Carthik Sharma

I cannot make up my mind whether I am having fun, or getting screwed, nor can I decide for once if I am lazy, or it’s the writer’s block.

In any case, there are a lot of thoughts floating in my head, with regard to the candidacy proposal I am working on. Today is the big day, when I hope to make sense of the bits ‘n pieces I have jotted, or typed down as notes, some strands floating in my mind, what I have written before, the few graphs I have of results of simulations and a few fresh ideas.

My advisor insists that I deliver a motivating example to convey the meaning behind some of the mathematical stuff I am doing. The Byzantine generals problem and the counterfeit coin problem probably come closest to what I will be trying to describe. Describing a mathematical framework, and then trying to derive relations between the mathematical entities is what I will attempt to do tonight. There are so many disparate things, that are all bound together - so many elements that need to go into that one document in an organized fashion, that I get lost, and lose the big picture, if I work in fits and starts, so a marathon session tonight should get everything in reasonable shape. Another significant problem is trying to relate my work to the work that has already been done, in different fields, and making myself look smart. Like, “see this guy was good, but he’s not smart enough to have seen this“, or something to that effect. It is amazing how innovative some technical authors and researchers get when it comes to digging up references and quoting previous work. I have a list of links I have to convert into a threaded conversation.

About the lazy Vs. Writer’s Block thing — it feels great to think of small problems, one at time, and to do nothing but that - just mull over specifics. When it comes to writing it down, half the ideas break down. The other half seem incomplete, and more often than not, I wonder what happened to all the things I thought I’d be writing about!

In any case, this is the most challenging and stimulating thing I have been engaged in, for a while. Solving problems from Irodov’s Problems in General Physics, which was in vogue among the IIT aspirants, and which one of the cool books that MIR published. MIR is now almost defunct, and a lot of the books, including Problems in General Physics are now out of print. I guess this is one of the undesirable side-effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I look forward to the night. Time to go home, now.

Filed by Carthik at 5:34 pm under Yours Truly, Research 2 Comments

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WorldChanging.com brings tidings of One World Health, a non-profit pharmaceutical company in the United States, with the goal of getting drugs that are not “profitable” for pharmaceutical companies.

When I was with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) I learned about “orphan” diseases, defined as diseases that fewer than 200,000 people in the US suffer from. I thought it strange that outside the US, some of these diseases are enormous. For instance, there are about 1000 cases of malaria in the US, and 500 or 600 million cases worldwide. You need to take your American eyeglasses off and consider the whole world.

– Says Victoria Hale in an Interview.

So what the company does is “rescue” such drugs that can have enormous use in the Third World and develop, test, and trial these to the point of being able to make it available to fight diseases and help millions.

I cannot begin to imagine the sacrifice she would have made to start this project. She describes her visit to India, and says she was pushed to tears at the sight of suffering in the villages. Often I think about the inquities that are so evident in the world, and in India, and I have to pause for a moment to be thankful for being able to acheive whatever little I have, and to have some this far. I hope I will be able to do something useful with my life too.

Filed by Carthik at 10:50 pm under Science 2 Comments

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This is certainly one of those weeks when I have so much on my hands that nothing gets done.
I don’t want to try making a to-do list of things. That is very tempting, as that would take some time, and so I can waste that amount of time, but I have things to get done over-night. This very post here is a delay tactic of sorts. Yesterday I counted at least 28 different tasks to complete, each taking upwards of an hour.

There is school related stuff, which is top priority, since I have to take and clear the Candidacy exam this semester. That alone involves a lot of tiring typing.

Then there are the things I would love to spend more time with, related to the Internet in general, and WordPress in particular.

That leaves us with things like updating my address at a million places, visiting the car dealer, mailing out stuff, opening old bills and filing them etc.

I am getting buried under, and the strangest part is, I am not catching up. I am in a interminable loop of doing senseless, worthless things. I have to chart a time-table and allocate time for different things judiciously. I should remember to repair my bicycle and start cycling a little, if not a lot.

Life scares me at times.

Filed by Carthik at 10:30 pm under Yours Truly 4 Comments

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Much as I try to keep out of the political dialogue in this nation, I find a few trends alarming, and red lights go off in my brain.
They are here and they are out to get you is an example.

Some of the suggestions the author makes:
-> Anyone who registers as Muslim should be required to take a loyalty oath. The U.S. or Islam.
-> Anyone who chooses Islam is to be considered a threat to this country and put in confinement.

Well, what’s going on? I have heard such voices before, and it is disquieting to realize that such ideas, as well as other fascist ideas are gaining ground and popularity here. To be honest, I would be releived if someone told me that the article was a joke, or an attempt at weird humor.

via amanita.net

Filed by Carthik at 3:41 pm under Yours Truly 10 Comments

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I have to explore this site more, at a leisurely pace. Whenever I read about people who had accents, in the books, I have wondered what that might sound like. This site is a repository of peoples’ accented speech, so should be fun to keep this as a handy reference.
Speech Accent Archive

Originally seen at Brian Meidell’s Blog

Update: Also see International Dialects of English Archive, which serves up accents as .mp3 files.

