actuality.log

I now assume I am a full fledged candidate.

Or something.

Related to the previous post.

UPDATE: Since one flaw was found so soon, I decided it couldn’t hurt to upload the current draft while I go start on the slides. If anyone else finds typos, please let me know. You’re awesome.

In order to make it easy for the nearly-illiterate to grasp the magnitude of the tasks ahead and to follow my progress, here is a small checklist. The tasks marked with an ‘X’ have been completed. The tasks marked with a ‘D’ aren’t really done, but I’ve decreed they’re done enough.

[X] Form committee
[D] Get committee OKed by even higher-ups
[D] Come up with ideas worth defending and write them up
[X] Figure out a time when everyone is free and get them in a room for a few hours
[X] Find a vacant room (with a projector and what not) and book it for those few hours
[D] Prepare the (and for the) talk
[X] Actually defend said ideas to said OKed committee in said room at said time
[X] Handle resulting administrivia

And I have 0 days to go. This post will be dynamically updated as the status of these events change.

Update:
I really am working. For instance, check out development from concept to near-finished product.

This

morphs to
.

Unrelated Update: A “Shaky version” of the Revolution controller teaser (in case you were wondering if I’d lost touch with the world because of trying to work). From some points of view, it looks like my old NES controller. And some of its functionality reminds me of my Zapper—which looked cool even though it was bright orange in colour.

Within the next 8 days, I have to go from a being a boy without a committee, a formal research proposal, a date to defend said proposal to one with all of the above and actually defend the plan of action. Will I pull it off? I don’t have a choice, and I’ve been working on fixing the issue. See, for e.g., Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Which means creative impulses will take a hit for a short bit.

Ah, who am I kidding<edit>?</edit>

The line between ‘white hat’ hacker and ‘black hat’ hacker is a surprisingly easy one to cross. And it’s made easier still by the lack of real security provided by WEP.

That’s the reason this post exists, and the reason why it had to be kept somewhat cryptic.

I’d been thinking of this just recently and I got the following e-mail in my inbox this morning (names changed for privacy).

What’s up everyone!? The athletic department is looking for physics tutors willing to help out student-athletes. The pay is $10.00/hr with an opportunity to work M-Th, 7:30-9:30pm down on central campus at athletic study halls (you don’t have to work all four nights).

I’ve done it the past few years and think its a pretty good experience — you get to help people out, get some teaching experience, and get extra money for the bar/movies/etc.

Please e-mail the tutor coordinator Jenny for more information.

Suzi

To which I promptly respond.

Of course, the obvious question is can this be done for free? Or, actually, have a student-athlete type help clue one in on nutrition/physical conditioning while they get tutored in physics?

Me

Will our unfit geek finally be motivated by some (potentially eye-catching) athlete to be a little less unfit? Will symbiosis, humiliation or the yearning to show off succeed where all else’s failed?

Stay tuned to this channel to find out.

I know this is going to piss off a lot of people, but I absolutely hate (East) Asian people with (made up) Christian first names. You know, you’re on e-mail or whatever and they sign off “Jenny” and you’re like, cool, she sounds nice enough.

Then you see them in person some 3 weeks later.

They’re actually a “Guan” or someother mono-syllable yet unpronouncable thing and don’t really know too many English words.

It’s fucking annoying. Don’t do it.

(Aforementioned names were made up. You know, privacy and such.)

dripping from a dead dog’s eye[1].

I didn’t talk about this earlier because I was concerned about coming off as a heartless prick. Now I’ve come to the conclusion it doesn’t matter how I sound. I will follow the herd and do what so many other people in this country do each day, confuse “freedom of speech” with the ability to say whatever they want, whenever they want, at whosever’s expense.

It is probably prudent, however, that I begin with this warning. This post is potentially racist, insensitive and proceeds to kick people who’re already down, as Eric Cartman oft eloquently puts it, “squa’ in the nuts”.

If you don’t want to read this sort of thing, don’t.

In the aftermath of the recent hurricane “Katrina” (like giving it a euphonious woman’s name makes a natural disaster more palatable), I heard numerous reporters look at the horrible state of affairs and exclaim “We’re not Somalia or some third world country damn it, we’re America”.

