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The Mathematics of Divinty and Evil

Mathematics is a beautiful subject.

Not the stuff we learn in college, though. Those are more of abominations; more of atrocious instances of human rights violation, hell bent on antagonizing innocent, unsuspecting students against this otherwise beautiful natural phenomenon. But, that apart, there still IS a mathematics which isn’t all about memorising formulae, which isn’t all about attending classes for getting to know which approach works best for which problem. Very little is known of this mathematics. And this mathematics, is the beautiful mathematics. The beauty of which comes to light, when one goes out of the text book, out of the constrained and contrived “syllabus” and delves into the sheer simplicity of stuff that goes on around us.

One such fascinating concept is that of the Golden Ratio, or the Golden Section. Considerably less known than the mainstream, stereotyped mathematics … but surprisingly ubiquitous in its application in the real world, this concept draws upon two things, and stands out from the rest: simplicity and beauty.

What is it?

Pretty simple. Take a line segment. Find a point on this line segment, and divide it into two portions such that the whole : bigger portion = bigger portion : smaller portion. The following figure will illustrate.

When you form an equation, and then solve it you get the following value for this “golden ratio” commonly represented by phi (φ).

Solving it yields the value

But all this is standard mathematics and juggling with numbers. Where’s the beauty in all this, the skeptic interjects.

Patience, I reply.

The ubiquitousness of this apparently simple and “dry” number is mind-numbing. From seemingly random assortment of florets in a sunflower or the petals of a rose, to the architecture involved in the making of the Pyramids of Giza and the Greek Parthenon, this little number holds the secrets of beauty, design and simplicity in the natural world like no other. Not surprisingly, it is considered to be the Divine Number or God’s favorite number, which he extensively used during Creation.

You can learn more about this Golden Ratio at http://www.goldennumber.net/ and also at … wait-for-it … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio … so I needn’t mention its widespread applications in my meek little post. What I focus on however, is a little known aspect of the Golden Ratio.

And that is its Divinity.

As I mentioned a few sentences back, the Golden Ratio is considered to be the Divine Number. Now here’s a question. Ever heard of  something “opposite” to this? A number which symbolizes the “opposite” of divinity? An Iron Maiden fan would jump up to his feet and shout “The Number of the Beast! Six-six-six”

And that’s what it is. 666. Six hundred and sixty six. The Number of The Beast. The Number of the Devil. Or generally, the number of Evil.

Now if Divinity and Evil are supposed to be “opposite” to each other, could we come to the same conclusion mathematically?


And presto! We can!

sin(666) = -φ/2

The sine of the Devil’s Number is negative of one half of the Divine Number! In other words, they are opposite in sign! Coincidence? Sheer coincidence? Or God’s way of stating a fundamental truth? Perhaps we shall never know.


Oh and by the way, this was the 100th post on my blog Took it’s time, but its finally arrived

the third side of the coin

“Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled. “

Indeed.

There is a difference between just looking and looking correctly.When you just look, it’s no more than a physical phenomenon … immaculately described by a few laws of physics and made unnecessarily complicated by a large number of biology books. But what it essentially boils down to is … the fact that it is understandable.

Looking correctly however is far from that. It is certainly not fully understandable. Nor is it defined in black and white by a few laws of physics. It, in fact, transcends all that the physical world stands for, and has to offer. Be it reason, rationale, human comprehension or laws. It borders upon vagueness, randomness; at times venturing into realms of surrealism; at other times, even boldly entering legends and myths.

Hindu mythology has a lot to do with looking correctly. The sort of looking that isn’t done by the eyes. The sort of looking that is rather done by the mind. The sort of looking that isn’t associated with just letting reflected rays of light getting refracted through your lens and creating a real image on the retina. Yes, what I refer to is indeed the sort of looking done by the third eye or the mind’s eye.

