A bunch of nerds

I had this discussion with one of my friends recently and came to the conclusion that a geek is one who is extremely interested in something, but a nerd is someone who is extremely interested in something to the exclusion of other things and fields.

I got this email about a piece of code which had won the international obfuscation competition. What the heck is this - all through school and grad school - this has been dinned into me - 'Write clear, easily understandable and well flowing code" And now I hear about some chumps awarding prizes for codes which are most obfuscated. I checked out the website of the IOCC which is an organization for people who do this. In fact I saw prizes for things like "Most Sonorous Code" - what is this?

I accept that I may be biased because I don't write code very well but are these guys prime candidates for the rulers of the nerd land or what?

Happy / Angry picture

My friend keeps sending me lots of forwards - mostly sentimental junk about friendship and love and truth and honesty and stuff like that - yecch - or as she would put it eew. I have never understood this expression eew - she picked it up from Friends. I understand yecch - full blooded voicing of ones utter disgust - but eew - seems to be tailormade for little girls. Anyway enough of my rambling.

But this picture was quite good and has to do with some long range and mid range filters. So when you look at the image on your screen you will see one happy and one angry (both tinged with a "house of wax" expression). If you walk back from the screen the faces interchange positions. The people who came up with this have done a great job.

Friends fiesta

A friend handed me a ton of DVD's having the complete Friends sitcom. I started watching and finished around 30 episodes.

I have never understood why so many of my friends like friends. Seems like a show where people
a) Sleep with one of their friends / some stranger
b) Break up with whomever they are sleeping with
c) Sit in the coffee shop / somebody's apartment and discuss meaningless stuff

Now I understand the appeal of this show which has nine episodes full off funny stuff, albeit filled with sexual content, and one sob ,extremely sentimental episode.

Its quite funny that this sitcom is broadcast on primetime in this country where people are so sensitive about not exposing children to "Adult content". All said, seems to be a good way to waste lots of time, have some laughs - eh!! Who bothers about anything else!!

Amazon.com Recommendations

I have this habit of spending around half an hour every day looking at some websites for good deals on electronic stuff for me and my friends. I recently bought a RaZr V3 mobile phone from Amazon

Amazon has this concept of recommendations where they look at the stuff you bought from them and recommend stuff that they think you will be interested in because of what you bought. I have seen wireless handsfree sets and travel chargers being recommended because I bought the phone but today, Amazon produced the clear winner. Check the boxed area of the picture.

In case the picture is not clear the circled part says that this was recommended because I bought the mobile phone.

Bluetooth linking

Bought a new mobile phone - Motorola RaZr V3 a week Ago. Had time just now and thought I should try transferring files to my computer using Bluetooth.

I didn't expect the process to be easy - what I did not expect was that the user manual would be totally useless. Anyway, I used the trusty Google and got it done and as always, once the job is done the manual and the error messages seem so useful.

About gradus desicus

I guess some explanation is needed on the term gradus desicus*.

This is a species of the family of homosapien desicus (named by Ramesh Mahadevan). This species is the Indian graduate student in US.

Usually the gradus is summed up as one of the following and then dismissied without further exploration.

1) Lucky creature enjoying life in US - by other species of the homosapien desicus family
2) A poor creature working hard in US while missing and being missed by people in India - by self and similar gradus desicus creatures
3) Clever predator who speaks in some strange lingo even when other species are present - by homosapien nondesicus

But the gradus desicus is quite the complex organism and merits a complete investigation into its life - which is the reason for this site. Events and thoughts in this gradus' life will be posted here.

*Desicus - comes from the hindi (Indian Language) word Desi meaning of same country. So Indians - especially students - refer to other Indians as desi. This is considered hillarious by some desicus because - well if this needs to be explained - forget it - you wont get it