Honestly, from the footage and reports I saw, it wasn’t apparent. Shops and homes being mercilessly looted, children and adults being raped, they being shot at and killed, needy elderly and babies dying from lack of help, people starving to death in piles of their own waste. For a casual observer, this might just as well have been Somalia[2]—a Somalia where it is easy for people to break into hardware stores and steal firearms.

I’ll make two separate statements now, and you connect them in any way you want.

1. Almost every single person you see in the dilapidated condition described above is black.
2. When I was in Louisiana earlier this summer, I couldn’t help but notice how—and I kid you not—EVERY SINGLE person below a certain socio-economic standard was black.

People in this country cringe every time they hear the word “communism”. This, my dearies, is a direct consequence of your beloved capitalism, unintelligently coupled with remnants of the effects of years of racism. You have a clear (and growing) dichotomy, you proceed to encourage it with your tax cuts for the rich and the wars draining billions from cash starved job training, health and education programmes.

And this is what you get. An intelligent warning system after tons of somewhat-accurate numerical simulations perhaps, but people too poor to have access to means to get out in time. Said people devastated and driven to desperation by natural forces, and then what? Your free-access-to-guns policies result in these people breaking into hardware stores and stealing weapons.

Couple this with the woefully slow response, the pace of which is incorrectly attributed to the fact that the afflicted people are black, but is really due to this country’s incompetence and policies—like the much famed war occupying most of the troops’ attention.

Rampant anarchy and lawlessness is sure to ensue.

And it’s all poor people. Almost all black.

You made them that way. These people may be criminals, but your society set the stage for their crimes.

Peeves follow:

1. My country is very poor, and it sees its fair share of natural disasters on a regular basis. But you know what? At least people don’t resort to stealing weapons and helping themselves to other people’s property. They—people who weren’t EVEN WARNED of events on much larger scale, like a large Tsunami—don’t get angered by authorities trying to help them.

Shooting at helicopters trying to rush to your aid? Whatever your current condition, you have no fucking right to be angry at those who are trying to give you a helping hand. If I were a paramedic or whatever trying to help a group, and they shot at my craft, I would most vehemently let them all die.

Ungrateful maniacs.

2. Oh, media people, just don’t use words like “spectacular” for describing the scale of horrifying events. Learn to use a thesaurus and pick similar words, but with negative connotations. How about, say, cataclysmic?

3. Why the fuck is ICE so important? We gave these people food, and water, AND ICE. Why?

4. And why doesn’t anybody get that none of this has anything to do with being an advanced nation or a third world nation? Or race? The only cause is that people, in general, take things for granted and don’t think forward enough. All goals are short term. All topics are short lived.

Just watch, 6 months or so down the line, none of these events will seem all that important, at least to the rest of us, and we will go back to building our easy-to-break levee systems.

[1] Lyrics stolen from The Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus” from their album “Magical Mystery Tour”.
[2] Not that I’m implying this is how I imagine Somalia to be. You know what I mean.

Update: This article is now in an easy to read and print PDF!

This is probably going to end up being an X-rated[0] post, but that’s only because of the nature of the subject in discussion. Any resulting distress—or titillation—is decidedly inadvertent. Kids, close this browser window. And parents concerned about “the sorts of content irresponsible people put up corrupting their kid’s innocence”, please, just go away—spend more time with your kids.

Additionally, at some point I got tired of typing this piece up and just published it “as is”. It is noticeably raw and there will be periodic revisions to it as I re-read it in the near future.

All this began a short while ago with a seemingly innocuous query pertaining to supporting children of hapless circumstance. Being that I had already done some research on the issue and actively do my small part, I was approached with some questions on the nature of the relationship I have with the children I support. These revolved around my ability to take part in decisions involving their lives, and more specifically, the degree to which my support resulted in me being considered a legal guardian[1]. One thing lead to another, and before long, I was introduced to a world of issues revolving around a tiny segment of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). To be more precise, it was the IPC 377, which I’ve stated verbatim below.

