Carthik Sharma

navin rajaram is a friend of mine who’s at clemson univ.

you know what, navin, we are blessed. yes, really. we will certainly be better human beings, and make life a lot more beautiful and easier for a lot of people who come in touch with us, like our (to be) wife and kids. its just because we are spending so much precious time away from the greed of the world . i am sure that even if i start publishing twice the number of papers, my stipend is not gonna double, or even increase. that eliminated material-greed-driven overwork. And we are in an environment with fewer changing variables. we dont take the metro or even a bus to get to work everyday. our environment at school is more conducive to introspection, and lets hope this is what we get for trading in a few “prosperous” years.

we are blessed. this is perhaps the best way to lie life. minimal possessions, minimal needs.

i wrote a mail to my friends describing how happy i felt, for some strange reason, yesterday. i wish i had a copy of that mail so that i could post it here.
what follows is what i wrote in response to reply i got saying that the respondent was happy, and felt special to have received that mail, regardless of the fact that it had so many CC addresses.

i trouble so many people when i feel bad. i take the liberty of taking the kind words of friends and relatives. i used to feel guilty about this, and then i decided that what i should do is tell them when i a feel happy too, so that its a fair deal.the message was the same for all my friends. it was about how much i missed my friends, and God knows that instead of meeting my friends one on one, i would love to meet them all at the same place, once again, just like i used to at recw, for example. so similarly, sharing the same happiness with so many people, using the same mail does make sense. i wish everyone was as understanding as one of my friends was, and realise that just because x-many other people got to hear what i had to say, the value of the shared feeling doesnt diminish by a factor of x.

After I read this about Mix CDs and how people swap them, I was amazed. I had thought of doing something like this not so long ago, but had given up because i thought no one would trust me enough to take the pain to burn a cd and mail it to me, trusting that i would do the same to them.

So this is an open offer.

Does anyone want to swap music mix cds with me?

I shall burn an eclectic collection of songs i like, and mail them to you, and i would expect you to do the same for me.

In fact, if you would like me to, i could burn mp3’s onto a cd, so you get more music.

To make it more interesting, i could burn music from exotic places like
Kerala[language-malayalam] (alright, its home, for me. )
Tamil Nadu[language - tamil]
India [Language - hindi]
and more…India is home to a lot of languages and also 2 classical music forms, the Hindustani and Carnatic traditions.

Of course, like everyone else I listen to a lot of english music too.

Wanna Swap?

This blog makes for interesting reading about Iraq. An Iraqi’s Blog , i presume, with moving images of life in Iraq, which, as I expected is much the same, and could be just as beautiful as life elsewhere.

dey harish ( ,
you are on the net.
here’s the article with you and your photo in it
good to see you , after so long.

after a long search, i finally found a palm download with the std codes of all indian cities. havent used it yet, hope its updated to reflect the latest numbering system changes made.
you can download it here

popularize http://labs.google.com
get set on http://slashdot.org
get the damn homepage in final(?) shape
look up RSS feeds

i wish i could find some justifiable use for a creativecommons license. be ages before i write/do anything artistic AND original…
creativecommons.org/license/

i figure some friends might want to use this. pretty neat idea this.

alright, i know what a ToDo list is for and why it shouldnt be on your friends page. sorry about that.
enough for the day, blogging off.

This here is a barcode that would be read as 2fargon by any Code 128-b type reader. I’m worse than a number, I am a barcode, that too of an assumed name

F I S H I N G F O R A W O R T H Y E X I S T E N C E

One summer, an American investment banker was vacationing in Mexico, in a small coastal village.
He was down at the dock just as a small boat was docking. The banker noted that on the deck of the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna, and only one young Mexican fisherman. He addressed the fisherman in English (which he understood), extended his compliments on the quality of those fish, and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replied, “Only two or three hours.”

The banker then asked why he fished so briefly. The fisherman said two or three hours of such work gave him enough money to support his family’s immediate needs.