Is it just a myth or is there room enough to speculate upon it’s possibilities in reality? Surprisingly enough the discovery of the tuatara, the enigmatic reptile from New Zealand does prove that a third eye is very much possible. It’s function however is not to look at things the way the two ordinary eyes do. In fact, it doesn’t look at all. However it is proof that a third eye once existed on this creature before it fell prey to the time stained process of evolution. Shamelessly quoting wikipedia :

“The tuatara has a third eye on the top of its head called the parietal eye. It has its own lens, cornea, retina with rod-like structures, and degenerated nerve connection to the brain, suggesting it evolved from a real eye. The parietal eye is only visible in hatchlings, which have a translucent patch at the top centre of the skull.”

What this third eye did, how it functioned, before it sunk into layers of dormancy? Perhaps we will never know, perhaps we will never figure out. But yes, open to ideas? Always. Maybe this is what made them special, and helped them stay put on this planet since the Mesozoic era? Very aptly being branded as living fossils?

Was it just the power of visual perception or more that helped the third eye, make their bearers, the tuatara invincible to the ravishing evolutionary process that made many a species extinct? That gave them a perspective to this world that the two eyes never could?

Can we have that power ever? Or is it a lost art? Fit for the Gods only, and books of mythology perhaps?

Or maybe, we can gain it someday … gain that perspective which will help us read between the lines that we actually read. Look at stuff the way others don’t. Stare at something and know what it’ll be like in the future.

In actuality it’s just the perspective. The art of looking at the third side of the coin, that matters.

Creating a partition in WIndows 7 or Vista and installing Ubuntu

Thanks to a some changes in the BITS academic system, our beloved campus is experiencing, much to my delight, a Linux revolution. People who were so very anti-Linux till a few months back or so are now gladly shifting either completely or opting for a dual-boot system. This post of mine is fueled by a few tens of phone calls and requests by my friends who want their computers converted to dual boot systems. Since it’s not possible to explain to every one individually, I write this post dedicated to all you guys 8)

This walk through however is meant for Windows Vista/7 users. If religiously followed, you should not lose your data, but IF you do, I am … well … not responsible.

1. Create a partition

To create a partition in your hard disk in Windows, you need to open the disk management window. Right click the ‘computer’ option in the right pane of the start menu. And select “manage” from the menu that pops up. You will see a window like this. Select “Storage” as highlighted in the screenshot below.

You should see something similar to this.

Now you need to a be a bit careful. Choose the drive which you believe has enough enough disk space to accommodate Ubuntu. We need some 10 GB at the least to play safe. The different columns you see in the lower half of the window are the different disks and drives that exist on your computer. Right click on the one (column) which meets the 10 GB requirement This is also the one whose space will be used to make space for Ubuntu. A menu like the in the pic that follows should pop up.

In this menu, click on the “Shrink Volume” option. The following screen pops up.

Enter the amount of disk space you want to shrink the drive by. You can safely shrink the volume by the size of the ‘available shrink space (in MB)’ as mentioned in the second line of the window.

Click on “Shrink”. And wait. The waiting time can be anything from a few seconds to several minutes so don’t get panicky.

After the shrinking part is done, new free space is created which you can then see. Right click on it and choose ‘New Simple Volume’. Or if you see “Unallocated space” instead of free space do the same there too.

Click “Next” when the pop up window … erm .. pops up. And you see a “new simple volume wizard” window like this. Follow the instructions that appear. In the Simple Volume Size in MB enter the volume you wish to set aside for Ubuntu. We are playing safe remember so we enter 10000 MB.

In the next window, click on the third option, do not assign a letter or drive path. By default you will be asked to format this newly created volume before you can do anything on it. And remember to format with the NTFS file system .

The formatting could take any amount of time depending on how big your new partition is. But once over, you have a partition ready to install Ubuntu in it.

             2. Installing Ubuntu in the partition just created.

This is the easier part, thought it may not sound so, and the entire installation process hardly takes 15 minutes (all hail Ubuntu).

