Crunchy Greens!

Books I plan to read in the following year..

2008-09-05T14:37:00.007-05:00

Now that I'll have time, I plan to read the following titles in the coming year. This list consists of both technical (Computer Science) as well as non-technical books.

The Art of Computer Programming; Volume I, II and III by Donald Knuth
Graph Theory by Narsingh Deo
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling
The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

One reason to write this list on the blog is that I am hoping it'll serve as a constant reminder to me and I hope to add more books as I remember.

On my trip back from Seattle a few days back, I read "The Last Lecture" by Late Prof. Randy Paush; a very simple book with key lessons.

I am currently reading "A Champion's Mind" by Pete Sampras.

We tried a cookbook recipe!

2008-08-10T20:03:00.012-05:00

Infact we (I and my roomie) tried two cook-book recipes. I bought a book called Joy of Cooking: All About Vegetarian Cooking from Barnes&Noble bookstores in March this year. I generally do not buy recipe books but this was available for a low price and looked interesting. This sat in my bookshelf for a long time before I thought that I should put the money I spent to some use.

We started with the dish called "Vegetarian Chilli" which had lots of beans and veggies as ingredients. Exactly, the kind of thing that I really like. The only problem was that the book didn't mention what it goes best with. So we tried it with rice once and the next time with bread and it was wonderful with both. Very spicy and delectable.

The other recipe was like something I had never tried before. It is called "Greek Cheese and Spinach Pie or Spanakopita". We had to get almost all the ingredients listed from the store which included feta cheese, parmesan cheese, nutmeg, phyllo dough etc. This was the first time I worked with phyllo sheets (click here for wiki entry on phyllo).

Both the recipes came out like shown in the book and they tasted pretty decent. I never really realized till this time that cook-book recipes can actually come out tasty.

The books that I have been reading.....

2008-08-04T10:57:00.010-05:00

I am back to reading books other than the technical ones. I bought these long time ago, some of them in India but never really got to read them.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
A very interesting and at times hilarious book. Anyone with a remote interest in science will like this.

Freakonomics
Interesting take on some interesting ordinary questions. Though in the beginning I found this book a little boring but was soon really liking the creativity showed in answering questions.

The Adventures of Sally
I am a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse.

Ever read an Art book?

2008-07-22T13:09:00.019-05:00

Actually I recently did, not exactly the whole book but just a couple of pages of the introduction chapter. How did it happen?? Well, I was at the Wilson Library to read algorithms; though I usually try to study at home but for the past week or so, I am not that productive so a change of place was exactly what I needed. While I sat at the desk reading a chapter on graph algorithms, I noticed a book lying next to my desk. It was opened at a very colorful page revealing what appeared to be a beautiful painting. I ignored it for a while trying to concentrate on the job at hand but then I gave into it. I picked up the book and found out that the page had a picture of a glass painting taken at a cathedral. The book was about art; I felt kind of excited. Reading the preface (I always do!), I figured that the book was meant to be read at entry-level, so I decided to give it a try after I am done with my work. However, I started reading the introduction way before finishing my stuff.

The first thing that I noticed was the style of the book which was really different. What can I say, I cannot find a better word than 'artistic' :). Sentence formation was so different than what I had seen before. At times, it felt beautiful and at times I found the sentences difficult to understand at the first go; had to reread to get what the author is trying to say. I don't know if it was because of the way the book is written or a mere lack of subject knowledge on my part. One reason that I think the latter is true is my unfamiliarity with the words used in the passages. No wonder I didn't read more than two pages. However, it doesn't mean that I won't come back and continue from where I left. My interest is definitely piqued.

In just those two pages, I ended up learning something I never had in my agenda for the day. So what new do I know now? In short, a little bit about the basics of art and some very interesting views that the author expresses. Author talks about various dimensions to classify an art object such as time, place of origin, the artist, medium of expression and so forth. The interesting part was the way he justifies these dimensions; when you see an art object, it is in present and a viewer is free to interpret it in a way he/she pleases, why then does he need to know its time/place etc.. (My interpretation of) The idea conveyed by the author is that art is an expression of history and it communicates in an implicit language to the viewer. To understand that language, you really need to know the context else you are missing the point.

