Chronicles of Nikhil Baliga

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Uththishtata Bharatha... (Arise India) " [This post may seem to be mixing two issues - Deal with it :) ] " Take a twig and you can snap it between your fingers, take a bundle of sticks and you can't do anything to it " is the summary of the lesson imparted by the ailing old father to his bickering sons. We all know that. When Alexander the Great arrived at Takshashila (current Pakistan), and was all set to invade India, the entire sub continent was made up of numerous kingdoms. These kingdoms individually were relatively small, save Magadha which was larger. There was still a concept of Bharath, which is modern India, but then they were all individual kingdoms. Alexander was poised to defeat India and kings like Ambhi even sided with the foreigner in his quest to invade Bharath. Chanakya foresaw what would happen if Alexander continued on this path, as you might have too - Each twig could be easily snapped by Alexander. He de...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " The ability to handle rejection is an important quality to have " [I started reading this fantastic book called " Design Of Everyday Things " by Donald A. Norman. The book is highly recommended by the way. This post is inspired by the book. Let me start off by saying I am no expert - these are my opinions only] Systems and Designs seem to be very technical words. But, to me, they are more like common sense. These days, that is... Actually, from yesterday, because I started reading this book and now I have suddenly become an expert in the area. Driving in Bangalore is a pain, which most of you are aware of. But driving a car can get a little more annoying because of all the motorcycles that swarm around you. Motorcycles are inherently unstable and tend to move in unpredictable paths in excessive traffic. So a driver of a car has to be extra careful when he drives because he has to concentrate on a number of haphazardly moving vehi...

Baba Gyani Triviani said: " If you believe in fate and destiny, then the randomness in this world is pseudo-randomness " Random Number Seed I am sure most of you would have used a Random number generating piece of code in your program at some point of  time or another. And when you were looking up code, you would have noticed the word 'seed' but would have ignored it. Some of you would have even noticed a word called pseudo-random number generator. Well, I did. And I didn't know what this seed was until a few days back. Let's try out an experiment. I will use Python in this post, but you can use any other language - Java, Ruby and they will all behave in the exact same way. >>> import random >>> random.random() 0.23108685984562283 >>> random.random() 0.017276293409835386 If you try this piece of code on your machine, your results will be different from mine. Isn't that obvious? It IS a random number generator af...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " When in a game, play... " I have won several lotteries organised by Shell, Coca Cola and other companies. Each prize was no less than 500,000 GBP. And I have also been fortunate to share my surname with super rich heirless millionaires, facilitating unscrupulous lawyers to wire their enormous funds into my account so that I can send them their share for making it happen. Considering the number of lotteries I have won and number of inheritances in my name, I am richer than Bill Gates ten times over. But alas, we are aware of how scams work. Some of us, at least. So I continue to be penniless as before. Recently, I got an email - The brevity of which prompted me to reply, and then began an interesting conversation. from: Robert Adair to: r-adair@hotmail.co.uk date: 17 October 2013 21:29 subject: Your revert awaited having a proposal to discuss with you To which I replied, with equal conciseness... Regarding what And I got ...

Swami Nikhilaananda said: " An Apple a day will definitely make me bankrupt " [The purpose of this post is not to tell you how to get themes, mod or dropdown menus] I have an old iPod - 2nd Generation 8 GB one lying around. With the rapid rate at which technology becomes obsolete, I often wonder if investing money into buying gadgets really makes sense. Apple promptly stopped support for the older generations of devices, with no software updates beyond 4.2.1 and none of the newer apps work on my device either. Which means, I have to be happy with whatever apps I had installed. It suddenly went from a savvy gadget to ordinary music player - something that phones do as well. I also have a Raspberry Pi and I thought - it would be really cool if I can somehow make my iPod a screen for the Raspberry Pi - Act as a monitor. That'll give me a small computer of sorts. My first thought was to run a VNC server on the Pi and a VNC player on the iPod because I was looking for ...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " The moral fabric is netted, the sizes of holes not constant " Let me start off by saying that the attitude in this post is intentionally cynical As kids, we are taught a series of moral lessons - " Don't hurt others ", " Don't steal from others "... and as we grow up " Don't covet others' wives " and so on. As children, we are taught to take these statements as truths, we don't question them, we simply accept them. The reason being that we don't have the maturity and experience to validate them. So we accept them, and we follow them. As we grow up, we gain both experience and maturity. At this point, we can begin to validate our lessons and accordingly strengthen those that matched with reality and discard those that didn't. AI junkies will consider this as strengthening of synapses and those who've read 'I'm OK, You're OK' will relate this with the PAC model. ...

Swami Nikhilaananda said: " And then when I saw the leeches, blood drained from my face... " A cool breeze blew past me, reminding me to prepare myself for the obstacles ahead. I looked up at the sky and felt like a giant, for the clouds seemed to be within my reach. In the epic Mahabharata, in the Mahaprasthanika Parva , the Pandavas and Draupadi begin their journey up the Himalayas to reach heaven. And then a dog accompanied them... I knew I was about to embark upon a similar journey; I sensed I was very close to heaven, for nowhere else can beauty of this magnitude exist - the lush leaves of plants and trees all around me painted in various hues and shades of green, the soft gurgle of the stream, the eternal croaks of frogs and chirps of mysterious birds that refused to show themselves... The entire area seemed to be the epitome of vibrant life, for even the fallen trees were teeming with life, with  mosses and colourful mushrooms growing side by side, a perfect exampl...