XKCD alt+tab about wikipedia

Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

Interesting observation !....

To quote Wikipedia  about Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language

Most of the time Wikipedia's first sentence about anything is about its definition, its origin, its usage. The first hyper link eventually is a common noun. If the clicking goes on it eventually get classified as science, mathematics, music, finance, language and so on. And all these happen to point "Philosophy".

Jenga in Ideal world!

Jenga tops my list of doing things socially. Jenga, a "sequential-consequential" (i named it for fun) game that can be played with 2 or more players. During the game players take turn to remove a block from a tower and keep it at the top to make it taller and increasingly unstable. 

 

John Nash would say that the game is flawed. A bunch of nerds could easily figure out the winner's position and they will fight for that. But hey..there's an assumption .  It assumes the players have steady hand and a collapse happens because of lack of remaining move for stable tower. Least to state, The uniform shape of blocks to millimeter accuracy is also assumed. 

From wikipedia:

Uri Zwick has analyzed the game using techniques of combinatorial game theory, under the assumption that players have perfectly steady hands and so the game only ends when a player is forced to collapse the tower through lack of any remaining move which would leave it in a stable state. In a two-player game starting with a tower of n ≥ 4 layers, the first player can win if and only if n is not divisible by 3

Pirates of the silicon valley

Fire in the Valley: The making of personal computers

Almost 400 pages of demonstration of emergence in silicon valley of personal computer market. The book was first written in 1999 but it has updated itself to pass the test of time. A must read book, i would say.

Though a movie titled "Pirates of the silicon valley" is there for the ones who don't like reading books.

 

How to fix computer - The Oatmeal

 

Animals' reactions to being placed inside a cardboard

God of small things

When she finished graduation school, she won admission into a mediocre college of engineering for post graduation. It wasn’t the outcome of any serious interest in engineering. Nor even, in fact, of a superficial one. She just happened to have applied to the university, and happened to get through. The staff were impressed by the size (enormous), rather than the originality, of her design ideas and programming skills. The carelessness and recklessness were mistaken for confidence, though in truth, she was no brain.

She spent eight years in college without finishing on a job note.The fees were low and it wasn’t hard to scratch out a living, staying in the hostel,eating in the subsidized student mess, rarely going to class, working instead as a researcher in gloomy university research facility that exploited cheap student labor. The other students, particularly the boys, were intimidated by her waywardness and almost fierce lack of ambition. They left her alone. She was never invited to their nice homes or noisy parties. Even her professors were a little wary of her–her bizarre, impractical design ideas, her lack of enthusiasm to publish papers.

Finally the university along with the research facility lost its patience. She had to pack her bag and go somewhere, certainly not home. The last time she packed her stuffs it was hardly 2 boxes, this time she had got hell a lot of stuff. Most of them were thrown anyway.

It won't be difficult for her to find a living for sure but the life is going to change a lot from what it was.

All the best

Awesome stuff from XKCD

If you've never had sex, this is what it feels like. Complete with the brief feeling of satisfaction, followed by ennui, followed by getting bored and trying to make it happen again.

$115 start-up 2.0

OCBC Cycle Singapore 2011

Its been quiet a while since the OCBC Cycle Singapore race got over. A little more than a month before the race i had started to log the heart rate data from the sensor just to see if there is any correlation. Definitely the data related to performance improves over time and an empirical equation can be written with parameters as Weight, Heart rate, cadence, Distance, time for completion to give a rating on scale of 10 about performance.

What more could be important is sEmg data from Calf muscle ! ;).

The Cycle-only data ...


On the eve of race there was a free sEmg of back at the Formula 1 pit building. The 12 electrodes along the back gave interesting data and hence the health of back. Looks like the technology is far more matured than one would believe.

Anyway an image from the race. Thanks Sabine !

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabineinsingapore/5501545246/

The OCBC Cycle Singapore 2011 was first such event for me and it was a great experience. Thanks to the  organizers. I started early morning from my home for the race venue (it was almost 18 kms away!). By 0645 I was there for the 0715 flag off. I was starting 2283. Sagar was way ahead of me starting 376 and Yoolim was starting 8000. 

I never took this as a race but a fun ride and believe me i finished it without breaking a sweat. Though the timing was sucky like 1:18:51 and i'll need to reduce it by 15 minutes at least but it was a cool ride. The pleasant singapore morning with the breeze, roads devoid of cars and only the sound of air gushing by..

The next step is Sun Down Marathon on 28th May. Lets see how much air i have left in my lungs. 

A video of cyclists fighting for fraction of seconds at OCBC Cycle Singapore. 

Retreat 2.0

21-02-11: As usual the ARL-team left the lab early morning in a bus bound for Pasir Ris. Costa Sands resort, Pasir ris, the far north-east was decided to be the retreat location for 2011. One can expect myself to be missing from the bus :). The plan for me was to cycle all the way from my home, some 30-32 odd kilometers. It was a relatively new route for me and ever since losing my GPS, paper map was the only way to navigate. 

But the inevitable happened ;). I took a wrong "right" turn from balestier road and i figured it out only when i had reached to the mouth of Macritchie Reservoir. Now the distance to destination was 40 kms atleast.  To be punctual in time i had only 1 hour. I cycled back to Balestier road in full throttle and then managed to get a cab who agreed to take my bike, though dismantled. nevertheless after an "adventurous journey" as  Mandar termed it, i was at destination. What followed was 8-8 hours of meeting !!!  separated by an overnight stay. Here's a nice pic of team.

Few things happened that will impact my life to follow and will remain untold here.
"Whatever happened in that room should not go out ;)".