actuality.log

I read random stuff each day. Usually it’s just normal and not terribly insightful or exciting or useful or any such thing. But once in a while, I run into articles that REALLY stand out. This article on “Structured Procrastination” by Prof. John Perry for instance. It’s a perfect description of how I get things done in my life. If some random individual were to observe my behavioral patterns and make comments, this is exactly what it would be. Exactly. It is also the reason for the existence of this (and other) blog entries.

It feels good to know, sometimes, you aren’t totally abnormal. And what could be more noble than using one character flaw to offset the bad effects of another?

Went for another of the (now way less frequent, for me anyway) Rackham luncheons. The usual, quite classy events where you get to meet interesting people doing their thing, talk about stuff, and get free food. An everyone wins situation.

(And I mean everyone. It always (usually) ends up with the, “Oh there’s so much food and drink remaining. Steal enough for you, your family, everyone in your lab” style things.)

This time the invitees were international students, from engineering. So there wasn’t that much of a diversity. No mass media communication and psychology style majors here.

It was still fun though. I have got to realize people who don’t put their affiliation on their name tag are usually the important folk. So as to avoid the usual, “Hi, I’m wahgnube from mechanical engineering, what’s your major?”. “I’m a dean“.

Ahh well, all’s fine.

I usually don’t feel. I am quite cold. I am apathetic to events around me. I don’t get terribly excited or depressed or angered or anything by anything.

Usually.

For all my ‘engineering knowledge’ and general life experience (It’s not a lot, I just said, ‘for all my’, conveniently hand waving my way through to making it sound like a lot), I should have realized, systems aren’t guaranteed to work properly all the time. (This goes for people too, but I am not directing my anger at human incompetence right now.)

Yet I trust it to. I foolishly expect and depend on it to. When I want something done, I let the drones know so, and move along thinking it’s done. Things fail, I end up angry. Actually, now it’s more disappointed than angry. Last night, I was saddened. Saddened, because sometimes things just happen to mean more. During the course of today, one small idiot event after another provoked me to this state of anger.

I don’t really know how to deal with things. Especially feeling mad. Decided to totally get it off my head with doing something fun with my machines. Something they can screw up and no one would care.

It’s not much, but it worked. I’ve not thought of a name yet, and haven’t moved it into one of the artwork pages as a result. Right now, I’ve tentatively named it, flaming leaves. Terribly uninspiring and literal I know, but it will do for now.

Being the straight person that I am, I read up some article and now know that my kind of hair needs – Moisturizing shampoo, silicone spray, deep conditioner, spray sheen (oil/silicone).

And general instructions for its well being – When hair is damp, mix a straightening balm in your hands and apply up the hair shaft until almost to the roots (again, steer clear of those roots!) Comb through to evenly distribute, then blow-dry hair using a large, round brush. Flat iron for a super-straight finish.

Well, someone got paid to write that, (s)he must know what (s)he’s talking about. Doesn’t (s)he?

I’m sad right now. It’s technology’s fault. Technology is evil.

Riding back up to north campus, I was continually greeted to the strong aroma of coffee. And then, as I attempted to use my bag as a cushion/pillow, I realized, it was me. My clothes, my bag, my hair. Looking at my watch, I realized I had spent some 5 hours at a coffee shop, and I’ve never drunk coffee!

Coffee places are cool to hang out at. Now if they just made them more about the hanging and less about the coffee.

Work stuff, Sarah’s collagen primer again, along with the Sandia lab people. As usual, such things just clarify how little people know.

Back “home”, this was highlighted again. The undergrads here are fishing ignorant. Oh MY GOD. I couldn’t stand it. I was trying to get some stuff done in this lab where these three kids were discussing some project or something. I didn’t realize people could be so stupid. I mean come on, don’t you have a brain? I mean, at least a third each?

It angered me. I am not going to go on about this. I just left the place after some 10 minutes of losing quite a bit of blood. As I was attempting to simultaneously blind myself and chop off my ears.

I guess I was exposed to an exceptionally extreme set. I hope rather.

In the blood and gore front, I read the review of Kill Bill on the local paper. In over a year, I’ve NEVER seen a movie/play/album whatever being rated more than 3 stars, so I assumed it was out of 3. And today, I saw this rave review of this movie, and it got 5 stars. Intrigued, I checked out the filmography of the director. I was like, hmm, unheard of, unheard of, … “FROM DUSK TILL DAWN” and then stopped. Anyone who’s ever had the extreme misfortune of having to sit through even a small portion of this movie will realize no good can come out of a director responsible for something like that. It was just the C-est B movie ever made. And it was just plain over the top (gory) violent, for no real reason.

