Folding A Shirt For Dummies - er Ph.D’s :)
This is probably the most useful clip that the guys in the department have ever shown me. Thanks to James Birkett and others for this life changing piece
How to fold a T-Shirt - The Japanese way
Mother Goose
Just before the term started I visited Sanjay Chachu, Amrita Chachi, Aman and Meerath. I was kindly visited to see the pantomine “Mother Goose” along with the family at Bromley Theatre.
Meerath is less than two years old and represnts the confident and cool new age “Digital Baby”. Here is a shot of her scrolling through pictures on a 7 megapixel Sony Camera, making sure I understand what she is telling me :) No kidding! She is more familiar with most digital gadgets around the house than many of us older ones. :)
Here is an article dedicated to this wonderful digital baby.
More Pictures here.
Bruce Almighty
I will confess this much. I am in awe of Bruce.
My first introduction to any form of Information Security was Phil Zimmerman’s PGP. At that time, about a decade ago when I was still at school, I cajoled my brother who was a student in the US to get me a copy of Bruce Schneier’s wonderful wonderful book, Applied Cryptography. It set him back 48$ and was pretty expensive for an Indian family where the head of the family earned that much in a month.. but it was worth every penny.
I didn’t understand much of the math and many of the concepts, but he kept saying stuff like “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people - cryptography can make them very afraid” :P and I just loved it.
I bet Bruce is aware that he has said (many more) things that he probably should have never said. The nice thing is he admits it. In his book “Beyond Fear” he admits he made a mistake when he assumed that with his book Applied Cryptography and Cryptography, all of the worlds free speech, privacy problems etc etc would all be solved.
But while Beyond Fear is not written in the same activist vein as Applied Cryptography and many of his essays and articles in Crypto Gram, I could not help feeling that he was doing it all over again. Will we see another book from Bruce with another apology?
That said, he’s probably done more to popularise the subject than any other person I can think of. There is a cult surrounding the man.
Here is a site that Bruce obviously loves. :)
SSL is invulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. Unless that man is Bruce Schneier.
:P
Bumper to Bumper
Its funny .. and it makes me want to kill myself when I see stuff like this.
What excuse do we have for behaviour like this?
End of the day, people get the country they deserve.
Lonely
This is how I feel at times..
:P
Pain
Y often has a unique take on things. I am not sure she realizes it. I am not sure she realizes she could make a living as a philosopher :)
The other day we were generally discussing things and we drifted from a mention of a pain on my foot to pain in general. At this point she said that she detested physical pain more than anything else and the reason she could never have been a spy, soldier or a revolutionary or be in any situation where she could be tortured, was because she would spill the beans too easily.
Then she said, “People become selfish under pain”.
We usually sympathise with the image of someone under pain, whether physical or otherwise, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by others. We see them as the victimised. We never say they are selfish under pain. Perhaps we do not wish to demonize someones suffering because selfishness is seen universally as a negative trait.
If we give it a thought though, it is evident that all our actions are geared towards avoiding pain and are essentially selfish. Even the most holy of acts are essentially selfish. Of course, this could be a matter of a huge debate or at least a topic of discussion for philosophers at a cafe, but for me I’ve simply added that comment to my list of to-be-pondered-ons.
Like Y said earlier, from the story of an ancient philosopher. “Truth is perspective. There are as many truths as there are perspectives”
Trip to Bletchley Park
I finally made my long awaited trip to the Bletchley Park. I have wanted to visit for a few years now, but I never got around to actually doing it. However The Bristol Holloway Provable Security Day at Bletchley Park made sure I set aside all other commitments. The travel expense were paid for and lunch provided as well. Now, what did I say my real reason for jumping at the offer was :P I am a PhD student after all.
I will not try and recount the entire history of Bletchley Park here. I will leave that to more detailed sources. Suffice to say that Britain’s code breaking efforts during WW2 were coordinated from Bletchley Park and great minds like Alan Turing worked on these premises.
I was a little disappointed at the general state of Bletchley Park though. For a country that seems to care so much about its history and especially anything related to the World Wars, Bletchley park certainly seems to have gotten the short end of the stick in terms of funding for its upkeep. However seeing a working Enigma machine ( see the film Enigma is you’d rather not read about it :) ) and a reconstructed Colossus as well as a replica of the original Bombe more than made up for everything.
You can see all the pictures from my trip here
New Years Eve 2007
We were at Sne’s place for New Years. Dinner was a quiet and simple, yet lavish affair. As per Bulgarian ritual, Sne , accompanied ably by Yeon, prepared a Banista, which is a baked dish in which wishes are hidden. One lucky person gets the biggest “luck”, a coin. It was me this time! I am supposedly to be married this year, while Sne will fall in Love, and Yeon gets to stay some more in college :P
I must add though that my Banista for 2005 said I will have a baby :P
More pictures here.
Muscle Men
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Beware.. I have dangerous “looking” friends :P
Shubo, Samir and I went to school together. Here we are catching up after almost a decade.
More pictures here
Christmas 2006
Christmas was a quiet affair with lots of food and more silliness :)
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