First up, you need a bootable pendrive or the Ubuntu live CD. To make an Ubuntu CD you can just download the latest version of Ubuntu ( viz 10.04) as in .iso image. And burn it in an empty CD. Insert the CD in the CD drive and reboot your computer.

When your laptop make splash screen comes up .. showing Dell or Vaio or HP or whatever just enter the correct F-button to enter the boot set-up mode. For Dell, it’s F-12.

You will see a primitive kinda screen giving you options as to what you intend to use … use the arrow keys to select the CD/DVD option and press enter.

You will soon see the purple splash screen of ubuntu and the “build-up” to the  installation will soon begin underway. The following screenshots will guide you.

From this point onwards, you need to exercise a certain degree of caution else your hard disk can get really screwed and your Windows partition totally formatte and all data lost.

When this window (the one above) comes up, you select the LAST OPTION viz Specify Partitions manually (advanced) and click on Forward.

Clearly identify the partition you have created from the multi-coloured bar. Check the size, the file system (ntfs) to ensure that you select the right one (from the list that follows the coloured bar) … and click forward.

You would see something like the following after it.

Remember to set the Use as option to Ext4. If you are however installing Ubuntu 9.10 … select Ext3. Check the ‘Format the partition’ box and set the Mount Point as / (which means root).

Now click OK. In the screen that next comes up, enter your personal details and click Forward.

Sit back and watch as Ubuntu gets installed. The process is very fast and they also give an overview of all that’s there within Ubuntu to enjoy.

After the installation completes, you’ll be asked to restart your machine. Do that.

And well … that’s that. Enjoy Ubuntu.

screenshots credits : 

http://blog.eches.net/tips/how-to-create-partition-or-new-drive-in-windows-vista/


and


http://techie-buzz.com/foss/ubuntu-10-04-lts-installation-guide.html

Jab We Met : Voldemort and Vader

Presenting, Darth Vader.  hssssssssh hsssssssssh

Bio : Originally Anakin Skywalker who fell prey to the wrong (read Dark) side of the Force. And later repented, but that is besides the point.

Weapons : Lightsaber. Custom form V specialist. make : Sith.

Finishing moves :  Force choke or Ripping off some body part with lightsaber, generally the head.

Strengths : highly trained Jedi knight, therefore gifted with extraordinary agility and intuition. Sith armour hand crafted by Sith workmen, is near impregnable. Unison with The Force.

Weakness : vulnerable to anything and everything once his respiratory mask his taken off. 

Presenting, Lord Voldemort.

Bio :  Originally Tom Marvolo Riddle. Greatest dark wizard of all time.

Weapons : Wand. 13½” (34.29cm) yew wood, with a phoenix feather core. Make : Ollivander’s

Finishing moves : Avada Kedavra, the killing curse.

Strengths : greatest dark wizard of all time. Well versed in all possible enchantments, spells. Mastery over non-verbal spells. Flight.

Weakness : no armour as such.

So now imagine. A ring. The sort they have in WWE. And in that. Darth Vader with his lightsaber. And Lord Voldemort with his wand.

TING TING TING

Lord Volemort’s snake like eyes stare intently at Lord Vader. He breathes back in return. All is well. Vader’s steady and deep breathing … the only sound in the silent arena.

And suddenly Voldemort lashes out. “AVADA KEDAVRA”

A jet of green light shoots out of the end of his wand … but Alas! All it takes is a well timed twirl of his lightsaber, and the green jet deflects harmlessly off Vader’s red blade.

Vader’s still breathing. Deep. Silent. Voldemort is … no not furious. Rather he’s perplexed. Was the Darth Vader mentioned in Sybill Trelawney’s prophecy too? It made no sense. Or was the Darth Vader Harry Potter himself. His slit-like nostrils flared in ambiguity. OK, he had to get stuff clarified.

“Look. Dude …”

“Silence. If you wish to address me, it shall be Lord Vader.”