Well, to be specific, the book was "Gardner's Art Through The Ages"; definitely interesting. I think one of the advantages of sitting in a library is that you get exposed to a variety of other literature even when you don't go with such an intent. For me, its back to algorithms now!

p.s.: I never really noticed, I was sitting next to an aisle which houses art books.

Making all the difference in the world

2007-06-27T11:36:00.000-05:00

Google is setting up their base in Kenya (read the full story here ). Now that's what is called making the real difference in the world. Really! They have money and so do others, but Google, so early in its life-span, is trying to change the world for better in its own innovative way.

One of my colleagues, a couple of years earlier had told me about this display in the Google reception office which had a 3-D globe on the screen and the small points of light that were blinking at various places. These light-points illuminated the places around the world where people were using Google search at that instant. I remember he told me what he was told about Africa looking at the display, it was indeed the dark continent with very little light emanating from it. When I saw this display myself, it was so surreal. With Internet penetration hardly anything, this was but natural to observe.

But the interesting part is not just observing and pondering but taking action. Setting up of a Kenyan office is indeed a concrete step toward making technology accessible to all, irrespective of geography, infrastructure, policy and various other kinds of issues. It strengthens my belief that technology (and especially Internet) is (and has the potential of) bridging numerous barriers that was not possible earlier.

Web Hoaxes and related thoughts....

2007-05-04T23:48:00.000-05:00

I read an article on yahoo titled "Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks". It is an interesting read though repetitive at places because it is highly unlikely that being on internet you have not seen one of such emails already. These hoaxes range from 'last picture taken before WTC collapse' to 'someone being terminally ill' email. Infact, I thought some of these mails to be true (though I never forwarded them) before I looked at this article, specially the ones that showed extraordinary pictures (like the iceberg one or the Africa one). These are just 25 and there are heck more that lot of us would have received and fortunately or unfortunately which are not as popular so that they make it to PC World's top 25 list :).

I remember when I used to receive such mails in India, they always used to end with some superstition advice. That leads me to the question whether the content of a web hoax exhibit some geographic locality? And by that, I mean: are the kind of hoaxes you receive in India different from the ones in United States? Yeah I agree some of them are global and have nothing to do with a particular location. But, it makes sort of intuitive sense that since the main reason behind sending such mails is to reach as many inboxes as possible, so exploiting the local culture (or beliefs) is the first (and easy) step towards accomplishing this goal. For example: in India, given the enormous belief in superstitions, you most likely would have seen something like the following at the end of the mail:

"If you send this now to 40 people, good luck will come to you now,
if you send it to 20 people, good luck will come to you tomorrow"

or some such stuff. Now this might not be happening in India alone, but I am just writing a personal experience.

Another surprising bit to this saga is that generally these mails are not from unknown users i.e. someone in your friend-list forwards them to you. So, although the content is spam but because of the ignorance of the sender, it doesn’t count as one. Even more surprising is the fact that young and educated people who look at these messages believe them enough to send it to their other 'n' friends, mostly without giving a thought about magnanimous amount of 'useless' network traffic these messages can generate. Strange Enough!!

A simple practice that can help curb such messages: even if the email content looks oh so real, the first thing to do before forwarding it to other people is to confirm the veracity of the message. This can be done by simple googling or better still checking at the Urban legends website, and if the mail is indeed a hoax (and you have truck loads of time) possibly replying the sender back. Lets be responsible on internet.....

ITs Google all the way!!

2007-05-02T14:31:00.001-05:00

I had a chance to attend a computer science technical conference recently. Although topic of the conference was data mining and it is not my research area but I thought I will get good exposure to the way the conferences work in US, so I chose to attend. My main goal was to attend the keynote talks which I thought are very high-level and easy to absorb for an outsider. I was indeed correct at the end of the conference and I liked almost all the keynote addresses. I will not venture here into technicalities of the topics of various talks, but I want to share some observations I made, specially about the talk given by one of the Google's researchers.

