The blog that lived...

Today happens to be this blog's anniversary (a bloggiversary, if I may). I never thought it would survive so far, let alone anybody would follow it with any amount of liking. But it has done so, going through a few changes of name, the author's geographical location, career, mood swings, severe shortage of time & content and this new template, among other things. If my site counters don't deceive me, it has picked up some regular (apart from my dear friends) and some new readers (publishing it on Orkut has helped ofcourse :)). Here's saying a big Thank You to all of them. I have hardly any clue of what this blog says about me, but I sure hope that this has been an enjoyable and informative read and that I would be in reception of your continued patronage! Wishing you all a very happy new year !!

Congratulations, Team India

A round of applause is due to the Indian cricket team for their splendid performance against Sri Lanka in both the ODI and the test series which has seen them move up from the depths of the ODI rankings to #5 and now become second only to Australia in Tests. Its a nice feeling to be the #2 Test team in the world, but I would prefer to see a more balanced ranking system. ICCs' current system does not differentiate between home/away wins and losses. By common cricketing wisdom, away victories should get due credit (unless they are against Zimbabwe or such like) and home losses should be penalized harder (again, allowing room for losses to really strong teams like Australia). If the ICC can go to the extent of using complicated stuff like Duckworth/Lewis, I don't think accommodating this into the system should be rocket science.

पी.जे.

काल विमातळावर जाताना झालेला विनोद:

प्र: विमानतळावर उतरल्या नंतर एक विमान दुसरया विमानास काय म्हणते?
उ: चल टॅक्सी करू
:)

[Sadly, doesn't carry the same PJishness when translated into English]

Pune, Googled

Just found out today that Pune is now very clearly visible on Google Earth. Nice feeling it is to be able to see you home, right down to the fencing! The level of detail and clarity is amazing - I could easily make out the fighter jets lined up at the airport!!! Now although this a bit disconcerting since almost all defence establishments have been snapped in much greater detail, the pictures do seem to be over a year old as suggested by a navy officer recently (since I can still see the old factory that was torn down for the new building of my old company). And lets face it, troublemakers are not going to wait for Google to give them enough pictures so that they can plan an attack. Ignorance is bliss - God (or more precisely, Uncle Sam) knows what else those satellites up there are watching! So lets just have some fun with this nice little tool :)

Relativity

Graduate studies should be the de facto practical example when it comes to understanding why time is actually relative and that too from a micro to macro level. I came here just a while ago... August was it? and its already the end of the semester! Time didn't just fly by, it took off on a rocket I guess. But, the semester's gonna end by mid December and that's still a huge 10 days or so away... boo hoo!! I want this semester to end so that I can finally have some days where I actually have _nothing_ to do but that means meeting project submission deadlines and some final exams which is not such an exciting prospect given the amount of small time remaining. Add to that this automatic discrete quantization of time in terms of weekends and 5 work days that happens when you start graduate studies (I would love to add professional work to that but I never really had to *work* this way in office :P). Its a new way of thinking and planning when you've got to measure time not in terms of hours/days remaining but in terms of the volume of work remaining between one assigment/exam to the other :)