“Screw you, Vader. Listen …”

Vader is taken aback. No one ever hasever dared to address him by anything except “Lord Vader” leave aside “Dude”. Voldemort wouldn’t be a Dopy-ite, or would he?

Voldemort goes on “Yeah so as I was saying. Are YOU the Chosen One too?”

Vader scratches his respirator. “Erm, Well. What IS a Chosen One? I was the one Obi Wan Kenobi chose to duel against, if that’s what you mean.”

“Ahh lite then.”

There, Voldemort was definitely BITSian. No doubt about it. But still better be sure.

“Are you BITSian?” he asks, uncertainly.

“Lol. No. Am not.” Voldemort gives his iconic maniacal and sinister laughter. “Just that, a lot of my fans are BITSians. The acad pressure is too much there I’ve heard, so they choose the Dark side.”

“You mean, they choose the Dark Side of the Force?” Vader is now excited. Had it not been for the mask, he would probably have been visibly excited too.

“Force?” Voldemort asks, “What Force?”

Vader is incredulous. Inside his mask, his mouth opens wide. “You mean, you don’t know what The Force is?”

“Oh, I get it. The thing in Star Wars comics kya? My fans like them too. ” Volemort’s lips curl into a ghostly smile.

Vader breathes on. “Hmph”

A diversion here. Here a few pics depicting Darth Vader during his mood swings.

Darth Vader breathing.

Darth Vader taken aback.

Darth Vader visibly excited

Darth Vader mouth opened wide.

Coming back to the encounter.

Vader then asks. “Er … Voldy, temme something … erm …. do you have a nose?”

Voldemort is now visibly infuriated. Unlike Vader however, his facial changes are quite distinguishable. Here’s how he replied.

“Oh. Cool! A flat nose. (Sigh) I wish I remembered, what my nose looks like. Damn Obi Wan Kenobi!”

Voldemort gives his hollow laughter. “Vader, ” he asks. “You gotta agree … your costume rocks man! I find my robes all slushy and … old and all. Would die to get one like yours, man!”

Vader smiles. Yes Like this.

  

“Well, I don’t like it much. I know it’s strong and all … cool also. But also kinda clumsy. In the end you gotta agree .. Jedis weren’t trained to fight with this humongous piece of metal all over them. Yeah, you do get the supervillain attention, but still … and by the way” Vader continues, ” How did your nose become that flat. As in … it was normal when you were Tom Riddle right?”

“Ahh, dude”, Volemort sighs and answers, “that is a sad story, One of my Death Eaters. James Cameron. He made this movie called Titanic. A pretty sissy story involving love and a sinking ship …”

Vader interrupts, “A SINKING ship? Our ships don’t SINK. ROFL!!! Here take a look” and hands him a picture.

“Our ships,” he continues, “are kick ass \m/  and that,” he points at the picture, “is a Star Destroyer \m/ “

“You guys FLY in ships?”

“yeah, what else do you do in them? Waltz?” Vader snaps back.

“LMAO”, Voldemort shrieks, “we fly on brooms!!! They are so much more cooler, and convenient. Though of course, I can just will to fly.” he smirks and suddenly levitates himself.

“Wanna try?”, he guffaws, “Wingardium leviosa” he points his wand at Vader and shouts.

Vader is lifted, and he shrieks out loud. Well this is how he shrieks.

Voldemort releases him and says, “So you want to know how I got this nose, eh?”

“That retarded Cameron, decided to make a scene involving me. I was to stand with my arms outstretched on the very front of the hull of the ship. Like this.”

“The Aurors then decided to storm in … bad timing, the spineless morons. They can’t attack me up front huh? And one of them, decided to Stupefy me. And so I stood there for ages and ages. The winds lashed against my face and nose, and eroded it. Sucks man.”

