actuality.log

From hippy geek to hippy geek with cool-glowey LED thingy.

I know exactly what you’re thinking. Just what sort of music could the pundit have fancied last year? Right?

Here you go; some half a dozen of the more decent things from last year I added to my album collection.

What can I say? Respect the fuckin’ Brits.

That will be all.

I seem to be pinning some sort of major lifestyle change along with the whole “selection of a new laptop” thing. This basically means that the ThinkPad was pretty much a non-starter in our little race.

For instance, I’ve decided on replacing my generic backpack,

with something more sporty, like so:

Because, clearly, these are the sorts of changes that really matter.

Have you ever wondered whether the grand dreams you had for life were akin to a one night stand with an old flame?

Full of seductive words, excitement and high hopes… only to crash around you into a situation of embarrassment, disillusionment and great disappointment.

Being the geek that I am, I’m going to get technical for a minute, or three. This is a fundamental principle that’s known to anyone who’s done high-school physics, so I apologise for boring you in advance if this isn’t new to you.

Everything in this universe prefers to exist in a state where its energy is minimised. For instance, you’re more comfortable when you lie down as opposed to when you stand up, because lying down—among other things—reduces your “gravitational potential energy”. If you consider the following plot between your energy ‘E’ and some measure of your state ‘S’ (be it an indicator or whether you’re lying down or standing, or something more important…),

it is clear that you’re likely to exist at a state where S=S_E. This is an equilibrium state, where you’re in a local energy minimum. And since you’re in this “energy well”, and you need to put in effort (dS) to get out of that well, you can exist fairly happy in this state—what’s called a stable equilibrium. i.e. Left alone, you probably won’t change very much, because after you try to change by providing energy (doing work) totalling to ‘dS’, all you get for your trouble is to end up at E=E_H (some high), which isn’t even a minimum.

Not pleasant.

Think of this as actually getting up and out of bed; resulting in a state you’re less comfortable in. What’s really the point?

Like I started off saying, this measure of state, ‘S’, needn’t be something trivial, like “Is she lying down?”, but could be something more important, like “Is he single?”. In this case, the work done, ‘dS’, would be actually leaving your corner, and chatting someone up, even if it is only to get shot down and end up at E=E_H again. (Again, not what you want).

But, a more thorough examination of the curve gives us the following.

Woah! There is this huge (energetically) favourable state, E=E_NS (not-single), just waiting to be attained. If only one could see the bigger picture and took the time to cross the energy barrier (dS)—which, from the totally accurate plot, is a trivial effort—much bliss awaits.

And this, is the sort of pseudo-reasoning a geek must give himself to actually go out and work toward changing his state… to one of no-longer chronic-singleness.

He’s around. He’s just uninspired and unmotivated. Sorry.

There are only so many doses of “good news” in a week he can handle before he breaks and decides to curl up in a corner.

But he’s using that time to come up with a collaborative photo log project which is themed along the lines of this journal.

Seven “artists”. One year. One photo a day.
Much less work per person.

Update: So you’re not too disappointed, here’s a Levis ad featuring a blind man [~4.35 MB MPG]. It’s like that old saying goes, “if at first you don’t come up with something original, infringe copyright”.

I had two phone calls today. I could stop there, and that in itself would be news.

But it gets better.

Each of the phone calls informed me about the impending marriages of another two of my friends. As in one each; to other people.

Just a short while before, I was gloating about how I’d nearly conned the uni into giving me my math masters. Then suddenly, my meager intellectual achievements seemed so tiny in comparison, and I began to trudge along the familiar trail of “what’s wrong with me?”

Maybe this has something to do with it?

I spent a lot of time scouring the intarweb trying to find decent specification comparisons between the new Thinkpad T60 line of notebooks, and Apple’s own Macbook Pro. Surprisingly enough, there weren’t any that were satisfactory. So here you go, a comparison of the top of the line (slightly customised) variants from Lenovo and Apple. Clearly, there are intangibles—like “even without the second fucking mouse button, I’d feel so much more sexier with one of them in a coffee shop”—that are not taken into account below. Plus the sweet education discounts mentioned previously haven’t been accounted for either.

Update: Also see a more detailed comparison between the ThinkPad T60P and the Macbook Pro.

Yes, I know this is a stunt to increase traffic. These are desperate times, people. Sorry.

The thing about perpetually being in the uni is that you’re perpetually poor.

Sure, they try to hand-wavingly distract you from it,

but you know you’re still poor.

Though I had resolved not to, my appearance is “perpetually shaggy”. Unkempt hair, odd shirts with not-always work-safe innuendo, facial hair feigning a certain sense of “busy-ness”… all designed to portray a lack of concern for and time to waste on trivialities.

But, I must admit, a bulk of this is quite calculated. As in, shaggy hair doesn’t just mean wild hair, it means clean, nice-smelling, well groomed hair that’s been pseudo-randomly messed, “for effect”. T-shirts worn with funny messages aren’t arbitrarily thrown on—they’re tailored to the kinds of people I’m going to run into for the day. From meetings, to the number of bus rides, to which departments I’ll be hanging out at, … . I look unaware, but I am quite perceptive and figure all this into my outwardly unkempt appearance.