Said the banker, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The fisherman said, “My day is this: I sleep late, then fish a little, then play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, then stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos.”

The banker saw an opportunity to be helpful. He said, “Back in the States I am an investment banker. If you wouldn’t mind a little advice, I think I could help you with your business.” The fisherman looked curious. “What would you advise?” “Well,” said the banker, “Were I in your shoes, I would spend more time fishing each day. You would eventually be able to buy a bigger boat with your increased proceeds.”

“And what then?” asked the fisherman. “Well, with the proceeds you would receive from using the bigger boat you would eventually be able to buy several such boats. You’d have a fleet. And with that clout, you could get rid of the middleman, and sell directly to the processor. Eventually you could open your own cannery, leaving you controlling the product, the processing and the distribution.”

“And what then?” asked the fisherman. “Well, at that point you could afford to live anywhere. You could put your wife and your kids in a luxurious house or condo, say in New York, and just enjoy all the fruits of your vast enterprise.” The fisherman said, “Very interesting. How long would all this take?” To which the American replied, “I think you could achieve all this easily within 15-20 years.”

“And what then?” asked the fisherman. The banker laughed triumphantly, “That’s the best part! When the time is right, you take your firm public, and immediately you become very rich. In fact, you would make millions.”

“Millions…!!! Very interesting. And what then?” the fisherman asked.

The banker thought for a moment. “Well, gee. At that point, you could afford to retire. A wonderful retirement, in fact. You could move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your grandchildren, take siesta with your wife, Maria, stroll to the village in the evenings where you would sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Now, isn’t that what it all boils down to?

another baby in the family!! baby born in britain! congratulations, sanjay and bindu!!

This new item made me sad. Whats worse? being rejected by what you look up to as a land created for you, or being rejected by the land you were born in?

Ray of hope for 283 Pak nationals in Kerala
By Ashraf Padanna, Special to Arab News

TRIVANDRUM, 13 January 2003 — As many as 283 ‘Pakistani’ nationals‚ residing in the Malabar region of Kerala would be allowed to stay back if the state government demands so, the federal Home Ministry assured yesterday. Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) lawmaker A Vijayaraghavan said Home Secretary Gopalaswamy conveyed this to him in response to his representation. These Keralites, who migrated to Pakistan after the partition only to be sent back by the Pakistani authorities, and living under miserable conditions without Indian citizenship, were hoping against hope that there would be an end to harassment by the Indian authorities who treat them as foreign nationals. Kerala Chief Minister A. K. Antony had already expressed his willingness to take up the case of these hapless men, most of them in their seventies and eighties living a life a of refugee.

Palash, that strange soul from Bangladesh who was with us(RECians) for four years, reports to say that he has got into the MBA program at the Institute of Business Administration, Dhaka University, the leading B school in Bangladesh.

Quite a surprise, i should say, i mean i never thought guys like me, chippu and palash would ever make a good manager. Imagine having a CEO who does not beleive in the material world! palash, CEO, indeed :))(someone, somewhere must be thinking now - 2fargon, professor, indeed!!)

I used to spend hours at his room, especially in the final year, listening to his stories of Thakurgaon, and Dhaka, and Rubina. Rubina got married recently and Palash did’nt. He’s the kind of guy who loves the idea of being in perpetual sadness. More than once he has told me that he wants more sadness, more pain, and so on, and man he used to love waning poetic. His fave hobby was to memorize dialogues from hindi films, especially nana patekar’s and boy, he picked up hindi quite fast. He didnt know any of it when he came to RECW as a fresher.

He took two days to teach me how to pronounce palash. he taught me a couple of lines of a bangla song too. “abar dekha hobe, eko rodiro dinar..” or something like that, “we will meet again, on a red day” i sure hope i meet him again, in Bangladesh, so I can see that tree and the transmission tower I have heard so much about. well, i can never ever write down all that makes me wish to see him again, or better still live in the same city as he does. but then neither can i live in the same city as any of the few good friends i have. Orlando - equidistant from friends, or some such.

