There is a blog named after me( and Dougal). Imagine my surprise when that turned up in a random search.
Thank you, Amalia, for making a bored graduate student’s life bright for a moment 
Filed by Carthik at 11:37 pm under General 
4 Comments
It is so unbelievably silent outside. I am at the department, it is late in the night, but not too late. Yet another Friday night spent wrangling with MS Word. I hate Fridays, unlike most other people, since it is almost always a disappointment - always there is that little something to do on Friday night.
But tonight is special - I feel good after the short walk. There are turtles in the small artificial lake near the union, and I tried looking for them but it is too dark, and the water was motionless. There were some Cirrus clouds in the sky, which was otherwise peaceful. Cirrus means “wisp of hair” - nice name to describe them, I suppose.
Pointless post, perhaps, but I can’t help it if pointless things make me happy.
Filed by Carthik at 8:53 pm under General 1 Comment
Am I the only one who thinks eating is a chore? I have to drag myself to subway in the afternoon, and in the evening, have to put up with eating - something I try to put off as much as possible. I hate how the body winds down without food. Somebody please fix this, soon.
Really, just think about it - how many hours/minutes and how many actions does it take in the course of a day to just keep your body “happy”. You have to bathe it, feed it, and it all does is moan, and then one day, give up and stop working altogether.
Filed by Carthik at 2:44 pm under General 9 Comments
Some lucky guy was writing his Master’s thesis on something related to Blogging. He’d sent me a mail a while ago, and requested me to complete it. I did, for some reason.
So now James has graduated, and was kind enough to write to me and tell me that the thesis is now available. Thanks James, and all the best for the future!
Filed by Carthik at 3:26 pm under General 2 Comments
If you are wondering, like I did about whether there really are Sharmas in America, other than the kind that walk off of planes, it looks like the family was given their surname (last name) by a Baba or Guru.
I am just plain jealous - how can someone climb like that, being human and all?
Filed by Carthik at 6:06 am under General No Comments
So someone has written a paper on how to listen to someone typing on a keyboard and convert that to the text that was typed. I read about at freedom to tinker, via Podz. The concept being that if you have a recording of the sound of someone typing for a longish period of time (15 - 20 minutes) then you can use machine learning techniques to figure out the text that was typed - taking into account the fact that different words, and letter-sequences have different frequencies in English. It’s not scary or anything — just interesting.
I have a friend who could, with some accuracy figure out the phone number that was “dialled” by listening to the key-press tones - all this reminds me of him.
Filed by Carthik at 7:15 pm under Research No Comments
Dubrovnik, or “Ragusa” as it was formerly known is a city by the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. It has the moniker, “Pearl of the Adriatic. Certainly a place I wouldn’t mind visiting on a long vacation (I should really keep a list of the places I want to visit - for when I can afford it). It used to be a “Republic” before, and here is the gem: It was the first state to officially recognize the United States of America!
Also, George Bernard Shaw was a plagiarist, he is reported to have said something to the effect of, “If you want to see a heaven on earth, come to Dubrovnik.” - well Mr. Shaw, a few centuries ago, someone said that of Kashmir, in India :
Gar Firdaus bar ruhe zamin ast
Hamin ast, hamin ast, hamin astTranslated:
If there is heaven of Earth
It is here, it is here, it is here.
Thanks for the original and the translation Vivek. I suppose you are an IAS officer?
Filed by Carthik at 4:50 pm under General 2 Comments
Filed by Carthik at 7:17 pm under General 2 Comments
kennedy
Originally uploaded by Carthik.
For posterity - this is the cover under which I was born (like one talks about the “Star” or “Sun Sign” one was born under)…
Question: was Ted Kennedy the first senator to have a website? My curiosity was stoked when, upon searching for this homepage, I was directed to his homepage at an MIT server. What was a senator doing at an MIT, I thought, and ended up at the page describing the IIIP project. 1992 was way ahead of the rest of the world. I wonder who was the first person with a “Home Page” as we know it!
Filed by Carthik at 7:12 pm under General No Comments
Originally uploaded by Throat Wobbler Mangrove.
Found this from Sameer’s Blog. Click through and see the other pictures in the same set on Flickr - fascinating!
Filed by Carthik at 1:46 pm under General 4 Comments
I discovered a random reader of my blog today, Sameer, but surely that is not reason enough for this post.
Did you know that the Germans were so good at creating counterfeit British currency that the counterfeits were told apart only by their perfection?, or, that routing numbers on your checks have an error detecting (Correcting?) code built into them? If you did not, like me, then you can read some more of these at Sameer’s Interesting facts page.
I look forward to reading his blog in the future, especially if it continues to yield such precious images as the one in my next post.
Filed by Carthik at 1:45 pm under General 1 Comment
Filed by Carthik at 7:17 pm under General No Comments
I was with a friend when I saw a pretty girl, and I said, “Oh no, she’s just a kid - she must be 18 or 19.” My friend agreed.
“So 18 is ‘too young’ now, eh, Carthik?”, said me to myself, “You must be growing old, then.”
Filed by Carthik at 10:15 am under Yours Truly 3 Comments