Vader is bewildered. Yeah, like this :

“When did THAT happen?” he asks, uncertainly, and does this :

Suddenly there’s a flourish. And a ringing laughter. And a new figure appears in the ring. And  Voldemort’s and Vader’s faces pale. Needless to say. Voldemort’s face paled, more than what it generally is. And Vader’s, yes, you guessed it right. It paled like this :

It was Him. “The He Who Must Not Be Named … The Chosen One … all put into one …” Voldemort breathed.

Vader breathed harder … “The Jedi who ate the Force … that’s Him too.”

A few moments of silence. Then Voldemort shouts. “RUN!!!!” Vader follows without a second thought. 

But suddenly the new entrant points at them and talks. And this is what happens.

Yes you guessed it right.

inception : the best movie ever made?

How would you like, if the thriller novel you brought the other day, had the entire plot, written … summary, spoilers and all .. on the rear cover? And the rear cover pasted on the front? My guess is, well, you wouldn’t. But that does not deter me from answering the question addressed in the title.

Frankly speaking, from the very fathomable depths in my white and unspoilt, honest conscience … the movie isn’t the best movie ever made. Now before you start throwing those tomatoes and pumpkins at me … give me a chance to explain myself.

First the big picture. Which is … parallel existence. Look into my eyes and tell me, that it is something innovative. You cannot, because it’s … not. Well. When Neo enters the Matrix … then yes, you can say that. But after he’s entered the matrix, after Jake Sully’s been there done that in the humanoid infested lush green forests of Pandora in Avatar … sorry to say … parallelism is getting clichéd.

But the means of implementing parallelism? Well, in The Matrix it was the digital medium. In Avatar it was the … I dunno any single phrase to encompass that entire thing …. in Inception, it’s … no points for guessing .. dreams.

So what’s new? Well … meta-parallelism. Which is creating multiple parallel existences …. simultaneously. (Did I just coin that term? :O ) So while in The Matrix, Neo enters the Matrix and doesn’t dare venture into further sub-Matrices, and Jake Sully enters the other life … and stops at that level, Dom Cobb keeps dreaming … in dreams … in dreams and …. so on. Reminds one of nested loops doesn’t it? Watch this space

So coming back to the typicalities of a typical film review.

Leonardo DiCaprio. I was never an avid fan of this gentleman. What with his boyish, midwesterner twang and delicately poised juvenescence I say. But if there was one film where he actually seemed to sink in to the character he was assigned, Inception is indeed the one. What Nolan has done is not pick stars to fill his cast. Rather, he’s taken people who he believes can act. And yes, he’s chosen well.

Ellen Page. Man! That was a good choice! She did her part well, and was kinda complimentary to DiCaprio. The others in the cast were good too, but yes. I would personally have liked Michael Caine .. in a more important role (like in The Prestige and The Dark Knight … sigh … ).

Cinematics. This is one thing I keep repeating in film reviews. A simple law. If it’s Hollywood and if film A is released after film B, then film A will have better cinematics than film B. OK. Make that generally. Simple. And the Inception is no exception. The zero-gravity thing, while the van in the first dream was falling off the bridge, and its repercussions in the second dream had me dazed. Seriously.  A fighting scene without gravity! And quite unlike the Matrix because there you could choose to defy gravity whereas in this case, you have no gravity to defy! I just wish that sometime in the distant future, there would actually be such a re-enactment in a space mission. 

The snow fortress episode in the third dream and the action clips associated were somewhat mushy and lacked visual diversity but yes, that doesn’t hinder the overall goodness because the genius in Nolan has actually overlapped the evasive car chase, the gravity-free fist fight and the snowy shootout within the same time frame simultaneously.

The … urgh … fourth dream where Cobb and  Ariadne meet Cobb’s wife … and then proceeds to the limbo is also a good turn, complexifying the already complex plot, but yes, artfully maintaining it within the frontiers of comprehension. The portion earlier up wherein Cobb explains to Ariadne … the concepts of extraction and inception are well shown too.