He has been working at Beximtex, a textile company all these days, and getting bored doing it.

I should start writing down my college memories. I dont have a perfect memory and without any friends around, i am afraid i will forget at least some of it. Thats what friends are for, to renew memories so you dont forget where you’ve been, and how you laughed, once upon a time…

I am going nuts!! Each time I talk to Dr.Demara, he offers new questions, and totally new avenues for exploration. Being the novice that I am at research, each of these paths takes hours to explore, and at the end, I find a dead end, or more questions. I ask him these questions, and his answers to the questions are more questions that lead to more options, more open roads. This would have been fun had we not been trying to write a grant proposal. Now its been two weeks, and I dont even have an idea _what_ we are going to attack/address in the proposal. From using reconfigurability to enhance security across a network of computer with reconfigurable co processor we have come to, among other things, a system consisting of a single chip that can eliminate insider attacks. Now i have to
1)decide what to do with the old, rejected proposal
2)decide whether to write an entirely new proposal
3)decide which problem to address in the new proposal
4)investigate the options for that proposal
5)write the first draft.
all over this weekend, i promised myself. Now i must be looking like an oaf. Each day i meet him(and i meet him once or twice a week), he asks me what i have been doing with regard to the problem, and i say this is what i have been thinking, what we thought all along is not quite good, this is what i think about it. Well really, what i say i think makes it look like i havent being doing anything, i guess.

absolutely no paper work so far, which is a bad thing. some things happened today, and now its final, he is going to be my advisor, and i pray to God i can think up something original, soon enough.

It is so difficult to come up with anything new. Its all been done before. Implementing an algorithm in a way that makes it run faster by 10% or even 100% is not my idea of a well spent three years. High hopes, are they too high?

Somehow I am stuck to this childhood notion that the best solution is often the simplest, and most beautiful. For example, the only know “unbreakable” crytographic algorithm is the vernan algorithm, which is as simple as using a random string of bits as long or longer than the data to be encrypted and then XORing the data with it. The random string of bits (the key) should never be used again, and the next time, another random key should be used. Neat, but done! If the simplest solution tuns out to be the best, then there is the obvious problem of extracting money from sources of funding. Complex solutions end up getting more funding, since it takes more to build/realise a complex system. I think thats why most research is cryptic.

I am tired, and i needed a break. the perfect break is reading and replying to , say, a dozen emails. But no, today, surprisingly, i havent got a single email.

I have a cookie in my pocket to sufficiently delay dinner.

Take the message direct to Dow Chemical
Join the call Dow day!

Greenpeace’s endeavour. Help , If you think you can.

three whole days stuck in front of the computer. i burnt a lot of cds and did all kinds of usual stuff on the computer. now point is, if i sit in front of the comp all weekend, what do i write home about?
i worked the internship fair today. pathetic scene. very few computer engineering companies, so i tried selling my soul to town planners and theme parks.
sea world was there, and their mouse pad is what it was all about. they had no need for a java jerk, and so i go up and say ” Say, do you need part time killer whale trainers?” and she said ” And so you need a mouse pad, eh?” No, this wasnt the way it went, but it could have been. It could have also gone like …

Me–” Hi I love programming in C!!”
HR manager at Seaworld –” excuse me, but we are looking for whale trainers.”
Me–” Oh I thought you were C World”
All good plans, but in the end, i just walked up and smiled and said ” Say, could you use a computer engineer over the summer?” and she said no, and all that, and at LAST she said ” I think a computer engineer sure could use a mouse pad” so kind of her, now my mouse has a pad of its own. But what beats me basically is, why should sea world be handing out mouse pads , if they arent looking to hire techies in the first place? Is there some other aquatic use for mouse pads that i havent figured out yet?
the lengths i go to to waste time…

I’ll never get to wear a dog collar id badge and work for a firm. i just know it.