Answer to a younger friend - why things changed?

A younger friend of mine, asked me - brother, why are you not doing any hacking with phones these days like you were doing earlier? For a second, I was silent as my mind went past the time to dig an answer.

When I was in college, I enjoyed tinkering with machines. It started when I tried whole night to make my computer dual bootable instead of playing video games. My enthusiasm reached a new height when I figured out free Ubuntu CD to break into any computer with a CD drive; later I figured out to create bootable USB stick. I enjoyed computer repairs, when my school teachers, my techie as well as non-techie friends asked me to fix their machines. I still get some requests, sadly I can't say them - "No, I don't repair your computer". 

    Smartphones are the other fun part of the story. I started my journey with Nokia series-40 handset back in 2008. Those days phones had supported an SDCard of capacity upto 2 giga bytes size. I loved listening to the romantic songs of south Indian language movies. Okay, 2 GB was not sufficient to load my favorite MP3 files along with my favorite videos accompanied with thousands of images which we used to call as wallpapers. With the help of a multimedia converter, I figured out optimal size-to-quality ratio for audio clips and video clips by adjusting the bit-rates, which let me load nearly 900+ songs in 2 GB Card. ( Believe me, the batch conversion took whole night and the tiny music player responded like a dead beast after seeing those many songs). Then came Symbian OS handsets (N Series, E Series) which allowed me to reply a message on IM, browse web on a browser and listen to music at the same time - that's why I needed a multi task capable phone. That was not enough, there was a next step, where I could 'hack' (the very first meaning for this word I encountered in my life was close to jailbreak/root in today's ios/android terminology) the OS to provide full privileges. That enabled me to do some crazy things like install DOSBOX emulator on my Nokia E52, using which I was able to operate windows 95 and Turbo C++.

    I am sorry for your death, Symbian, I moved onto something I love even today - the Nokia N900. It had mobile debian linux OS called Maemo, and the best part was there was no need to hack/root as the OS offered it out of the box and it was legal. This is where I developed interest on Free and Open Source Softwares. Gone are those days, I had a mini laptop in my pocket! This story will become a new story if I start to give just a glimpse of what all I did on my N900, so lets move on to the next one. I joined the Android ride when it was at version 3.1. It was only a week after my purchase, my Galaxy Tab 10.1 was bricked while I was trying out something, but later I learned to root, flash, backup, recover the device without taking to repair shop. I don't remember me taking any device to service man for software repair even if device was within the warranty period. A few months later, I was virtually running ubuntu and fedora on my tablet as android was too kiddish for someone who lived with N900. Later I bought a Nexus device and an iPAD, which are way powerful, modern and capable than my previous gadgets (excluding N900, it will never be old for me ;-) ) but I don't remember having much fun with these compared to the previous gadgets. 

I think I found an answer for that question of my young friend, it is - 'I am busy with my work.' I have told this phrase to so many people at times, but this time it had a different connotation. This is the proof - we spend most of our time at work and it impacts our habits. On the other hand, I found my coolness in learning and solving harder problems at work so job is not the real culprit, it is change of interests.

A Shakespearean conversation

A: do you use a spell checker?
B: Yes, I do.
A: why?
B:  Because I don't like to sound ridiculous. I care for my language.
A: Shakespeare didn't use one, but I believe he still cared for language..., look at him, he invented so many new words. Can you imagine what would have happened if he had used a stringent spell checker like yours?
B: That's not my business, please spare my neurons.
A: It is your business, you said you care for your language.
B: Oh! did I say that?
A: Yes, you did.
B: Alright, I don't have the liberty of Shakespeare to use whatever the word I feel like using. For instance, I can't use "cutted"  "putted", even tough I feel they're more appropriate and less confusing. You know, there are confusing rules.
A: Okay, I got it. World doesn't encourage creativity and abnormality.