IPC 377. Unnatural offences

“Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with 152 (imprisonment for life), or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Explanation: Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section.”

I don’t entirely know whether to laud the British genius who came up with this[2], laugh, or cry. But before that, as a mathematician (and as one who makes sure he knows and follows the letter of the law, even if not in spirit), I need to go, “It’s nice that you give me a sufficient condition, but what is the necessary condition”? And before that, as a wannabe comic, I need to go, “OK, I get it. Penetration is wrong. So does this mean lesbians are good to go? What if they haven’t heard of dildos?”

The point being, genius, before you go about detailing to me what constitutes “carnal intercourse”, you probably should explain what you mean by “against the order of nature”. If you’re taking the trouble to explain something, you might as well start with the bits that cause the most confusion, or at least follow the order in which your own nebulous words appear on paper.

Rather than get terribly wordy[3] sorting out what is wrong, and who has the right to judge what’s wrong, I’m going to borrow lyrics (emphasis mine) from the chorus of a particularly poignant song, the opening track on Blur’s Parklife, Girls & Boys:

Girls who are boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they’re girls
Who do girls like they’re boys
Always should be someone you really love

Re-read that last line. That’s it people. Just try to take a step back and see the big picture. Can’t you see?

Given that we’re an inherently selfish and needy species, and it’s plenty hard to find another compatible person who makes you happy—and to whom you repay the favour—why further complicate things by narrowing your selection pool, be it by race, gender, language, age or anything else? And, if this journey of being happy with someone else, at some point, involves “relations in ways against the order of nature”, how is it really against the order of anything if everyone involved is willing, happy, and no one is hurt?

Besides, who’s really fit to judge whether another’s ways “are against the order of nature”? Me[4]? You?

How can you look at another with a straight face and tell them their harmless choices are “wrong”. And go further by declaring that, being evil, they are consequently unfit to raise a child?

———fin———

Epilogue and extraneous blabber: The author of this piece is clearly not a lawyer or sociologist or even an informed commentator. He chooses to make stuff up in order to support a point, and then proceeds to ramble on; drowning the point he envisioned making in the first place.

With the number of references to “freedom of penis use”, you can clearly see this article was penned by a man. Also, in the following, there will be numerous additional references to the penis. It’s like, being a man, I have to be obsessed with it, and I am trying to purge my system so I can move onto other things.

I know this seems unrelated, and it mostly is, but bear with me. I recognize FX (slowly becoming one of my most-watched channels) is extremely lenient toward crappy programs, but the geniuses behind FX, please, CANCEL “Starved”. I know I make it sound like the show is entirely tasteless and useless. Tasteless it is, but I did learn that shaving/trimming one’s pubic hair makes their genitalia look bigger. As a bonus, losing a few pounds of overall body weight exposes more turgid tissue usually obscured by flab. Great! Enlargement… without the pills.

If you’re wondering how I jumped from our topic of discussion to FX (apart from ADD that is), I recalled another program on the channel “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (slowly becoming one of my most-watched sitcoms).

Anyway, the culprit thought being, is it really that wrong if someone (no names) finds a transsexual extremely attractive? What if “she’s” really really hot? and the whole clearly-has-a-penis thing doesn’t seem terribly consequential?

Again, no names. Just arbitrary curiosity.

Why are you looking at me like that?[5]

———fin, really———

[0] Though I have decided to take the high road and not work in crass related Family Guy humour, such as the following.

Peter: So uhh, Mr. Pewterschmidt, the big race is tomorrow eh? Bet you’re gonna need some strapping men to help you with your boat.
Mr. Pewterschmidt: Are you calling me gay?
Peter: No. No. I just; I just thought you might want some extra seamen on your poopdeck.

Like I said, I skillfully avoided working it in.

[1] If you really look into it, this is one of the few areas where it is legally favourable to be born female. A man, I guess they conjecture, just isn’t responsible or nurturing enough to bring up kids. Even more than one man, a partnership, isn’t apparently sufficient.

And yet, single angels like Angelina Jolie (you know, the woman who tied vials of blood onto her necklaces) get their pick of, not one, but two or more children. The logic there being, I guess, women are “implicitly nurturing”.