Now well, as a movie critic I feel the need to criticise. A simple question. When you are in a dream, do you remember your plans in the real world? Well you don’t. So Cobb asking in the second dream, how many more minutes does Yusuf have before the van crashes down the bridge (in the first dream) is … a gross error.

Also as a friend of mine pointed out, would YOU really risk so much for a commercial rivalry? If no, then the story ends there. Within the first thirty minutes. But if you do, there’s the rest of the story for you.

Reverting back to parallelism and meta-parallelism. Read this part carefully. The Matrix, as I said a few paragraphs back heralded this concept of parallelism. Avatar took it in a different perspective and Inception dealt the finishing move.

A geometric analogy. The Matrix involved choosing two two-dimensional planes to reside in. You can travel through the three dimensional space that separates the two planes by doing whatever computer wizardry you know or whatever Neo did. And then you had to turn back, travel back through the two dimensional space and come back to the first plane.

To visualise Inception you need to think of an infinite number of shells, each representing a level of dreaming. You can move from one shell to another but never know which is the last one, closest to reality. This important concept is hidden in the perpetually spinning top in the end. 

Wait a second. Lemme explain. You thought that the perpetual motion of the top signified that the real was a dream too. That is not so. It is not just a dream. It is a dream within a dream within a dream …. within infinite layers of dreams. Why? Because once you go up one dream level, time slows down. So to make a top that would otherwise stop spinning, spin for longer, you need to just get into a dream. But what if there was one top that would never stop spinning? Quite simply, a top within infinite layers of dreams. Food for thought? You bet so. 

So to sum it in layman’s terms, if the Matrix was the fresher’s course, Inception was post-graduation.

Here’s another analogy for the sake of it.

Say you are learning a language. I mean a programming language.

First you learn selection statements viz if else. That is the Matrix. Here’s a crude analogy,

if(youWannaEnter)

{

       enter();

}

void enter()

{

       if(youWannaExit)

       System.exit();

}

whereas Inception is like nested loops or possibly recursion or maybe even meta-recusrion.

//n is dream layer

keepDreaming(n)

{

      if(wannaDreamMore)

            keepDreaming(n+1);

     else if (!wannaDreamMore)

            keepDreaming(n-1);

}

There. You seriously expected a film review from me minus my fine touches

But yes, certainly not the best movie ever made.

the birth of the hyper hybrid

What follows are some technical details of Porsche’s latest mindbender. The 918 Spyder. Considered to be the perfect amalgamation of supercar like awesomeness and … yes … environmental friendliness.

• The engine : a 3.4 liter V8 mated to seven-speed gearbox. 500 bhp to the rear wheels. That’s not it! Three more electric motors : two driving the front wheels mated to a fixed gear ratio and the third, through the seven-speed provides additional power to the rear axle. When all work together the car transforms into a 718 bhp fire breather. 
• The electric pots can not only be plugged-in and charged. They also get automatically charged when the car undergoes braking.
• Four driving modes : an E-drive mode wherein the car runs on battery power alone, using the rear motor only, with a range of 16 miles. Three hybrid modes : Hybdrid, Sport, and Race, where all four power pots work to different extents to provide the desired levels of performance and economy. In Race mode a push-to-pass button is available to deliver additional electric power, useful during overtaking.
• A carbon-fiber reinforced plastic monocoque chassis and a lot of aluminium and magnesium in the body means that it weighs less than 1500 kgs 
• A mind-blowing 0-100 km/hr run in less than 3.2 seconds and a staggering top-speed of 320 km/hr.
• Fuel economy at an all time high of 78 US miles/gallon.

Some pics follow.

Looks impressive too, what say people? Here’s raising a toast to its success, and
hoping that it reaches production lines soon!