Time and Timeline

Tick...Tick...Tick...Tick... Its running. What is 'it' here? Any educated person who had seen clock says it is time. When somebody asks me 'What is time?' (I used to look at my wrist earlier, now) I look at my phone to answer it. It was alright till few theories and articles of physics spoiled my mind. One of which is 'The brief history of Time' by Professor Hawking. Questions such as : did I address the question of 'What is time?' properly by looking at my clock, Is that what that person was seeking from me? - never raised earlier. By looking at the clock I see its the clock running not the time. By looking at the count down at a traffic signal I see its the countdown running not the time. These are actually measures getting mapped to time. Then what exactly is time in my view? Read on..
Imagine a perfectly spherical ball on a perfectly flat ground staying at rest. Imagine a small supporting component which elevated the ball to few centimeters high in altitude. Suppose if a golf player hits the ball in parallel to ground, the ball start flying in parallel to ground with maximum velocity in the beginning but sooner it slows down. It slows down because there is gravity which pulls down the ball and opposition by air which resists to give way. As gravity pulls down the ball slowly tends to come down, when one face of ball touches the rough ground, it is felt pull back due to friction while the rest other parts are continuing the initial movement which gives a revolving motion to it. Let us suppose that we set up an ideal place to conduct this task again. Suppose there is a line one side of which there is gravity and other side of it has no mass and no gravity(a complete void). Imagine the same old player hitting the ball placed at the edge towards void side. The ball keeps moving in the direction of force and continues to move in its initial pace since no other external force acts on it. What if the direction it is advancing has no obstacles at all and no boundaries at all? It goes on and on and on as time goes on and on. Is it what the time like? If yes, then what precisely is the time here – the ball, its path, its current location or its direction? If only one of the aforementioned choices are true, what are the others?
Though I haven't found accurate answers for my previously mentioned questions, I am approximating few answers to pave my way to another curious yet interesting task. I presume that the 'Time' in our discussion is the ball in our previous experiment. It is moving. It is also running. It has no obstacles to hit and stop. It also has no other external force to alter its speed. Apparently if the ball is not messing with any other entity then it leaves no footprint or mark. Imagine an imaginary silencer at the back of the non revolving yet advancing ball which emits colored non diffusing smoke. Now we can see the path taken by ball. Let us call this path as 'TimeLine'. So the Time leaves our imaginary 'Timeline'. The path behind the ball is 'History' and the path it might take as it proceeds is 'Future'. I honestly do not know what is target is and who hit the ball. Leaving aside prediction of future path of ball but get hold of 'History', lets try to bring you and me into the path.
You, me, everybody has a lifeline which is the line segment in our imaginary timeline connecting the point where birth happened with the point where death would happen. Our enjoyments, studies, works, family life and everything else comes in between these two points in time. This tiny segment is duration of our lives!! Jesus Christ's life segment is nearly 2000 years earlier to us on the same timeline. Pythagoras, Euclid and other Greek nobles time lifespan is much farrer than that. The past timeline has witnessed glorious empires, merciless wars, amazing personalities and mind-blowing discoveries. I am after the problem of bringing all of these goodies and baddies and their actions virtually into a system as simulated entities. I am after the problem of making a computer to know complete history instead of saving narrated history as zeros and ones. Wish me best!!

Closure for 2014 year

 Here comes the end of 2014, so this is the time to say good bye to it. Another year is completely spent. The journey of 365 day units traversed along the dimension of time posed new challenges, offered new learning, met several new milestones. All these encircle around just three aspects - Family, Work and Dreams.
  This year at work I took over new responsibilities which confronted me with new challenges. From the beginning of the year I worked to make Datoin real. This gave me an opportunity to involve and witness end to end product development. Though I always loved programming and making stuff, this task was more than that. Everything went fine and now I am super excited to see what is going to happen to Datoin in 2015.
 In the family and dream side, many plans came into execution. We rejuvenated our house which was built at the time of my birth. I convinced my parents about my dream to continue further studies. And then worked restlessly towards making my dreams to come true. No, its not just continuation of studies, rather I was and I am very specific about my studies. I want to study Artificial Intelligence, moreover I need to join place which has best researchers.  So, I calculated what is in the middle of me and my dream grad school.  I found that I need 3 years time - one year to prepare & two years to pursue,  need to qualify few exams and need to apply for a loan to pay college fee. Near the end of the year, I managed to take temporary leave from work to prepare for exams.
   During my holidays, I spent days and nights to crack GRE. I loved mathematics so I didnt do any preparations for GRE maths. I realized that the path to my new dream demands superlative language usage capability irrespective of GRE's score. English as a language made me uncomfortable ever since I started to learn at age 11.  Though I have learned grammar in high school and few vocabulary words later on, it is only less than quarter of required. I had known only two ways of making myself prepared : read books, watch movies. Later I appeared for GRE and I secured score of 300/340. I was bit disappointed. I retook and this time I scored 315/340.  After my holidays, I joined my team at Datoin to continue my work on infrastructure. Meanwhile I applied to my dream schools for grad school admit.

 I  With this my 2014 nicely ended by leaving hopes for 2015 regarding Datoin and my Graduate Studies.



  

The four patterns : a philosophy

You took birth as an Homo Sapiens. You have limited lifetime as a living creature. In the past couple of decades, you've probably grown up: physically your growth has been stalled; mentally not yet!. May be you have earned some resources and/or inherited some. May be you acquired some knowledge by your own and learned from others. Now, standing somewhere in this jumbled society, looking for the path ahead. In a nutshell, all the tangles gets reduced to these 4 patterns:

  1. You convert energy into capital. May be you do business or a day job to serve the needs of others. You boost your capital. You use a portion of it to buy comforts. The rest, you transfer as inheritance or as charity.