Filed by Carthik at 7:53 pm under Science No Comments

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Thanks to Mr.Man, I have been spending the last half hour downloading some classical music.

Search for “netjuke @” index.php and browse the sites. Download if you please and if the sites allow you to.

NetJuke is interesting, to say the least. PHP, MySQL and XML is all there seems to be behind it.

Of course I have all the cds of the tracks I just downloaded Happy Downloading!

Filed by Carthik at 10:55 pm under techknow 1 Comment

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I found an interesting and detailed post at Living in India about the Padmanabhapuram palace.

My life is linked to this palace more than any other. Padmanabhapuram was the capital of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore (or Thiruvithamcode, which is the non-anglicised name), of which my grandparents were citizens. Padmanabhapuram literally translated means “The place of the one with a lotus in his belly button”. In spite of searching high and low, I can’t find a picture of the deity in question here, who is really Lord Vishnu with a lotus coming out of his navel. The very lotus where Lord Brahma sits.

But we are digressing, now about the palace — the palace does not seem to be too much of a palace really, at least not in the Windsor Castle scale of things. It has a tiled roof, and highly polished earthen floors, and is built almost entirely using Wood, finely engraved wood. The Kings of Travancore lived a very simple and austere life when compared with Kings elsewhere. I beleive they barely ever drank alcohol, never had meat, and were rather simple, like the palaces they lived in.

My grandfather used to work for the King. The King himself had laid his kingdom at the feet of Lord Padmanabha, the resident deity of the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Trivandrum, my hometown. He used to call himself Padmanabha-dasa (Padmanabha’s Servant). So my father was born and brought up close to Padmanabhapuram, and they moved to Trivandrum later on.

I was happy to read about the palace once again. There is a document describing the architecture for those inclined, complete with sketches and plans. Archnet, the source of the document is MIT’s effort to create an online resource of sorts for architects, with details about historical monuments from around the world. Engrossing! Now, if only all the documents were free of copyright issues. I have a terrible urge to add some Kerala related information to wikipedia. Later, perhaps. Now I have to deal with teaching tomorrow’s class, and catching up with the course plans, set back by Hurricane Frances.

Filed by Carthik at 6:46 pm under Yours Truly 1 Comment

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I am back in Orlando after spending a few days in Atlanta with my cousin and his family.
It was strange, to be without a computer on my lap all the time, with family and I was amazed at how quickly everything from the past comes back, and how seeing old, familiar faces takes me back to places I have spent most of my life in. I met my aunt and uncle after a long time, had food, of the kind made at home, which I can’t recreate well enough when I cook - food I had eaten for the first 16 years of my as yet short life. For some reason I remembered the steps outside our house, and how the water flows down it in a torrent during the rains, and how I used to watch it, entranced, through the window, beside which I had my table. I remembered a lot of things, the details of which I won’t go through, and now I can’t wait to go home, but it looks like going home will have to wait awhile.

I started reading Seth’s “An Equal Music” on the way back to Orlando, and given the long drive and the traffic, I was able to complete about 90 pages. Traffic was slow, but less painful thanks to the book.

On my way back, I was, as usual, listening to one of NPR’s member stations, and somewhere in between the soothing voices that read interesting news and views, and Bach, I heard Pachelbel’s Canon in D major. Everything I had been feeling over the past 4-5 days happened together again, and I felt happy to be alive, and I got the feeling I get once in a year perhaps - one of complete rapture, tinged with an indescribable sadness. My eyes welled with tears, without my permission.

The road back was filled with folks coming back to Florida, like me, and the sky to my left had a rainbow in it. To my right, there were green pastures, and horses, and white fences. The grass was flourescent in the orange glow of dusk. The music was heavenly, and I was happy.

Nothing about Orlando has changed. I have not changed. I have just realised how much of an island I have become, and how the distance between me and my past, and all that I was, and all those I am related to by blood has increased to the point that I feel like a stranger amongst my thoughts, at times.

I think of lives that could have been, and the one that is, and though I never imagined the life-that-is as a possibility when in my past I dreamt up could-be futures, I must say that things have turned out pretty well. Now if only people could see how I have changed, and instantly catch up with who I am, as opposed to what I was.

Filed by Carthik at 2:25 am under Yours Truly 6 Comments

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Hurricane Frances might hit Orlando at a mean 140 miles per hour, on Sunday.

So I may not be online, or doing anything else at all, related to computers, over the next few days. Now I need to get ready for Frances. Please excuse my absence.

Filed by Carthik at 1:11 am under General 7 Comments

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