The official Porsche video follows.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Ucnp-srma-A&hl=en_US&fs=1

games people play

disclaimer : all information provided in this write up is grossly incorrect to the very best of my knowledge. Any suicide attempts, divorce cases that may take place after this is published, should NOT be traced back to this under any known or unknown circumstances. The author regrets to inform that he won’t be held responsible too.

disclaimer for previous disclaimer : this is another of my superbly disoriented and fuzzy wramblingz. A lame attempt to emulate the god like articles of uncyclopedia. Please bear with the amount of nonsense you shall behold before your eyes.

the third and … kinda serious … disclaimer : this is essentially a parody of all the games people go gaga over and play on something called Microsoft Windows.

1. Need for Creed. Often mistaken for Need for Speed, Need for Creed, developed by Alternative Entertainment and Sports (AE Sports), is a stunning game featuring Creed, an iconic death metal band of the early 14th century. The variants released since 1998 .. are as follows

• Need for Creed – the first version wherein your main objective is to save Joan of Arc from the burning stake, and liberate France, thus distorting human history. Then only instrument you can use however is the Fender Stratocaster, a certain 6 string instrument, which a certain Celtic outlaw called Mummy Hendrix had immortalized. Creed band members are always there to help you use it.
• Need for Creed 2 – the second version of the stunning game continued to fascinate people with dramatic changes in primary objectives. This time, you had to play the role of Gandalf, a wizened old wizard, who had to destroy a certain ear ring, which his ex-girlfriend had given him before breaking up. The important thing in this game is that Gandalf frequently suffers from heartaches from memories of his girlfriend, which is where the Creed part comes in. You need to choose the right Creed songs for his iPod Shuffle playlist, so as to cheer him up, and keep him free of any sort of illness while he goes on this perilous quest.  
• Need for Creed : Bourbon – also the latest version, was the most celebrated version of NFC ever, and it required the player to help the Dark Lord, Barrack Obama, buy a packet of bourbon biscuits from Wallmart. Here the Creed band members take up part-time jobs as his body guards and you have to help defend Him while he buys the stuff.

2. Age of Vampires. Made jointly by Dissemble Studios and Microshit, often confused with a third class board game called Age of Empire (Ensemble Studios, Microsoft) is easily the greatest game ever made. Soon after its launch in 1997 it went on to win 3 BAFTAs, 4 Grammys and 1 Golden Globe. There are three versions of this game as follows.

•  Age of Vampires : the Rise of Romance. The making of this game was a top secret affair, confined to the underworld realms of the Large Hadron Collider, in Nigeria. It is said that Edward Cullen was one of the core programmers and minds behind this game. Not surprisingly, the Twilight saga, a series of movies about gay rights, is believed to have sprouted from this game.
• Age of Vampires : the Age of Pings. This version was mainly directed at the Linux user who checks his internet connection by typing in the terminal ping google.com It received huge acclaim because for the first time in the history of gaming, the interests of a Linux user had been considered. The game however did not run on Linux, and resulted in immediate degradation in the version of the GRUB installed on the machine.
• Age of Vampires : the Werewolves’ Expansion. This fantasy version features a red Indian wife called Aishwarya Rai, trying to convert her husband, Abhishek Bachhan to a werewolf by biting him in his sleep. You win this game if you can convert all the beggars in Bombay city to werewolves and then launch a full fledged attack on the Bollywood Film industry and punish Ram Gopal Verma for a series of mishaps.

3. Counterlike – One of the most popular games of all time, it is based on the biggest online madness ever called Facebook. Not surprisingly it is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). It is a team game with no rules. You can do whatever you want. The idea however is to Like as many things as you can. Of course, if you feel your opponent is Liking stuff more than you, you can immediately shoot him dead and claim the crown. The popularity of the game is mainly owing to its minimal requirements ( an internet connection, Mark Zuckerberg’s phone number (you need to call him up to register), and a mouse (actually a mouse button will do too) because as a great mind called Subhayan Mukerjee once said ‘all it takes is a click to like’.

