbial child in a candy store. And knowing this, my sister gave me a Rs. 1500 grant (Read b’day gift vouchers) at Crossword. Here’s what I bought. Now I have to print my name on these with a green pen. And read them.

I have never read Tom Peters’ work. Dilly-dallied with this for while, but the sheer energy of the book got to me at last.
From the title, looks like another run-of-the-mill management book. But under closer scrutiny, something inside me said "There’s a lot you can learn here, sonny"
Unbelievable poetry.
I love McCormack’s old school thoughts. No emails, he talks about ‘memos’ !
When I don’t know whether I should buy a book, I open up a page at random and read it end to end. If I feel held, I buy it.
Tired of reading biographies of people who made a lot of money

Yesterday, I conducted a quiz at work. Over 60 enthusiasts turned up and I was just at the brink or running out of prelims question sheets. Lazy Shourya needs some time to put up the questions of the final round (all pictures), but here are the questions from the written prelims. See how many you can crack (without googling) ! Answers in a later post.

1. The book, “The Education of Henry Adams” topped the Random House list of 100 best Non Fiction Books of the 20^th century. Name the Author.
   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
2. The unit used to measure stellar distances, equal to 3.259 light years is
   _ _ _ _ _ _
3. Emil Adolf von Behring won the first Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1901 for serum therapy against which disease ? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
4. Shawn Fanning wrote a computer program while attending Boston NorthEastern University which later put him on the cover of Wired magazine and a cameo appearance in the film, The Italian Job, What’s the program he wrote ?
   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
5. Which Indian religio-political leader, hailed as Guruji said, “Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for use in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.” __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
6. In the Mahabharata, Bheema was Ghatotkacha’s father. Who was his mother ?  _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _
7. Sridevi debuted as a child actress in which 1975 Hindi movie about Hindu-Christian intercaste marriage? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
8. Alexander Pushkin’s play that was made into the 8-Oscar winning movie “Amadeus” by Milos Forman is about Mozart and his alleged murderer, also a famous composer. Who ? __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
9. I have been named the 68^th best dressed person alongside Brad Pitt and David Beckham by the Vanity Fair magazine. Along with Tony Blair, I am the acknowledged inspiration behind Dominic Greene, villain of the Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace”. As the President of my country, I once said, igniting much controversy, that my nation “has never exploited an African nation”. Who am I ? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
10. Dialog from which movie ? _ _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __  _ Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn’t mean that they are not safe.
    Raymond: QANTAS. QANTAS never crashed.
    Charlie: QANTAS?
    Raymond: Never crashed.
    Charlie: Oh that’s gonna do me a lot of good because QANTAS doesn’t fly to Los Angeles out of Cincinnati, you have to get to Melbourne! Melbourne, Australia in order to get the plane that flies to Los Angeles!
11. I played test cricket for England. I have been called the “Black Prince of Cricketers” & was awarded the Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1897. Who am I ? _ _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
12. 12. Which invention of Dr. Leo Baekeland is designated the “ACS National Historical Chemical Landmark” as the world’s first synthetic plastic ?
    _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
13. French President, Charles De Gaulle said, “No country without an
    _ _ _ _       _ _ _ _ _     could properly consider itself independent.”
    (2 words)

Jeff Atwood, in his blog mentions this concept.

Perhaps what we need is a model of software accretion. Start
with a tiny fragment of code that does almost nothing. Look on the
bright side — code that does nothing can’t have many bugs! Test it,
and check it in. Add one more small feature. Test that feature, and
check it in. Add another small feature. Test that, and check it
in. Daily. Hourly, even. You always have functional software. It may
not do much, but it runs. And with every checkin it becomes
infinitesimally more functional.

As a model, it sounds quite OK, but I wonder how far this is practicable in complex systems.

September 3rd, we celebrated Ganesha Chaturthi in a different way. Maui and I went over to Sweet Chariot, bought a “Happy Birthday” butterscotch cake; my wife dekkoed up an idol we had with small tidbit streamers and aromatherapy candles.

In attendance, as special guest, was Swiper, the sneaky fox who, I think wanted to swipe the cake ! But we all managed to shout in unison, “Swiper, no swiping !”, and that encouraged the naughty fox to behave.

My wife did notice, later, though that the slice of cake that had been offered to Lord Ganesha, had mysteriously shrunken in size. Was it the Lord himself ? Swiper ? Or somebody else ?

Over the weekend, I was writing some code in Ruby — cracking some programming puzzles to keep my brain working. One puzzle was to write to a program that displays LCD style numbers at adjustable sizes.

Sunday morning, it took me about an hour and a half to write a solution and it was 1469 bytes. Then I read that somebody had done this under 300 bytes !!

Suddenly, the challenge got to me — it bit me hard. Pretty much , rest of the day, I toiled over this problem. Tried every trick I could think of to eat away at the bytes. Kind of an obsessive thing — I even went to the shoe-store with my wife shopping for (her) shoes and me sitting in the middle of the shop with a laptop trying to squeeze out bytes.

Its 1:52 AM now, and I have cracked the challenge ! My code is 299 bytes.

The situation at home being a bit tense. I just got a phone call from my wife who is supposed to be sleeping in the other room. It was a terse “Wont you sleep?”

Anyway, I am a happy guy. As I maintain, there are only a handful of other pleasures that can equal the end of a hard day getting a piece of code to work.

The code is in Ruby and is heavily golfed (obfuscated). 299 bytes. 5 lines, each less than 80 characters. This is perfectly legal Ruby code. Reminds me of a favourite excuse of lazy-me avoiding code comments, “If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read”.

Click on the image for a better resolution.

This is how the output looks like.

Can your favourite programming language do this under 300 bytes ?

BrainLab AG, a German vendor, has come up with a Digital Lightbox. This has got a touchscreen with some basic functionality such as ROI measurement, zoom-pan etc. Could not help but wonder what amazing applications one can think of if we marry this with the Microsoft Surface platform.

 Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
 domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
 dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
    and action–
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

– Rabindranath Tagore, from the poem “Where the Mind is without Fear”, Gitanjali

Happy One Year Anniversary, O Blog, My Keeper of Dreams.

15th August. Today is India’s Independence Day. Exactly a year ago, I started writing this blog. How quickly time passes, or how slowly, depending on whether you are enduring excruciating pain or enjoying unfathomable happiness. And down that inexorable passage of time, the Journeyman continues. The road’s been beautiful. Ask not where it leads.