The topic of this talk was "Next generation Algorithmic challenges in Google". This was an interesting talk, not that I got all the stuff that was said but overall it was interesting and not completely OHT. Cutting short the context and coming to the portion of the talk, I really wanted to talk about, starts at the beginning of Q n A session. Some of the questions being related to machine learning were really out of my grasp in their entirety, the questions not related to the talk (but which were asked) is the topic of interest in this post.

These questions were related to the Google's mission statement (which centers around providing universal access to information) that was read out by the speaker during the beginning of the talk. Someone questioned something to the effect of - will you make information in my wallet universally accessible. To this, speaker replied that they provide tools and the rest is upto the user. Attached was another question, which inevitably pointed towards Google's policies in China, though it was asked in a very indirect way. To this speaker replied, china is a big country and some presence is better than none at all. (Of course, what is the point of asking such a question, after all Google is a business and they have to make profits to stay alive and it was their business decision. The kind of work they are doing might have different political implications in different countries governed by the local laws and you have to abide by them.)

Anyhow, now picture this: a person from a research lab comes to a technical conference to talk about algorithmic challenges and is asked questions about Google's policies. My question is, first of all, does asking such questions make sense? specially when speaker just talked about algorithms for the last one hour. Its really not a press conference where a company spokesperson is briefing about company policies etc., in which case these questions might make perfect sense. This happened not only at this talk but various other Google talks in the past that I attended. It surprises me why people bring the same topic again and again even though the talk was about core computer science. A better way to put such questions might relate to addressing privacy/security/copyright concerns when making the information universally accessible but then again they have to somewhat relate to speaker's talk and not just appear out of the blue.

Nonetheless, I do not know why but after coming out of Google's talks, I always get a feeling that everyone wants to get in there (and of course why not). I might be generalizing a lot but the kind of questions asked by people (who might be from other companies :)) makes me feel that. Good for Google though.

The BITS days..

2007-04-06T20:12:00.000-05:00

I was watching the following video on you tube about BITS Pilani:
BITS Pilani Video

I am feeling so nostalgic about it. I don't know why but past always seems glorious, I had all sorts of problems in BITS from being terribly home-sick for complete 1st year to not scoring well in GenB and for that matter other courses (:D), but I feel so immensly psenti about the place. I met some of finest people in BITS and made lifelong friends. Sometimes it even makes me think can I have close friends other than my BITSIAN friends.

Anyways, that apart, the place reminds me of so many things like: cycling to insti, passing in front of different bhavans, giving gate-calls, recieving gate-calls, rushing at 11pm from c'not to Meera Bhavan and seeing people rushing from ref-li (I never was a ghotu so hardly ever went at night to ref-li :)), stopping at redi specially when budh bhavan was getting renovated, during the last sem going to sky in the morning and evening (courtesy: I stayed in Mal in the last sem), going to IPC, seeing people lock their bathroom slippers in the lockers outside IPC (I really used to find it funny and it made me think "c'mon whom do you think can take your bathroom slippers" and even if someone takes, c'mon it not worth the effort of bringing a lock from the room:)), trips to c'not, liveliness of OASIS and gloom after it ended, listening to the soft playlist, the sunday dosa (only breaker I used to get up early for), time-passing sitting on stairs (anywhere, in front of FDs.. QT...), cribbing about my grades (which I always thought was not due to my mistakes:)), having fun in the MT2 class sitting in the last bench, looking at studs in the wing and wondering will I ever be able to ghot that much? (I never did ghot), anc trips during pre-oasis work in 2000, splly sam chaat and tea, how can i forget shreekhand that I forced so many of my friends to have with me, I think literally everyone I knew reasonably well had shreekhand with me or heard me rant about how yummm it is, those thick (well, and yummy:)) mango shakes in c'not (;)) and melted dairy milks in IC, movies in audi and whole wing sitting in 6th-7th row making loud comments when the movie was oh so boring but still so much fun, music nights, Jhankar shifts (it was so much fun, some of my nice and funny memories are with people I interacted in Jhankar with), that urdu shayari with boss log, preparing for PLCC compree (the last CDC) in CIS, BOSM basketball matches (I never really knew anything about basketball but the enthu was so contagious, I remember "BITS inna summa wa", I used to shout this without ever knowing what it meant:)), visits to sarswati temple, eating at Auntie's place, going to assoc grubs, PCA farewells, the b'day treats, standing in huge line in SBBJ, enjoying MSR's OR class, bunking almost all CS classes, standing in rain (which used to be rare but whenever it happened), running (and getting caught) from prob-stat class in the first semester (:)), chatting on mail in IPC and text-based internet, and lots and lots and lots of such memories.