4. Call of Nature : Modern Shitfare 2. The most amazing game ever built, but often confused with one of Enrique Iglesias’ songs, Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2. The objectives are simple and straight forward. Eat and shit. If you shit more than your opponent you win. The game grows in difficulty as you progress because you get things like constipation. In such cases you need to poison your opponent’s food , and put in stuff that hinders free bowel movement, so that he fails to shit too. You can find hidden items like laxatives and purgatives throughout the game. Therefore you need to keep an eye open, not to mention something else open too.

5. Pro Evolution Socker – This game is a heavy game and grows heavier the more you play, because you start with dry socks which tend to get wet, and increase the weight. The objective is to walk in the Calcutta Maidan without wearing shoes, but just socks. The person who walks the most in a given time interval is usually the winner. Exceptions arise when Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, two of the world’s greatest spy agents, call for a strike. In such cases your objectives change to burning as many private buses you can. All the while however, you can wear nothing else but socks.

the four color problem

Another post fueled by interest in all things geeky. Hell. It’s math this time. And it’s about something called the four color theorem. A seemingly simple theorem, with certain … er … beauties, that caught my eye, and thus led to me writing this post.

/*sheepish grin
the angle brackets are better off for expressing feelings but Blogger’s smart arse word processor very inconveniently considers any starting angle bracket to be the beginning of an html tag and all oddities arise. Hence the C/C++ style comments. Lol. */

The Four Color Theorem in its bare bones states that, (erm … quoting Wikipedia) given any separation of a plane into contiguous regions, producing a figure called a map, no more than four colors are required to color the regions of the map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Point to note : two regions meeting at points can have the same color


Well, I am myself not the absolute authority in the four color theorem, and any such assumptions gathered, or unintentionally implied should be … discarded immediately. Ahem.

The beauty I referred to in the opening paragraph is the method used to deal with these map coloring problems.

/*I know how suicidal the American spellings look, but unfortunately none of the browsers I use have spell check for any form English on this side of the Atlantic, so …*/

Yes, so coming back to the method. Here’s how it goes.

Consider the following map, showing a few countries of West Europe.

/* Pics taken from http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/mapcolor/mapcolor.htm, but as you can check, I’ve tried to explain in my own words */

The goal is too color the map such that no two countries sharing a common border have the same color. (Also, as a side information the minimum number of colors needed to colour a map is called the chromatic number of the map.) The completed map should look something like this.

So how to go about the predicament? Here’s how.

1. We replace each country with circles, maintaining a roughly correct relative orientation. 
2. Whenever two countries share a common border, we join the two corresponding circles with a straight line.
3. We ensure that multiple common borders are taken care of … France’s with Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy.
4. Now color the circles such that a) two circles at the end of each line segment have different colours and b) the least number of colors are used.

the steps in pictures :

Done Well that’s about it. If it seems a bit too abrupt, my apologies.

Hey Dude … an Ode to Dopy

terrifyingly crude, arbit and downright stupid … but well, it doesn’t hurt does it

Hey Dude,

don’t feel so sad,
take one snap shot, and you’ll feel better.
Remember to give your ID in,
then we will start to feel better.

Hey Dude,

don’t feel afraid
We were made to, go out and click her
The minute you step in to the frame
Then we begin to make it better.

And anytime you feel the doubt, hey dude, don’t pout
don’t carry the burden on your shoulders …
for those who know that it’s a rule, to click and drool
with all those bucks, that we keep gathering …

na na na na na nana na na …

Hey Dude,

don’t let me down.
We have found you, now let us click you
remember that it’s just one single click
that’s worth words, all of a thousand few

So let it out, and let it in
how to replace the memory stick>
And don’t you know that it’s just you, hey dude, you’ll do
Just the movement you need, is in the lens region.

na na na na na nana na na …

Hey Dude,

don’t feel so sad,
take one snap shot, and you’ll feel better.
Remember to give your ID in,
then we will start to feel

better better better better better better, oh

na na na na na nana na na … Hey Dude ….