 2. You use your energy to acquire more knowledge.You transfer your knowledge to others : may be via writing, teaching, etc.,.

3. You absorb all you receive, consume all you have and leave no trace. May be you are under privileged or got reasons to tell why this is so.

4. May be you will find the right balance of above. The extent of each of them depends on your abilities and luck.

And finally you will die, after which you are not a living body. May be your life will be interrupted if some one or something doesn't like your actions and possessions.  

How did nature facilitate birth of intelligent species in finite amount of energy and time?

The question "How intelligent animals are came into existence in this planet?" was whirling in my mind. Such a question had arise when I was thinking what does it take to create a truly intelligent agent like human brain out of a finite amount of energy & time.
This is amazing - the answer I was seeking is finally here:
Vast amount of energy formed due to sudden burst(Big bang) resulted in formation of particles(such as quarks).  High temperature kicked these particles to move faster and faster, but expansion caused temperature to reduce and hence particles gradually slowed down. This resulted the formation of next order particles(such as electrons, protons, neutrons...). As the particles slowed down further due to dropping temperature, protons and neutrons accumulated into nuclei and hence atoms are formed. As the temperature further reduced and movement further slowed down, electrons gets attached to nuclei and relatively stable state is formed which resulted in formation of atoms. Till now atoms are of single atomic number (one proton, one electron) -  we call it as Hydrogen. These Hydrogen atoms with unit proton, neutron & electron then resulted in forming galaxies, stars, planets. Later on by addition/fusion of Hydrogen, higher elements with bulky atoms(more particles) formed. In that process an higher order atom with 6 protons and 6 electrons formed - we call it as Carbon.  And even an atom with 8 protons and 8 electrons also formed - we call it as Oxygen. After certain time when temperature dropped to a pleasant value,  in one of the revolving body (Earth),  these atoms of  Hydrogen, Carbon & Oxygen together created these wonders on this planet- Water(Hydrogen and Oxygen), organic matter(Carbon and Hydrogen) and combustion (Carbon & Oxygen).
 Now lets jump on to Darwin's theory - When water on this planet gets stagnated, Carbon and Hydrogen settled to form a cell of organic matter, it was later evolved to multi-cellular organisms such as algae, marine species including water plants, amphibians, land species, birds. Out of so many possible combinations, there also lies a combination which had natural intelligence, we call them humans.

Now the question is - these intelligent species are now trying to find out answer for the question - why is the universe the way it is?

A month ago, while I was surfing on an online store, there was a recommendation of book : 'Brief history of Time - Stephen Hawking'. I was aware of Professor Hawking, a famous physicist. Preface and short summary of it were interesting. I said myself - 'Its been long time you read physics, lets have a look'.

High school science text books introduced basic laws of science, which are then broadened during pre university studies. During undergrad freshman year had read physics again on few narrow topics such as quantum mechanics, optics,... (In fact, my all time high score in academics was achieved in physics - 99/100, during Bachelor degree!) But, somehow the topics read were so disconnected in mind. 'The brief history of Time' helped to link one with another to make real sense. Thank you author.

The Author starts with historical beliefs and theories about the world around us. Then takes readers into a journey alongside timeline in which he narrates how the beliefs gets revised as centuries rolled, from Greek Philosophers to Copernicus & Galileo to Newton to Einstein to Heisenberg & Bohr to contemporary physicists. Meanwhile, you will be given with thoughts and affirmations of improvement in accuracy of understanding of universe.

I enjoyed reading it end to end, completed today. I would greatly recommend it to anybody who is interested in physics. If you don't have time for going through works of several researchers & scientists of past two millenniums, Professor Hawking has summarized it for you in simple words! By the time you finish reading book, you will be more confident about basic concepts in science.

I was astonished, for the way Professor thinks. The way how he throws questions, and answers one by one. This book summarized many theories, out of which it developed deep interest in me to have a deeper look on Einstein's "General and Special theory of Relativity" and Darwin's "Evolution of species". Now, I know what to read next! 

Effort is necessary to make favorable events happen but unfavorable can happen themselves

Wondering why conscious effort is necessary to make right events to occur but wrong events can happen by themselves! Right events, I mean here, are favorable events.

Recalling Murphy's law

1. Anything CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong. (full of pessimism)
2. what ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough.(a little room for optimism).

Inferring from second law of thermo dynamics: Disorder tends to increase over the time. From observations "wrong" events must be due to disorder.