Small Bits

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There's probably no god

2008-10-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

This is a very creative and provocative atheist campaign in London that is starting to gain popularity. Even Richard Dawkins donated money.

Polemic F1 moments during the Japanese GP

2008-10-15T22:04:00.000-07:00

FIA released a video with new angles of the polemic moments that culminated with the punishment of Hamilton, Massa, and Sebastien Bourdais last weekend in the Japanese GP. You can see it here.

For me, none of them should have been punished. F1 is becoming too rigid in the name of security, putting all the fun in a supporting role. It would be a waste to see this year's championship be decided on some rule or technical decision. Or, worse, see drivers more and more caution because they are afraid of being punished.

Hanging out

2008-10-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

I don’t really understand why the need for a social gathering after the death of a related one. I assume it’s for a last goodbye or to set an end and move on. It is probably a right assumption but it doesn’t make much sense to me. So I pretend. I go to funerals and I make sure others acknowledge my presence, as if I was part of it. But I’m not sad. I usually don’t feel anything, even if it is someone related to me, even if I try. I stand there, watching the coffin being buried while everybody but me is crying or praying or both. I disguise myself with sunglasses and by constantly looking down. It seems to fit the ritual and nobody notices how careless I am being about the whole thing. I could probably sing, make joke or have a beer in there. Cemeteries seem such a nice place for a beer. It is calm, green and breezy; like going to an empty beach or the outskirts of a park. If it wasn’t for the dead people underneath, I guess most people wouldn’t mind hanging out there either.

My grandfather died when I was really young - probably six or seven. It was the first funeral I attended. I was picked at school and remember being happy about it. After all, it seemed as an opportunity to skip that day classes. From that day, I only recall my already dead grandpa. Even my mom and dad’s faces are blurred to me. Everybody but grandpa was ghosts, wandering, giving me pity eyes. But grandpa, grandpa I remember. A lot of him is distinctively clear, a vivid picture taken seconds ago. He had an elongated face, brown skin, eyes shut, and cotton in his big nose. The hair he had left was well combed but most of it was on the back of the head. He was all a big wrinkly forehead. The rest of his body was confined within an indistinct wooden coffin. Nothing else really seemed to matter but my grandpa’s serene expression. He had a happy look, although everybody else was utterly sad. “What a contradiction”, I still remember thinking.

I also remember getting sick that same day, still in the cemetery, moments after my grandpa was buried. I remember a burning sensation in my stomach. I was about to throw up so I ran. I didn’t want anyone to see that. And after arriving at a distant sidewalk with no time left, I put it all out. Today I can tell it was like an awful hangover. My mom, of course, saw me and followed my steps. I remember her saying: “It’s ok son, lets take care of this.” I wasn’t really sure what was there to be taken care of. Of course she didn’t know I threw up not because of a dead body being buried. It was probably due to hyperthermia or lack of food. Or am I on denial? Maybe I still need care.

Since that episode, every time I go to a funeral I remember my grandfather. It is the only emotion that arises, I guess. But it is not happy or sad; it is just a recurring thought of my childhood. I guess my presence is important for others in those moments so I go and I try to comfort them. I don’t need any. It feels like I’m hollow inside or worse because I’m pretending not to be. And if I had to pray, I would for the ritual to be over as quick as possible. I always feel like having a beer after it is over.

Note: This is a work of fiction. Although some events inspired it, the story doesn’t represent any actual facts or a true narrative of my or anybody else’s past.

Gandhi Jayanthi

2008-10-01T23:53:00.000-07:00

Today, 139 years ago, Gandhi was born. The date is one of the only three national holidays here in India. And to celebrate it, here is one rare poem I read in his memorial during my visit to Delhi last december.

The poem is attributed to Venibhai Purohit (1918-1981), a poet from Gujarat. It is said that in the later years of Gandhi's life, this poem was read by him every morning, before the beginning of his formal activities.

Whether weary or unweary, O Man, do not rest
Do not cease your single-handed struggle.
Go on, and do not rest,

You will follow confused and tangled pathways,
And you will save only a few, sorrowful lives.
O Man, do not lose faith, do not rest.

Your own life will be exhausting and crippling,
And there will be growing dangers on the journey.
O Man, bear all these burdens, do not rest.

Leap over your troubles though they are high as mountains,
And though there are only dry and harren fields beyond.
O Man, till those fields, do not rest.

The world will be dark and you shall shed light on it,
And you shall dispel all the darkness around.
O Man, though life deserts you, do not rest.

O Man, take no rest for thyself,
O Man, give rest unto others.

Bombs in India or Lost Bullets in Brazil?