[2] The Indian Penal Code came into force in 1862 (during British occupation) and is consequently based on British criminal law.

[3] Even more so than it is. I was considering apologising for the general verbosity and the time you’re probably wasting reading this. Then I realised that pales in comparison to the time I spent writing this up. If you’re in a hurry though, here’s the meat:
a. Being gay is not a choice, and it isn’t evil.
b. Being a man (single or in a homosexual partnership) doesn’t make you incapable of being nurturing toward, caring for, supporting or raising children.
c. “Starved”, the “comedy” on FX, still sucks.

[4] On almost any metric of morality you pick—degree of cruelty to animals or people, (lack of) usage of drugs, alcohol or nicotine, fraction of earnings or time devoted to charity, nature (or rather lack thereof) of illicit carnal relations, … anything other than modesty—I am sure comparing me with an average person will result in me coming out the saint. Does this mean I can judge what’s right and what’s “against the order of nature”?

Why? Because I can probably convince you and a handful of other people I hold the moral high ground? Come come now, even I am not that presumptuous.

[5] And no, if you’re concerned, this is not some grand “Hi world, this is who I really am” coming out of the closet piece.

(This is not one of those hit-generating stunts. I promise. We all know how well those work.)

I’m redecorating my modest home, and I have one prominent empty wall to fill. I’ve always planned to (but never gotten around to actually) populate this with a collage composed of somewhat-large prints of my better pictures in cute frames that I’ve already picked out.

Where do you come in?

I am shooting for 8–12 pictures, and I obviously know which ones I really like. But these aren’t what the general populace usually coo over, and I need your input in deciding which ones get to go on there.

So if you could go through my gallery, and pick out your favourites, I would be most grateful.

Anything would do. Favourite, top few, top ten, anything. Comment here or e-mail me.

This weekend was good for the pseudo-intellectual amongst the gaming community. The source code for Quake III‘s engine was released. Here are some steps and notes to getting it compiled on your friendly GNU/Linux box.

(Remember, this is just the engine, and you do need to shell out the $10 or whatever and get your copy of the original game, for the game data.)

Steps:

0) cd /convenient/directory/
1) wget --passive-ftp ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/ source/quake3-1.32b-source.zip
2) unzip -qq quake3-1.32b-source.zip
3) cd quake3-1.32b
4) find -type f -exec dos2unix {} \;
5) cd code
6) chmod +x ./unix/cons
7) ./unix/cons -- release
8) cp -r /where/you/installed/the/game/you/bought/baseq3 ./install/
9) cd install
10) ./linuxq3

Corresponding Notes:

0) Pick a directory writable by you. Duh.
1) Make sure you get the latest code by first browsing the ftp site with your web browser.
2) -qq keeps things very quiet.
4) Make sure all the evil DOS carriage return characters are removed and the text files are UNIXified.
6) Make the install script executable.
7) -- release ensures you’re building the “final release” version of the code without -Werror turned on. Which means it will complain, but not balk, on warnings. You could also do ./unix/cons -- release gcc="/opt/intel_cc_80/bin/icc" g++="/opt/intel_cc_80/bin/icc" for, you know, Intel goodness.
8) Move the game data over from the original game’s install.
10) Start fragging!

Once you’re done and decide to actually learn something, you browse the code a bit. There are some absolutely intriguing (or horrendous, depending on how you look at it) bits in the code. For e.g., in code/game/q_math.c,

float Q_rsqrt( float number )
{
	long i;
	float x2, y;
	const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

	x2 = number * 0.5F;
	y  = number;
	i  = * ( long * ) &y;
       // evil floating point bit level hacking
	i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );  // what the fuck?
	y  = * ( float * ) &i;
	y  = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) );

#ifndef Q3_VM
#ifdef __linux__
	assert( !isnan(y) ); // bk010122 - FPE?
#endif
#endif
	return y;
}

Seriously, what the fuck? I found a paper on-line that made a little bit more sense.

