Applying for a VISA!

It's been 9 days since I blogged last. Didn't feel like blogging at all. There weren't many things happening either.

I finished my German 4th level with flying colors. Went to the largest Beer-house of the world which sells largest number of beer per year.

It was fun - teacher and 5 students. Unfortunately, there weren't any girls/ladies in the course this time. We went to the beer-house, had lot of food, beer and fun! I guess, teacher and yours truly were (very) slightly drunk.

I should say, this was the major event which happened last week.

~~~

I am planning to attend a workshop to be held at Dublin in September (5-7). I need a visa to go there. I am a big failure in these bureaucracy related things. May be not a failure - because I always do things successfully. But definitely not good at it - very unprepared.

Yesterday morning I suddenly decided to apply for it ... without postponing further. Went ahead and started doing the necessary. I was totally upset the way I was unprepared(not anymore). Even though I struggled to get all the necessary documents properly, I managed to reach the office/consulate just 15 minutes before it closed (12:00). Successfully finished the work.

After all I wasn't that bad :)

Time out. Gotta go to the university. More later.

After a long time, I am going to contribute to the FSF... Hooray!. Details later.

Signing off, Sands.

~

Mera Naam Saara Hein!

It was in the train, I saw her. All members of my tour-team were getting introduced to each other. She said "mera naam saara hein". Wooh!!! I was surprised - just because she comes from Morocco and I really didn't expect her to know Hindi. Of course, I had underestimated "Bollywood-effect".

Yesterday, I went as one of the tutors for the summer university students. There were actually two small groups in the team - Arabic and Russian ones. My colleague took care of the Russian group. She was from Ukrain, so she knew Russian.

The Arabian group was with me. Should I mention it.... all of them were girls. ;)[why don't I change?]

To my surprise, despite of their Arabic origin, they kept speaking in English. (What I have noticed is, most of the Arabic speaking people keep talking in Arabic even when there are persons who don't understand it).. Hint : GULT

The whole thing was good. The Englisher garden visit, the meadows, lake, beer garden, Chinese tower and hmm.... yeah, the beauties lying around in the garden (in bikini ;) )

I have a lot to write. But running out of time. Today we are taking the students to the Castle of Herrenchiemsee. Have to move now!

More details and pictures later.

Signing off,
Sands.
~

Programmer's Dilemma

Guess what? After a long time, I am into full-time coding. For the past few days, I am coding for about 7-8 hours a day.

The language is MAPLE. It is actually a mathematical software system or for the beauty of it, let's call "a computer algebra system". To be frank, I haven't liked the syntax/grammar that well. I guess, it's just a matter of getting used to.

Programming is not easy too. Because you need to know quite a lot of math to use this. Till now, I have managed fine.

I had to use some finite-field stuff - which is incidentally very poorly done in Maple. I just thought of writing a wrapper class/module. Started with it and got defeated badly. The reasons for failure were - 1) I am not crystal clear with all the details of finite fields. 2) I am still not an expert in Maple.

Now, coming to the title.

Whenever I have to write a reasonably big function/program, I think for quite some time. Even after I am done with thinking, I would be hesitant to start. I will just go around and around for quite some time. It takes a lot of energy to pull me back to write it. I guess it is like "chewing the cud". Taking the program structure from mind and chewing and re-chewing it - to confirm everything.

Another funny thing is that, after writing the code, I will read the code very many times - checking for syntax/logical errors. Again I am hesitant to try compiling and running. I want it all to go in a single go. Rather, I don't want the compiler to find the smallest silly mistake.

What would the compiler think about me? - if I don't find and correct it myself? ;)

Just now, I am done with a big chunk of code - a set of functions for core of the program. I finished it and waiting to get enough courage to run it. I have read it a couple of times and it looks perfect and is shining after the polish.

Still... shall I try it now or after a break? This is my dilemma. If I try now and find some mistakes, then I wont be taking any break. Anyway I'm running it now.

I guess, cross-checking the algorithm and code, before giving it to the computer is what makes me a good programmer. Careful coding is always better than trial and error. Less bugs more fun! :)

Signing off,
Sands.

~

Internet Reservoirs

For the past few years, a couple of websites are providing online music services. The movie songs in most of the major languages (Indian) are available - to listen online.

There (is?) was the website coolgoose even provided the downloadable mp3 versions.

Since the huge growth of band width, there are sites offering video - either parts of movies or even the full length movies. The second wave of music sites are even uprooting the old music sites like raaga/music-india-online.

In case of video-sites, the major ones are videoduniya/videoraaga/videomasti etc. These websites are just a collection of well organised links to the online reservoirs of YouTube and Google-Video (both are actually the same).

This is in fact a very good business. Since I live abroad, I know how much do people want to see Indian movies here. And this kind of websites is a blessing for us - especially in Europe.

Now comes the problem of piracy. Even Sivaji (the latest Rajni movie) is available online. And as far as I know, the real distributors of the movies are not happy about it. Still I am surprised, why don't they act?

All these online sites are providing very low-quality videos. At the same time, if the distributors want, they can setup good servers with good quality video - let it be streaming or even download (which expires after a couple of hours/days). This is what is happening with amazon-video right?. People rent the movies and watch them. (I don't know about the patent/legal issues)

Even if they charge about 3-5 Euros, I am sure there would be quite a lot of people to rent and watch the movies. If you consider the whole of Europe, I am sure you'll get quite a number of people for that.

I would definitely watch 2-3 Indian movies at the cost of 10 Euros a month. I am sure, I am not a movie-freak in this aspect. There are people with LOT of time who would watch at least 8-10 movies every month.

Am I overlooking something? Some legal issues?

Now since Indians are smart, they would download the stuff, record it new, and the sell it off for lower price. In that case, I am sorry.. you cannot help it! Let the online piracy continue!

By the way, I watched Sivaji and liked it. It was fun. I am becoming an ardent fan of Thalaivar ;). [Reciprocating for another post ;) - from a dear friend]

Signing off,
Sands
~
PS: From a Malayalam daily (online version) what I could understand is this. The following image is of a health centre in Kerala - How is it?!


~