I wonder will I ever be attached to grad school like that, I don't think so, it can never be like under-grad, it just can't ever be. Can I go back in time?

A bit of this and that!

2007-03-10T21:38:00.000-06:00

I have so many things to write about but still nothing concrete that I can pen. Its alright I guess to be random at times and this post is all about random things crossing my mind right now.

My last post on this blog was just at the beginning of Fall semester last year. I have learnt and thought about so many things since then, that there is no dearth of topics that I can write and express my opinion on. Infact, I wanted to write about Windows Vista from a long time, I have read so many articles about Vista (mostly talking about its shortcomings), so I wanted to give my 2 cents on Vista. A few weeks back I did write a couple of paragraphs but alas it never made it to this blog. Well, some day!!

I went to SFO last weekend and attended a grad cohort workshop organized by CRA-W. It was pretty nice, the whole experience, I mean, not only the workshop but visiting and roaming around in SFO. I went to Fisherman's Wharf and really enjoyed my ride on the cable car starting at Powell Street in the downtown. Apart from the fun, one of the important take-away's for me was that inter-disciplinary research in Computer Science is on an all-time high. I met so many people doing research related to Bioinformatics, the hot topic these days in CS research.

Coming back from SFO to snow in Minneapolis was, needless to say, quite a shock:) but cold seems to be receding now. Temperatures are not sub-zero (degree C) any more. Feels quite good to just go in one sweater outside and not 'n' layers which were unavoidable a few days back. I remember how I got frozen in an attempt to take the picture of frozen Mississippi (see the pic below).

I am digressing here again, but I have been subscribing to Time Magazine for some weeks now and I like reading it, its like what India Today was in India. I like reading analysis of news, opinions of different people and then compare and contrast it with my views, its fun! Although, sometimes I feel lost when articles discuss US politics; I do not posses enough information at this point on how the US political system works. And infact now I am a bit out of touch even with Indian politics. But notwithstanding such articles, I enjoy the rest of the magazine.

Today, while reading I found a small article about photo editing and the writer had referred this site called picnik.com. I went to this site, which is still in Beta and found it to be extremely useful and light-weight as compared to all the image-editing software that I have tried to use till now. I found them too complicated for little things I want to try on the pictures. But this site is simple and beautiful, some of the nice features include:
1. No signup required
2. Fairly easy to navigate
3. Connects to the webcam to take fresh pictures
4. Can take images uploaded on some website for editing
......

And lastly, before I end the post, I'd like to mention that if you keep a schedule and have not yet started using Google Calendar, give it a shot, its fun!!

And oh yeah, World Cup is coming!! :)

Interviews..... Interviews...

2006-09-25T11:18:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: This article is broadly about my experience in Software Industry in India. As a consequence, I might be using some technical terms with respect to Computer Science (CS). I feel that this might appear to be a nuisance to other non-CS folks so please bear with me.

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc.. etc.. The first thing that comes to mind when one hears these names is the tough competition to get inside these companies and take pride in being a part of them. All of these and many other such companies are heavily in need of technical people. The reality is that it is as difficult for them to find people fitting their standards as it is difficult for the interviewees to cruise their way through the arduous rounds of interviews. The technical interviews of most of these are a class in its own. I have experienced Microsoft interviews and can vouch that other big names have similar hiring standards if not higher.

I passed out from BITS with a job in Infosys Technologies limited. Yes, you are in a hurry in the psenti-sem to make a job at the earliest and you really can not afford to be selective (atleast 3 years back, job scene was not as great). So in the June of 2003, I started my first job at Infosys. Definitely the campuses were awesome and so was everything else at Infosys ‘but’ the work that I was doing. I wanted to do some real work that related to CS and test whatever knowledge I had of the subject. I fought for about 4 months in Infosys, but, unfortunately I could see that I can not put my skills to their best use at the current job.