For any society that isn’t shrouded in a reality distorted by mass media, the notion of “who’s sexy” is primarily tied to what’s most favourable, in terms of sustenance and propagation of the species. Subtle, and not-so-subtle indications of fertility—the large forehead or curvaceous hips, strength—lean muscled arms or the chiseled abdomen, health, being part of a good gene pool, that you’re capable of sustaining yourself and a family, that you’ll actually stick around… is a subset of the criteria that matter.

At some point, starting about the time humans began shaping their first crude tools to help them in their daily survival-oriented activities, it was slowly becoming clearer that being strong and muscular has little to with one’s effectiveness as a hunter, one’s ability to defend themselves or their home (or even their country) and least of all, one’s ability to provide and care for their family.

I could proceed with this argument using better clubs, traps and bows-and-arrows as examples, but I am going to fast-forward in time to make a more emphatic statement.

I was watching this documentary the other day on the Second World War. (I am not anti or pro war, so my observations are not too emotionally biased.) Specifically, they mentioned how Japanese heads of armies prided themselves on their armies being populated by soldiers who were habituated in the “ways of the Samurai warrior”. Meaning, because they had discipline, skill, courage, strength and so on, they were invincible.

It’s scary how wrong a society so enamored with technology can be about it.

A few scrawny geeks sitting in the corner of some room across the world, scribbling on bits of paper, figure out how to harness the power of atomic fission (and later fusion) to build a bomb. Where is your Samurai warrior now? Honestly, what chance does he or thousands like him or even millions of him stand next to a fission (let alone thermonuclear) warhead? Sure he can swing a sword or shoot an arrow, but what good is that when your opponent can annihilate your entire country before you can blink an eyelid?

What do you have to say to that? Who really has the power?

So returning to our central theme, isn’t such a even-if-scrawny intense geek type better capable of defending themselves (or their home or intelligently hunting, or intelligently coming up with ways of growing the better crop, or intelligently curing themselves and ones around them of major diseases, or even enhancing and enlarging their erections via chemical concoctions), really your best bet for a comfortable life and prolonged propagation of your species? Therefore, based on our hypothesis, aren’t these the sorts of people you should be finding sexy?

So why is it that Chuck Norris, or someone else like him, still shows up on TV at 3 A.M. and tries to convince you that being beefy is of paramount importance in being found sexy? Why is that even the least bit of anyone’s concern? Isn’t being intellectually forward (and hence all those other things) what people should be looking for?

This isn’t 10000 BC or whatever.

Or however it’s spelt.

Marking this and the other related-religious-event that is the “Gayathri Japam” (or however that’s spelt too), I got a bunch of calls from people regarding “implementation details”. By which I mean, they called me up and gave me instructions on how I should go about doing things, now that I am alone and all.

Like hello, firstly, I’ve not been at home for over three years, if you haven’t noticed. So if I didn’t or didn’t know how to do things the last year, or the year before last, little is going to change with a few phone calls. This stuff is elaborate, complicated, and you know it.

Anyway, I hate it when I’m-technically-not-lying but really-am-in-spirit. I was talking to my thatha (grand dad) a couple of evenings ago, and he goes, “So you know what to do and when right?”. My response? “Thatha, I got a tape”.

See? I didn’t say yes I will, or yes I do know what to do. I said “I got a tape”. (Note, not even “Sure Thatha, I got a tape”.)

I didn’t even say this was one of those religious-implementation-detail-describing tapes, it could have been an old Oasis tape or something. If they proceed to assume I have this tape, and it holds enough information AND I will actually use it, it’s their assumption right? I mean, I didn’t—technically—lie.

I do this sort of thing so often, it’s not even funny. I never say no to people. I never lie. I rarely say anything to anyone that they aren’t willing to hear. Yet I always end up doing exactly what I want, when I want, and rarely what they assumed I would. (My mom was probably the first to catch on, but even she couldn’t do anything about it. Normal conversation at home, since the time I could speak—”Clean your room H”. “Sure thing ma”. (Note I didn’t say when.))

I always get away on technicalities. I used to think that’s smart. A few-failed-relationships later, I realize women, and people in general, don’t want cute equivocation, they want the truth.