Anywho, this obviously extends to geeky shirts too (warning, quantum physics humour), and I’ve been sorely disappointed by the (lack of) attention this shirt has garnered so far. I mean, I pick it on days when I’m hovering around physics/really geeky engineering types, but so far it’s been lacklustre, to say the least. Either people don’t know, don’t care or don’t in anyway share my sense of “humour”. But not one to give up, I continued to wear it on select occasion, and I must say it was a smart move.

I was in a hallway this afternoon when someone behind me stifled a giggle, going “Hey, nice shirt. Where’d you get it?”; I turn smiling with an “It gets better”, and point to the opposite text on the front. At which point she bursts out laughing, remarking “how sweet it is”. We got around to talking, and after a bit, I let her know—what she deemed obvious—that I’d gotten it from one of the many geek stores on the internet… thinkgeek.

Later in the evening over coffee, I got to know more about her. She’s über brilliant, funny, and apart from liking geeks, she also likes macs!

Now is when I wished my brain didn’t hold random information such as this.

Either way, my point is, I’m unkempt, but calculatedly so.

Unrelated: I just got copy of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I’m wicked excited. Even if it’s cookie-cutter based off of the original, I am guaranteed 60–80 hours of super immersive and fun gameplay. Rock.

Which is a first.

So here’s the thing people; I was trying to write up an opinion piece on this thought-provoking (if entirely wrong) opinion piece. [Pussyfoot past registration]

I still am. Please read it when you can make the time. I assure you it’s entertaining, at least. The previous post was supposed to start you thinking along those lines, and I was supposed to follow up with this brilliantly-funny take on things.

And then I got sidetracked. (Help me as you always do, my friendly typo-checkers.)

It’s like I have a very tiny limit on the number of words I can write in a given day.

I’ve not been slacking, I’ve been busy. Amongst other things, I’ve also been “researching” stuff toward a post (and our not-as-yet dead treatise [PDF]) I’m working on.

Yes people, this is more work than it seems. As a preview however, consider the same[1] woman, wearing the exact same shirt.

Who would you rather approach semi-seriously (all mumbling and nervously) for a date? And why?

Stay tuned for more such extreme thought-experimentation; right here on actuality dot log.

[1] For argument’s sake.

Do not click the red link.

Oh what’s become of this journal? We haven’t delved into the world of reality TV in so long. And for those of you joining us from a parts of the world that don’t know the joys of excessive reality TV, all I can say is that I pity you.

I cannot believe that this slipped under my radar. I was channel surfing the other day, and chanced upon an episode of this little gem.

This is a show that’s either conceived or produced or just endorsed (I’m not really sure, and I don’t care) by Ashton Kutcher, and apparently, it’s already in its second season. The premise is simple enough—pair intelligent but severely socially challenged men up with gorgeous but not-so-bright women and watch the hilarity as the “best couple wins”. The guys on the show were (for the most part) your usual suspects—generally super sweet and nice engineering grad students who were beyond socially stunted. The women were extremely attractive (the photos on the website above do not do them justice), but borderline retarded. Oh joy!

What I liked about the show was that it didn’t overtly milk either of these extremely contrasting traits for cheap laughs (though I probably would have liked it even more if it did!). The guys seem genuinely in it to learn and evolve socially while trying their best, and the women are sweet, feel sorry for them and try to get them out of their shells. The interesting thing, I thought, was the general level of self-consciousness and insecurity on both sides of the fence. You’d assume a knock-out blonde hasn’t a care in the world. You’d be wrong.

Now here’s what I didn’t like.

Gorgeous as they were, the women on average in the show were, let’s say, bartenders. The men on the other hand were senior grad students in Ivy League schools. Now that in itself isn’t a big deal. But in every single pairing, it was the woman who felt the strong need to teach the poor guy something. You know, important life skills, like the Salsa or how to pluck your eyebrows. Not once did any of the guys sit down and go, “Hmm, there’s so much she hasn’t a clue about. Why don’t we show her a thing or two and help open up her eyes as well”.

Not once.

I’m not literally suggesting rocket science tutoring for massage lessons. But I’m not not suggesting it either.

And now this brings us to our final super-general and sweeping comment that’s going to draw much fire (from you, my feisty audience, of course). Men—without thought—mate up and down the socio-economic ladder[1] as long as they find the woman “hot”. However intelligent they claim to be, the really important decisions subvert their cerebrum entirely. (As in, I’ll keep harping I need someone über-qualified, but if a random hot bartender chick crosses my path, I’ll be more than happy. Thoughts like, “But I might never be able to have a meaningful and deep conversation with her, ever” will not even cross my mind.)

Women, on the other hand, are intelligent enough to look into things like financial stability (as a function of education or job or whatever) when deciding a mate. Which is why they will probably only mate up the ladder given the chance; it clearly makes more sense than living destitute with a starving artist, doesn’t it? And this, is why I believe the show reversed, i.e. super hot bartender guys and socially stunted Nobel laureate women won’t work. There just won’t be an attraction either way, unless there’s someone like Miranda in the midst.

[1] As in for life.

I was at a coffee shop earlier, and I suddenly started smiling uncontrollably. My eye had caught the following headline.

And then the woman I was with asked me what was so funny; I pointed to it as I told her it wasn’t anything funny. All I got in response was a blank stare.

My my, how quickly they forget.