Then, started my quest for a job that I wanted to see myself in. I had nothing specific in my mind other than something better than the current job. I started my preparation with Data Structures, C and other interview related material. I knew that my fundamentals in computer science were not as strong as they should have been or as people expect when you go out with “BITS Pilani” attached to your name. This was partly because of faculty at that time (lot of good professors had left) and partly because I was not that serious . In other words, I had not understood the importance of the courses I was doing in my third year.

Given the background, I started with the C-bible called ‘The C Programming Language’ by Kernighan and Ritchie. I am sure people in this group would agree this is THE book for any person in Computer Science not only software industry. I was amazed that I did not read this book while in BITS. I learnt a lot about C which I never knew before inspite of this being the only language I programmed in. My take-away from the reading was this: all the basic programming questions that companies ask in their screening or first round can be easily answered if you have read this book carefully. I have gone through this book atleast 5-6 times in its entirety and the beauty is that every time I read it, I learn something new.

Having done with my C fundamentals, I took up Data Structures. If you are a person with Computer Science background and are looking for a job as a Software Developer in any of the big firms, you ought to have a very through understanding of Data structures and algorithms. The importance can not be under-emphasized. It is not only required for interviews but a major chunk of your job will require this knowledge everyday.

I started giving interviews after about 6 months in Infosys. I did not know that in the course of next six months, I’d be giving about 30 such interviews. I gave some of them just to gain experience and definitely learnt lot of soft skills in the process. Finally I moved to Hyderabad with Oracle. Oracle was definitely better than Infosys but I was not interested in Oracle applications (the only kind of work happening at Hyderabad office at that time). I wanted to get a job which had something related to computer networks. In the due course of two months at oracle, I gave a number of interviews with Nortel Networks, Cisco, Net Devices and Microsoft R & D etc.

Finally I joined Microsoft in August 2004. I learnt a great deal in Microsoft interviews. Infact my opinion and learnings of good and bad in technical interviews is mainly based on this experience. I realized that following are the three basic areas that one should focus on while preparing for technical interviews:
• Data Structures and Algorithms (specially analysis of time complexity)
• Programming language of your choice (in my case it was C)
• Basics of Operating systems (like virtual memory, paging etc.)

This pretty much includes what can be called as the working knowledge of computer science. One important thing that I observed and I think is worth mentioning is: its not always the right answer that counts but the approach you take and your zeal to improve constantly in that 1-2 hours of interview.

I think I can harp on this topic for on and on but I guess I should leave some food for thought for the audience :) I would love to get comments regarding your 'peculiar' or 'not-so-peculiar' expreriences in interviews :).

What's Cooking?

2006-07-13T05:33:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been quite a while since I wrote. When I started this blog, I thought (and I still think) that I will be updating it every two days, but lately I have been too busy with traveling and career-related things that I absolutely got no time. Nonetheless, the enthu is still on and today I feel like writing on cooking, more precisely trying my hand at cooking :).

It hasn’t been too long since I ventured into this arena but I think I have come a long way from where I started. I dint know anything about cooking till the time I entered my first job. As a child I really never went to kitchen as emphasis was always on devoting as much time as possible on studies. Any sojourns to the kitchen were mainly limited to helping mom little bit in the chores. I do not know how, but apparently to my dismay, it was only during this time that I picked some skills in this area. Till date, I really haven’t asked mom about any recipe, I just happen to know it (and for all those who are wondering "Oh really does she know cooking?" the answer, yes I do and I cook decent). Of course, at times I have seen mom preparing dishes and just by observing her, unintentionally I have also picked up some bits for atleast getting started in the kitchen.