The reviewers and other people are obviously lying.

For some strange reason, one of the major events (from my pov of course) yesterday slipped my mind. During one of these breaks between sessions, I gravitated towards the nearest computer, somewhere in the basement of the league. Firstly, this place allows people to carry food to the machines, and their keyboards and mice are all gross and sticky. Eww. Now, I can mess with my own computer and that’s different. I know where I spilled what and what keys to avoid. Common machines, not good. I wonder who we got to write to, to complain about such things.

Anyway, more on that another time. It was this relatively decent machine, with Windows 2000 installed. Now I’ve never really used Win2k, so decided to probe a bit, not expecting it to be terribly different from anything else. During some snooping around, I realized, this was like some gamer’s wet dream. Everything from every single FPS from HL+CS to RTCW to strategy/RTSs like WarIII was installed. I rushed to Q3, since I hadn’t played in a long while. A year and a half almost. It felt so good. Practiced with the bots for like 3 minutes, getting my keys and mouse sensitivities, fov etc all perfect and was online getting kicked in multiplayer servers in no time.

That was the fastest 3 hours have ever gone by in ages. Even getting mercilessly kicked felt so good. I just need to get a few weeks of 18 hours a day practice sessions in, and will be half decent again.

On the software theme of things, installed Office 2003 today, where I am typing this, as a check. (Has anyone got any grammar error other than – “Fragment (consider revising) – The marked words might be an incomplete thought blah blah” error?) It feels all XPish. Complete with the gross ‘silvery gradients’ on everything, buttons and all. Ick. Point being, the uni seems to have made all sorts of deals with the evil folks at M1cros0ft, and we can just ‘take’ whatever we want off the uni servers. I guess it’s some sort of complicated ‘get em hooked now and they will buy when they can afford later on in life’ scheme.

Scary part is it works for most of these mindless drones.

Talking about the uni, I think I’ve screwed up? There were like a gazillion emails a few weeks ago on our local email lists about having to fill up some paperwork to get an M.S degree. a) I had applied and directly made it into the PhD program b) Didn’t really take the time to find out details. So decided that wasn’t for me. What was I thinking? That I wouldn’t get an M.S? I actually think that’s it. I assumed I was on some different path, where things “just happen” and having to request for intermediary degrees wasn’t one of them.

Hmm.. will have to fix this soon. Paperwork, bah!

Oh my god. I’m almost in tears. (In a moved, happy sort of way). This group that performed at the end of the conference banquet, the Amazing Blue, sung extremely well. I’m usually like the the filthy critic when it comes to commenting about (other) singers, but these people were just so awesome. They were different, young, fresh, had awesome voice modulation …

I can’t even begin to describe their awesomeness. (I don’t mean to abuse that line, it’s just, the way I feel about things at the moment.) I can’t believe the first time I actually bought theater tickets to a non-movie thing, and it happens to be clashing with the day AND TIME this group performs next at Rackham. Hmm, will have to investigate a bit and find out when and where they’re up next. It will be totally worth it.

This people, was the highlight of the conference. 15 minutes before they came on, it was the dessert. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. (Actually come to think of it, eating stuff as rich as that will result in death, heaven’s another story). The banquet meal was nice too, nicer cause you know you got to choose it :). Being one of the only vegetarians around has its perks.

Also got to meet a bunch of wisc mad grad students at the banquet. Fun people, and now they’ve made me want to design and print cool business cards. Why you say? No reason, just for coolness’ sake. Why not? I say.

And I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time not being a patron of music theater. Also need to find out from Eric when the music school people do their thing. I imagine that will be very good too.

(If you’re seeing this and wondering what’s the cause of this blog weirdness, there is none. It is me. This was typed in at a later time and suitably time stamp modded and inserted in this place. Though I finished typing it after the banquet blog, this is where it belongs, chronologically.)

Finally got around to getting my tickets for the Comedy Central No Class Tour coming this weekend to the Michigan Theater.

Skipped midway during one of the talks this cold and wet (yet totally not depressing) morning down to the ticket office at the union. Where I had one of the more interesting ticket buying experiences I’ve had. The conversation was quite normal, as was expected, until I indicated I was a student and needed the discount. Along with the usual (don’t you trust me) do you need to see ID?. Of course she did. Anyway, then the conversation slowly migrated to how much my hair’d grown in this time. The ID had a year old picture. Anyway, she’d forgotten how many tickets I wanted. I didn’t realize 1 was such a hard number to remember.

And when she’s like, did you say three, I start smiling uncontrollably. This B-movie dialogue kept running in my head, “No, I said one, but I meant two if you’d join me” or something similar. I was laughing so loud inside.