2008-09-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

The following blog wondered (sorry, it is in Portuguese) the other day whether the deaths by bombing in India are higher than deaths by lost bullets in Brazil. If you are not familiar with the concept, a “lost bullet” hit is a somewhat common phenomenon in some metropolitan areas, especially in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It happens when the bullet hits someone by accident, because the person was in its direction. In Rio it is common because of the violence (mostly due to drug traffic) but also given the way slums (the now infamously known “favelas”) are shaped in the city, surrounding richer neighborhoods in the nearby hills. It is not rare to see gunshot marks in the buildings nearer the favelas, for example. The stories of being hit or nearly hit are so commonplace that they don’t even appear in the news anymore.

And in fact, it turns out that probably more people die by lost bullets in Brazil than by bombing in India. According to the mentioned blog, 152 people died in India due to terrorist attack this year. On the other hand, it is estimated that 170 were hit by lost bullets in 2007, only in the city of Rio (Portuguese again sorry)! Because there is not official statistic of lost bullet, we can only guess the actual numbers for the whole country.

However, if we take into account all cases of murders, Brazil shows up as the really bad guy. In 2006, 46660 people were assassinated in the country. In contrast, 32719 is the number in India (this one is in English). It gets even worse if you divide the number by total population: Approximately 0.23 murders for every 100 people in Brazil and only 0.02 in India. Even if you double the underestimated total number of murders in India, the country will still have a much lower murder rate by inhabitants. The only good news for Brazil is that its rate is declining: It fell by 8.5% in the last 3 years (Portuguese).

Hug a developer today

2008-09-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

Funny video with a point to make...

Chrome: Just a new browser?

2008-09-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

Howdy! I’m back to some frequent updates again!

Initially, as my first post to inaugurate the return, I planned to translate a post I wrote in Portuguese about the launch of Chrome, Google’s browser. Since in English there are some much more rich information about the topic available, I decided to rather just point them out instead.

In the post I wrote in Portuguese, I start by talking about how in the current short-term scenario the release of Chrome wouldn’t matter that much. It would be much like the loss Netscape suffered in the mid-1990s against Microsoft due to the absence of network externalities and to low switching costs between browsers. You can read Shapiro and Varian's “Information Rules” book for detailed information on this or go straight to the page where the spoiler is in there. You can also check for yourself that Google’s browser so far has reached only 1% usage.

The point then is that this release has a vision attached to it. It’s not a simple release of another browser. Instead, it’s one more step towards a paradigm shift. We are probably witnessing the transition from a world dominated by PCs requiring an operating system to function to one where PCs or even operating systems won’t be required anymore. It is in that new world Google is betting.

So, for more details, I recommend:

A bug in Google's system

2008-07-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

I got this e-mail today from Google:

Hello,

There was a bug in our system that allowed you to sign up for a nickname that was already taken. Please log in at and update your profile with a new nickname. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and hope that you'll take this chance to come up with a new creative nickname!

Thanks for your understanding and best of luck in the contest.

- Google Code Jam Team

This is after more than a month using the old nickname and doing some of the exercises with it. My nickname is ideed very common, Rick, but it's not the same as the one with Google's profile, even though the e-mail address is the same.

So the only thing I can think of is that they were not checking for unique nicknames before and were relying their system solely on some internal code. Now that the contest start date is approaching, they figured unique nicknames will be important.

Am I missing something?

2008-07-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know I'm not being a frequent writer these days. The reason is I'm sort of enjoying holidays in my hometown. It's not exactly holidays because I'm still working and studying a lot but at least it's all near old friends, family, and my girlfriend.

I will probably be back to the normal activity in august when I will go back to Bangalore...

Is Technological Singularity almost a reality?

2008-06-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

Until two days ago, I was very skeptic about technological singularity. I believed in the paradox that if humans created the machines, how can they be smarter than their creators? So, computers could not even start to be smarter and cognitive work would always be done by humans. This is pretty much the same view of Frank Levy and Richard Murnane on the matter in their 2004 book “The New Division of Labor - How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market”.

In the book, they say that computers are changing work and salaries, shifting the most well paid jobs to areas focusing on expert thinking, complex communication, and non-routine tasks that involve cognitive work or where humans “still have a comparative (that is, relative) advantage”. (p. 36)

Of course I always agreed that our systems will improve and become more complex, efficient and capable with time but I didn’t think they could get to a point where they would behave as humans and evolve by their own terms and become conscious of their actions.

In this context, there would always be limitations and we are already approaching some of them if we don’t discover another means (such as is believed with quantum computing) to improve technology since thermodynamics is one of the constraints reaching limits.

I’m still skeptic but a very captive special report by IEEE caught my attention on Friday and kept me thinking about this topic. There, two articles are particularly interesting together by their antagonistic views: The first of them, by Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi, argues that yes, machines can eventually have consciousness and execute at least some cognitive work. "Consciousness is part of the natural world. It depends, we believe, only on mathematics and logic and on the imperfectly known laws of physics, chemistry, and biology; it does not arise from some magical or otherworldly quality. That's good news, because it means there's no reason why consciousness can't be reproduced in a machine—in theory, anyway."

