Carthik Sharma

make_u_smile

Found this one on Go! Flavien who somehow found what I wrote earlier. I’m still amazed at the the chances of someone finding something I wrote and I accidentally finding out that someone found what I wrote interesting. I mean, there are, what – 100 million blogs out there? 1/100,000,000 * 1/100,000,000 = Wow! Okay, that was a very naive mathematical model, but still.

Narayan Days is Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri’s review of Malgudi Days, that R.K.Narayan work that we Indian’s have come to love. The review introduces you (if you are unfamiliar) to Malgudi, and if you have read the book, reading the review will bring back fond memories.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of R.K. Narayan’s birth, here is one way I propose that you read his Malgudi Days: one story per day for 32 consecutive days, by the end of which you will have experienced Malgudi Days as a Malgudi month, more or less. Each day’s reading, with only a few exceptions, will take about ten minutes. The vast majority of the stories are less than ten pages long; several are under five; and only one is more than 20. “What a fine idea,” you are perhaps thinking. “Ten minutes a day: I can manage that.” And if you are the type of virtuous person who is satisfied after just one piece of chocolate from a chocolate box, never tempted, until the following day, by a second, then perhaps you will be able to savor Malgudi Days in this restrained fashion.

Strange public sculptures from around the world – some of them are not strange, them being works of famous artists.

My new roommate, who shares my first name, subscribes to the Wired magazine. Nice magazine, really. I never thought I’d use visually stunning to describe a magazine, but it is that, and much more. There were very few articles that I skipped, and every one of the articles I read was interesting and thought provoking.

As an example, there was this article titled, “What kind of genius are you?“. So it appears that there are two kinds, the Conceptualists, and the Experimentalists. The early- and late-bloomers. The author, an economist, has made it his life’s work to study the phenomenon across diverse fields, like painting, literature, film-making and music. The results are clear — there are the Picassos and Mozarts, who do their best work early in their lives, and then there are the Cézannes and Beethovens, who take time to hone their technique, and bring out the best in themselves.

Long after they are dead, these things seem to matter very little, but I can see how the late bloomers must have been frustrated through much of their early lives, watching other, less-talented individuals surpass them in acclaim, and the later-life depression of the early-peakers — never able to rise again to their early productivity later in their lives.

The long dawn of Indian internet activism — jace.seacrow.com
The long dawn of Indian internet activism

And so a week has passed. We kicked up a ruckus, got mainstream media to back our case, appealed on television, made various government babus look like idiots, rattled their departments, extracted their precious document, made it public, set them off on a blame game, and finally, got the ISPs to restore access to our blogs.

Have you ever seen a long, detailed, well written article, with every single phrase in the article being a link to some informative article somewhere? Read the above article. It is the first such I have come across, and speaks of the recent Indian Govt ban on some blogs and websites. Information and opinion should be free for democracy to prevail.

Amazing, I wonder how long it took for him to put this article together, and how many tabs he had open when we wrote it.

I have had to revoke my PGP key since I forgot the passphrase – mea culpa. Not that I have had too much use for it in the near past, but really, my Social Security Card, and passport haven’t seen the light of the day in more than a year now. My passphrase had 5 phrases/words in it, and though I can remember the last four, no amount of thinking in the shower, going to sleep while telling my mind to recall it from the subconscious and reveal it in a dream, and trying to recreate the instant when I thought up the passphrase is helping me. When I created the passphrase I had taken special care to make sure that I can recall it if I remembered at least one of three things, and yet, though I have the last four phrases/words I can’t for the life of me remember the first. I am sure it will come to me one day when I am lounging in my beach chair in a remote beach with a book on my chest.

So, friends, my keys have been revoked, using the instructions I wrote myself when I created the revocation certificate. The Key ID is 1878779A. Previously, the key with the Key ID 702814C0 had also been revoked. Searching the MIT PGP KeyServer confirms the revocation. Strangely though, the Veridis Keyserver doesn’t seem to know about the first revocation.

Anyway, the following is the revoke certificate:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: A revocation certificate should follow

iI4EIBECAE4FAkKUqn1HHQBSZXZvY2F0aW9uIGNlcnRpZmljYXRlIGNyZWF0ZWQg
YXQgdGhlIHRpbWUgb2YgY3JlYXRpb24uIE1heSAyNSwgMjAwNS4ACgkQPEhXdhh4
d5rUDQCeMdyDBHIh4rGGnFrsw6yWi99Db5EAni81qyTuNVBZu5OwE7bOcvuO0psb
=3bl3
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

The only reason it took me so long to revoke this key-pair is that I had encrypted the revocation certificate with a symmetric key cipher, and thought I had forgotten the password for that too. I know, how smart. I had encrypted the revocation certificate using Gringotts – a very neat little encryption/decryption application. Then when I tried to decrypt it a while ago, the dang file wouldn’t get decrypted. So I feared the worst, and thought maybe I had forgotten the password for that too. Being unable to revoke keys is a lifelong sign of stupidity – much worse than a tattoo, I hear. Fortunately I just found out that Gringotts was broken and it was not my fault. So I tried with an up-to-date Gringotts, and voila! – I could decrypt my revoke certificate.

I will create a new key pair shortly – I have to get it all perfect from the get-go this time.

Update: New Key ID: BB0B8176
New key is below:
—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: SKS 1.0.9
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=BJmr
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–

India bans some websites at the ISP level(or if China can, we sure can too, though we are a democracy)

When I was a little boy, I used to get frequent stomach aches. Almost everytime, my grand mother used to heat a dosa kallu (a flat, heavy non-non-stick frying pan). Then she’d roll up a long piece of cotton cloth, make a puff out of it and heat it on the kallu and transfer the heat to my tummy – it was a very good feeling. The pain would gradually subside, and after 15-20 minutes, get reduced to a minor irritation.

Turns out, scientists at the University College at London just verified the fact that heat helps combat stomach pain. They didn’t need to have done the research to have known that, really – all they had to do was be a little boy, and go to my grandmother complaining of a stomach ache.

And to think that I used to think that it was the magic in her hands that took the pain away…

Roger Barrett, aka Syd Barrett died at an unknown time in the past week. From a founding member of Pink Floyd, he went to a recluse living in Cambridge – riding his bike, and living a quiet life. Too much LSD, and what followed was a life, the details of which are unknown. I am amazed by people who give everything up, and retreat to a life of silent existence. His songs used to leave me in wonder, and I could never wrap my head around how such a dangerously deviant musical experiment as the Piper at the Gates of Dawn became a commercial and critical success. I owe him a word of gratitude for having made my teenage years more colourful, and for teaching me to appreciate art. I wonder what his thoughts were in the later years of his life – maybe nothing remarkable, and maybe his silence was his biggest message – that there is no “message” – that life is just meant to be survived – a day at a time.