And we ended up with a pleasant conversation about how her hair doesn’t grow so fast. :)

YAT (Yet Another Talk) is over. I wouldn’t say it went off well or that I had fun doing it, but it’s over. I just wasn’t terribly excited or anything close. I guess sleeping at 4 am after many repeated failed attempts to parallelize solvers is to blame. Now to make best use of the free food and free knowledge gaining (which are pretty compelling reasons to attend these things) during the rest of the events.

And who’d have ever thought that people would mail lil ol me for insightful advice. I mean, oh my god, am I that old already? And got a mail from someone I’ve been meaning to write to for a while now. Very pleasant surprise. Another walking tour of a city with her sounds very fun.

On an unrelated note (not like any of the above thoughts were related in any way), I might have jumped the gun when I went about proclaiming intel compilers are the coolest pieces (apart from inherent non-free related evilness) of software. GiNaC, is insanely awesome, and it’s free software.

I can’t even to begin to describe its awesomeness.

Actually, I re-read that post. I did no such thing. All I did is proclaim intel compilers are insanely cool pieces of software. That they are. But inherently evil nonetheless.

Here I am, tralla lalla laaa’ing my way down to the uni (to finish up (start) some stuff on the now much talked about talk) when I ran into one of my neighbours. Apparently, she had observed my curious behaviour yesterday as I was taking Bug’s eye view.

And by curious behaviour, I mean lying down in odd positions on fallen leaf covered grass. Anyway, after she approached me (with some caution I might add), we got around to talking and it soon became clear I wasn’t some nutcase who does funky yoga or whatever on the grass outside (Not that I have anything against nutcases (or sane people) who do funky yoga or whatever on the grass outside). By which time, of course?, she’d indicated curiosity to sneak a peek at my “work”.

Luckily us geeks carry our computer everywhere. Which has added benefits like having a digital copy of your picture collection at all times. Complete with that special folder filled with the ones you know came out better than most, just for days like these.

So, right there, on some footpath sidewalk somewhere, I got my few minutes of glory. She was impressed.

It’s funny how the weirdest and smallest of things can make you grin so much. :D

On a side note, during the rest of the walk (mostly downhill), I kept having this intense urge to reacquaint myself with a skateboard. I don’t know whether it was a seed sown when I watched Dave (another Dave) literally ride into class, or all this scheming about riding down one way and using the bus on the way back.

Hmm.

Gah! I just realized I’m almost THIRTY.

Yes, 7-8 years is not a really long period of time.

I realized I hadn’t updated the picture page in a while. So rather than idle while doing some mundanely choresey stuff (no, not preparing for talks) like laundry, I decided to take a few pictures of all the colour outside. Uploaded a few to the picture page. My favourite in this set is, “Fall, a bug’s eye view”.

It’s sehr kuhl, I know. Thank you very much.

Well, I guess I lied. There were no “frequent updates”. There however, has been an update to the picture page. It will have to do.

Thinking about my ‘not entirely high energy’ state for a while, I decided to try some stuff out. Probably it was malnutrition (aww), probably it was lack of sleep (aww), or probably I just needed to get my mind off stuff and go ahead and do something out of the ordinary. Probably it was a combination of all of these and other things which I can’t see right now. Damn, I need all of you to have native MathML compliant browsers (by which I mean, run along to mozilla.org and install mozilla, a real browser). Then I can say something roughly like,

my state (element of) span ({malnutrition, lack of sleep, … })

And be done with it. Concise, accurate enough, and a whole lot less work.

Anyway, deciding to do something about it, I left the lab at (drumroll) 8 pm (gah! not caring about whether FEAP was parallelized or not), instead of some ungodly hour like 1 am or what not. Decided to go to some nice place down at central and stuff my face till I was uncomfortably full. Now comes one of the more interesting observations over the past few weeks. I remember a time during the end of school and early undergrad when there couldn’t be a single place I could go to in Madras and not run into someone I “know”. Yes, I don’t go out much or too many places and I use the word “know” very loosely. Point being, through school, school events, JEE classes and all of that, you pretty much “knew” most people in that ‘finishing school getting into college’ age group. And that means there is a very high probability of running into one of these people, when you’re out. I’ve, over the past year or so, reached that critical number of people here. Whenever I’ve been out doing anything, however small, I’ve managed to meet someone and have a talk beyond how good/bad the weather is, since we did have something in common.

If any of that made sense, moving along, last night was no different. Met up with this group as I was stuffing myself till I couldn’t walk (as planned, so no aww), and made it back home, early early. And went to bed before 10 pm. No computer, no music, no STAND UP COMICS, no nothing. Just home, sleep.