It started as a necessity rather then a choice while I was with Infosys in Pune. It was the lunch at office which served as a compelling reason to for me to get acquainted with cooking. There were three different caterers providing good north Indian food at office and it actually sufficed my taste-buds for a couple of months. However gradually my lunch was reduced to just a fruit-plate and I started longing for the simple yet wholesome food. As a result I and my room-mate decided to cook lunch daily morning. Surprisingly, after a month or so I was a champ at making good soft paranthas and that too in the minimum time. Needless to say, that the first few weren’t that great but a few failures didn’t really deter me (:D) as I always found my home lunch (whatsoever it was) much satisfying than the oil-rich food served at the cafeterias. I learnt a number of tricks while experimenting to cook real fast. Eventually I realized that to cook any Indian veggie dish all you need to do is the following:
• Ingredients: Take a chopped onion, a chopped tomato and cut vegetables and of course a few basic Indian spices like turmeric powder, chilli powder and salt
• Modus Operandi: Heat a tablespoon of cooking oil and put cumin seeds (zeera) and mustard seeds. Saute onion to golden brown, add tomatoes and fry for 10 minutes. Add spices and heat for five more minutes. Add (raw or semi-boiled) veggies and that is it!

You might have a doubt (atleast I had) that all the veggies with one recipe might taste pretty similar but thatz not the case, I guess it is something to do with the flavor provided by vegetables themselves. Nonetheless, This recipe has worked for me for more or less everything I have tried. Sometimes I do deviate and try different things but the above is by far the safest way to make a decent meal. I keep adding/removing spices as a result of learning from various people I stayed with. For example: I learnt how to make dal from my roomies at Pune and that adding a teaspoon of sugar to certain lentils makes the preparation a lot yummier at times. While at Hyderabad, I learnt how to make good phulkas. I have come to realize that cooking in general takes a lot of skill, some amount of which you possess, some which you learn while practicing the thing and rest which you pick up from others.

At one point in time I used to think that cooking is a house-hold chore which busy people can easily avoid but slowly and steadily I have realized that it is an indispensable skill that everyone should possess. It is a necessity specially when you are out of India and want to have Indian vegetarian food. Believe me you can not survive on outside food for long.

In any case, if you ever get into a situation where you do not have a go but to cook on your own and haven’t ever tried your hand at kitchen before, my recipe will definitely help. In case it proves disastrous, do drop a comment:). Happy munching.

Mein Kamph : My Take

2006-06-29T07:03:00.000-05:00

I like reading and mostly my interests surround non-fiction books sans PG Wodehouse creations, which inspite of being fictional stories, are my favorites. But it took me nearly a month to finish "Mein Kamph" - autobiography of Adolf Hitler. A month is huge enough as I do not take this long for any book I choose to read, provided that I feel interested in it. I could only read 4-5 pages of this book daily before crashing, unless of course I chanced upon something relatively captivating. This post is about what I think of this book and what I learnt from it.

The first and foremost thing that you will notice in the print available in India (printed by MasterMind India) is the illustration given at the cover on the back side. The author (whose name is not mentioned) has written about his views on Hitler, which needless to say are negative. He has advised people to read the book so that we can nip a Hitler (if there happens to be one in our society) in the bud. Though I myself think that Hitler was an extremist and his views towards non-aryan folk were detestable to the core, but I say, why bias the customer about any personality or book or anything negatively. Let him decide on his own whether something is good or bad. I understand when it is done on a website or a newspaper but what baffles me is how can a publisher give a foreword saying the negative things about the underlying text he is publishing? It stands against my right to build an opinion on my own. In any case, this translation to English is not done in India but by a British translator and his foreword explains the historical significance of the text and gives a brief overview of historical events of those times. Nowhere does he try to pass judgment on Hitler (or on any of Hitler's views) and I think that's how a foreword should be.

Notwithstanding my feelings for the publisher, I must say I found the book to be more philosophical than relating to the events in someone's life so as to get into the genre of (auto)biography. Hitler has focused on (in this book) what he thought about various political ideologies, communities, races etc of his times. Since I do not like reading philosophy (as of now), I did not find the book gripping in contrast to what I had thought while buying. However, there were patches in the book that I found really interesting like Hitler's days at the first world war, the first meeting for National Socialist German Labor party (where first time Hitler had to speak to a large mass of people) etc. Also, in the due course of reading this book, there are few things that invariably got etched on my mind which I will summarize in the following paragraphs.