And here I am the next morning, waking 12 hours later, and still not feeling terribly different. Or am I? Time should tell.

I am not doing too much. Rather, I feel I am doing a lot and nothing’s getting done. This week has been one of exceptionally low efficiency. I’ve been continuously “busy” and tired, and I can’t look back and see what was really achieved. Except of course, some FEAP stuff involving different platforms and different compilers. I also replaced the base solver with SuperLU, and almost got it parallelized on legolas. (Note to self, need to take some classes on parallel computing for coolness’ sake.)

What am I saying, none of that was work, in the sense of it NEEDED to be done. I still don’t have my talk ready for Monday. I haven’t made any major inroads into the growth code. I haven’t made any major inroads into the remodelling papers. I haven’t even been able to keep up with going to the analysis classes, let alone doing home work and all that. Fat chance trying to figure out stuff in classes without doing work for them. Damn these non-spoonfeedy educational systems.

And god, not another talk. All I’ve been doing for the past few months is talk. Yes, it’s fun and all, for a while. Now it’s become so mundanely normal. Forget fun or exciting or that sort of thing, it isn’t even making me tense anymore. It’s become “just a talk”. Mundane things aren’t fun. I’m used to them. I try to adjust my environment so it is predictable and mundane. It makes things easier, not fun.

I need to break this cycle. I need some radical enlightenment halo moments. I just want to snap my fingers and see all this magically get done and me suddenly be at some state that all I want to be clear, be clear.

Idle ranting apart, :) someone remembered my birthday. And, the GameCube it is. Hmm.. probably that’s it. That’s one of the major changes over this past year. Probably gaming was the brain fuel that kept it active and feeling young all this time.

Hmmm. No.

Did something cool last night. I need to document it before I forget how to do it again. This is incomplete and I am pasting it here to check out stuff before moving it into the (currently not open) articles area. Move along now, I am just using this space as a scratchpad.

Building FEAP using the Intel Fortran Compiler on Windows
v 0.0 (The “it’s up, but barely” release.) © 2003 – Me

(Non) Standard disclaimer: The code itself not free software. I am not releasing code, just instructions on key modifications to certain files to get it to build on a different compiler in a different platform. I don’t think this is horribly evil, or more importantly, illegal. If it is, please let me know, and I will remove this content. Also, the content is not guaranteed to be complete or correct. Use this information at your own risk and all that. The changes themselves are currently quite preliminary. The list will be slowly modified and corrected as I learn more. However, if you note some gross errors, let me know. I will fix it.

After getting FEAP up and running on GNU/Linux with gcc/g77 and icc/ifc, and combinations of the compilers (with different levels of optimization), I was in danger of actually using the code to get some useful work done. Then it dawned on me that I had a whole new untried OS to repeat this shenanigans. I am justifying all of this to myself as, “I really haven’t begun to use it productively yet, why not try and find the fastest/easiest set of tools to work with before I really do.”

Actually, I think this mentality has something to do with it.

Also this should be more “fun”, since code had to be hacked to make it “happy” to be in a different environment, and makeable with a different tool chain. I am happy to say, after 14 or so straight hours of mucking around with Fortran graphics code and hacking intel header files, it now lives. Probably not entirely happy, but lives none the less.

I decided to document my steps in order that brave souls attempting this in the future (me included) will find the road a little easier. I begin with a standard, totally unmodded source set, version 7.4 in my case. I don’t believe that it will be horribly different for other versions,but I haven’t tried it, yet. The same goes for FEAPpv.

My “build chain” includes Visual Studio .NET (not entirely necessary, but does make life easier at times, and a lot harder at others.), and the Intel Fortran compiler. The first I got free from the uni, since apparently they’ve made some sort of pact with the devil. The Intel Fortran compiler for windows, ifl from now on, I downloaded for “free” from here. Yes, it is “free” only for a month. And I plan to pay the 30$ if the performance gains are impressive enough. This was a major motiviation for this work too. If the gains from Compaq Visual Fortran are as extreme as the g77 to ifc jump, it should be totally worth it. More on that later.

First, I have to say, apart from the inherent evilness of being non-free, ifl is an insanely cool piece of software. It also has the best documentation I have ever seen for software, ever. Download it, and install it. This involves some registration key and things, which annoy but need to be done. The cool thing here is that it “integrates” with Visual Studio .NET, VSN, for short. By integrating, I mean it now shows a little Intel logo on the splash screen, and more importantly, new projects now can be in Fortran (of different types), apart from the usual C++, C# and what not projects.

Unzip your FEAP source to some convenient location, (eg: C:\Work\FEAP) a place I will be calling $FEAPHOME. So, the source itself exists in different folders in $FEAPHOME/ver74 . Read readme.compaq in $FEAPHOME. It is very useful, though the steps have to be changed to get it working with ifl. The basic idea is the same, the source has to be built in groups that form different libraries, which are all finally linked together to form the FEAP executable.

The libraries specified in readme.compaq are as logical as any other I could think of, so we’ll use something similar. viz. program.lib, element.lib, plot.lib, contact.lib and windows.lib.

(I just randomly use a mix and match of the VSN IDE and the ifl CLI. There’s no need for this, I just switch based on convenience. By which I mean, if you’re comfortable with the ifl CLI, you can hack the source with notepad or whatever and get it to build without requiring the gargantuan VSN installed. I had it anyway, so I used it. Plus, I was very impressed initially with how well ifl integrated with it, and had this intense urge to check it out.)

Open VSN and create a new “Fortran static library” project called “program”.

(The steps I’ve outlined here are just that, an outline. If you need details on how these different steps are carried out, I suggest you read $FEAPHOME/readme.compaq.)

/* Insert actual list of steps and changes here. */

Further articles in this vein involve different optimization levels, replacing the default solver with SuperLU and getting it to build parallely with SuperLU_MT. Now on to optimization changes. Conservative choices, BAH!

I am alive. Last “weekend” was pretty hectic with all the working as a labourer (among other things) for the symposium. (It’s not like I didn’t update the blog JUST so that the previous post stayed on top harnessing the many comments that it did. Thank you, one and all.) It went off pretty well, except that I realized how little respect is given to a session chair’s word on the time alloted for a talk.

Midway during talks, I have to “hint” to the participant that (s)he’s WAAY over the alloted time. They stop, acknowledge that they realize this, AND THEN GO ON FOR 10 MORE minutes.

Anyway, apart from that, all was fun. Tons of free food and looted enough stationery to last for a loong time.

And got to meet all these people I had corresponded via email all this time :). That was fun. Complete with all the “Thanks for being so nice about this”isms, with regards to they being late with everything – abstracts and all. Hey, I am as lazy busy as they come. I know how much I love it when people bend deadlines for me. More than happy to repay a favour.

This was caused due to classics like: It is fine. Vacations are more fun and moving’s more important at the moment. If you can, please do try to get it in by tomorrow, which is the 26th. If it’s still not possible, I will use the short one.

The pictures taken by some Joe on the department’s camera are insanely horrid. I think we have to recommend a change. Right now, I’ve been sent the pathetic set and been asked to put it up. It’s going to take a long time, to doctor them to some state of presentability. I need to find out what the procedure is to get a department that spends OVER 22 MILLION DOLLARS a year on research to buy a camera that can actually take a picture.

That apart, I’ve been feeling very old lately. I think it comes with being unable to associate with any “music” that’s being played on TV. I’ve really really tried. There used to be a point of time, not too long ago, I could really listen to some stuff that was on. For the past week, all I’ve been doing is switching between the 83 music channels realizing my tastes, and I, are too old for them.

Forget hip hop and rap and so on, even in the more standard listenable genres like rock, I can’t stand anything. An ENTIRE top 40 countdown, and the only one I don’t change the channel within 10s is this song called Stacy’s mom. And trust me, that has NOTHING to do with the song. Strangely, there was this one “afro-american” (I guess my catch-all term for R&B, Rap – {Eminem}, hip hop etc) song that I like, called “Where’s the love”, by “Black eyed peas”. Believe it or not, it’s for the lyrics.

Back to work. I’m presenting in another real conference next week. This is close to the MIT talk, so it should be fine. Should be.

And so, this is me, trallalaa laa, walking down a corridor in GGB. Suddenly, I notice something I hadn’t before.

There it was, bang at the newly renovated toilets bathrooms restrooms. There it was, the mother’s room. I was like, cool. As I walk a few metres meters feet to the right, there was the plain ol men’s room.

Evidently, women can be moms, but guys can’t be dads? Or is it somehow assumed that men won’t change their kid’s diapers or whatever it is that a mother does in a mother’s room? Or mothers are more likely to bring their kids to work than fathers?

Society is so warped. It’s set up so the male gets screwed, and we’re too dumb to see it. We’d rather get stereotyped and just get back to surviving.

Totally unrelated yet related. I remember this extremely funny stand up comic, and she went “I have fertility problems. Yes, I consider being single a fertility problem.”

:D

And speaking of stand up comics, a whole bunch of good ones are coming to the Michigan Theater in a couple of weeks. This just exists to remind me I need to remind me to get tickets. And speaking of things I need to get tickets for, other things I need to see include Thirteen and School of Rock.