I have come to understand that Hitler was the guy who knew from the very beginning what he wanted to do in life. He had a definite view on everything that interested him, which got formed as he pored on all sorts of books during his formative years. For example: the way he looked at teaching history is exemplary, he always laid emphasis on the fact that there is no use in making people cram the important dates and names, instead history should be taught in such a way so that a person remembers the outcome for various events that happened and hence use that knowledge, if the need be, in future. This according to him should be the real purpose of history being taught in schools.

Again his analysis of democracy sounds plausible. The way he puts forth ill-effects that democracy can have on a nation's well being are easy to understand and apparently seem so true in today's times. Other than that, he also reflects deeply on political alliances that Germany should have opted for at the time of first world war and later. All in all, for every argument he puts forth, he makes it a point to justify it properly and this probably was one of the reasons that he had such a huge following in Germany (another being that he knew the art of oration). On the other hand, he always thought that Aryan race is the best and other human beings in this world are born to serve the aryans, thus he found it logical enough to exterminate other races from Germany. This act was a proof of his barabaric extremism.

There is lot more to this book than I remember at this time. Surely enough, it is a master piece preserving the political history of the world from about the start of first world war till around 1925. Though it primarily focuses on Germany and condition of her people and government, it does not hold back on explaining the external events that affected Germany, thus making it a generic historical document. It also teaches how to be the master of the game in political arena (for someone who is shrewd enough to take the clues:)).

I have provided the link to online copy of the book at the title of this post, for people who want to ponder more on this. Just a slight piece of advice, this is not the book for you if you are not interested in reading about politics and history. I found much respite when I finished this and moved on to The Google Story by David Vise, a relatively much lighter and definitely more interesting book according to my taste.

Aaakraaman!!

2006-06-26T11:59:00.000-05:00

With the war cry of Indian warriors, I enter into the world of blogging. Whenever I thought that I must write, I always fell short of topics that I should be writing on. I thought of a number of things that I can write on: like routine events that happen in day-to-day life but I was very sure that I won’t keep up. Another thought that crossed my mind was to write about technical stuff but again it sounds sometimes too boring + the mere mention of technical terms would be more than enough to bog someone down. I think technical blogs are more for the niche audience. Nonetheless, I pondered over and still I am not quite sure what is going to appear in this space. As of now I plan to write on random stuff from music I like, books I read to philosophy of life. So please bear with me:)

But wait a minute, what do I name this blog? I don’t know but I keep falling into these small pits whenever I try to start something afresh. I am quite baffled as to what should I name my blog. Do I really need to think? Just taking something random should be good enough. In any case, I can name it ‘zukzuksix’, this is the easiest thing that I can think of (was my ID at college). But what the heck, I must move on and I am sure it might just sound a little snobbish to some people. I want the blog address to be lively (if not the blog:) itself). So I guess it is going to be ‘Crunchy Greens’, courtesy: one of the menu items in the Barista Creme menu.

While writing this, I am listening to Gangster sound track. A friend gave me the CD a couple of weeks back but I haven’t had a chance to listen to this. I think I like couple of songs, rest are not that great, I am playing these songs shuffled with RDB songs. Quite a bit of enthu in all sans two. Has anyone tried Pandora.com, it’s a great site which samples music based on the one song/artist you like. The learning algorithms that they have in place seems to be quite decent and I have more or less liked what they suggested me till now. Must visit for people who like to experiment in English music wrt listening.

Ahhh ahhh, my CD is over and I have not put windows media player in the repeat mode and can you guess what am I hearning now? Well its something like “oooohhh lalalaaa ohhh lalaaa”, the title music of ‘Nimmo ka kya hoga’ (for the lesser mortals who are reading this, this is a daily soap on TV).

Well its 10pm and time for me to eat a nice chilled mango. I will be reading “The Google Story” before I crash and needless to say that I am liking it a lot(quite interesting, more on this later). Till then, good night and keep rhyming

Apni to paathshaala, masti ki paathshaala