The other article, by Alfred Nordmann, is on the other direction. For him, technology isn't evolving faster now than it was from 19th century until 1960s (he presents a timeline of some of humans' important and popular breakthroughs from 1830s onwards to exemplify this) and argues that "the story of the Singularity is sweeping, dramatic, simple—and wrong".

In the different scenarios of the report, singularity is possible (or should I say believed?) in some of them and not too far away from our present time. For me, right now, I don’t know anymore what to conclude. I need more reading and discussion time.

A sunset on sundays

2008-05-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

Lotus Temple, Delhi, India

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 has been released!

2008-05-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

Great news! We are now one step closer to version 3 of Firefox. See the release notes at the official Mozilla web site.

I've been using the new Firefox since its beta 4. The Mozilla Blog has been talking about it for a while now but it is never too much to highlight the completely renewed and integrated address bar and bookmarking system plus the more efficient memory management. All great!

If you already use Firefox 2, I sincerely recommend you to try the new version. It is definitely stable enough for any user and you can use the Nightly Tester Tools to run most of the add-ons that are incompatible just because the interface to identify the add-on compatibility changed.

One night of chaos in India

2008-05-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

It all started when I left the shopping mall. The large and yet packed-with-cars avenue was duping the incautious dwellers with its traffic lights and the impractical number of headlamps. The glare was blinding them and everything seemed normal; whatever normal means in India. But I noticed the difference. Half the city was already under complete darkness and a thunderstorm was approaching.

My watch was marking 10pm sharp. The mall was closing and its staff was going home. For them, nothing else mattered, so selfishly minding their own business. But I noticed a flare. It came from the building across the avenue and it looked like it was exploding. And indeed its transformer had just blown and with it all the nearby electrical network, leaving a path of sparks over the wires like scary fireworks. I glimpsed at leaving the place but nowhere would be safe if the whole city was collapsing.

I took a rickshaw. This little devil, covered with some synthetic fabric, completely opened at the sides, was to me the fastest means to get out, zigzagging through cars in a cacophony of horns and moos and barks and shouts, in roads full of bumps and puddles. It was cold and the open sides meant no windows to close and a freezing wind surrounding my body. It was the heavy storm now all over, striking glances of light to the blackout. The lightning could be seen from a distance; 1, 2, 3 and there it was the thunder adding one more percussion to the cacophony.

With all the water everywhere, I should have expected what was coming next. A truck ran over and obviously hit one big puddle and splashed all of us. Remember, no side windows in the rickshaw. And after strings of curses from the driver, another truck came and, probably on purpose and on behalf of the previous truck, splashed us again. At least I think they were having fun.

When we finally reached destination, I was cold, wet, and in the dark when I realized I had to money to pay for the ride; Just a credit card. I didn’t speak Hindi or Kannada, he didn’t speak English. I tried to say sorry. But he probably cursed me as he did with the truck driver. The security guard of my building ended up paying him; what else could I do? Well, I did what I could to finish that day as soon as possible: took a shower and went to bed, hoping for a new day to come with better moods…

Note: This is a work of fiction. Although some true events inspired it, the intensity of the story is beyond possibly any reality. Even in India.

Damn you Rubik’s cube

2008-05-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

After 4 hours, I managed to finish Rubik’s cube for the first time ever (I’m so happy!). In my childhood I never had one but I remember playing with it for a while in my cousin’s place once. A couple of weeks ago, a friend’s play triggered my curiosity again and I decided to buy it.

For me, after reading some general instructions, it was not hard at all to cover the first two layers and reach a state that seems almost done. Almost. The damn thing was laughing at my face after several failed attempts from that point on. “You are a fool!” – The cube kept telling me.

So I succumbed to step-by-step instructions. “Solving Rubik's Cube for speed” by Lars Petrus was the most comprehensive and easy-to-follow guide I found. But that doesn’t mean that the last layer is as straightforward as the other two. It’s not. There are several different moves and combinations that you must memorize. Lars names them after people (Bruno, Sune, Allan, etc.) and I guess it’s his friends and family - Though it seems like he is casting a whole generation of his family. Even if you get the logic as I did, it is almost impossible to see it 10 to 14 steps ahead of time, so only logic won’t help you.

Now, I think I can finish it in 30 minutes. I will keep practicing for a while in my free time to see how fast I can get. My target is a 3-year old kid that can solve it in less than 3 minutes. And lets ignore a 6-year old who solves it in 37 seconds...

You have to burn the rope!

2008-05-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

This game is so hard...

[Hat tip to Osias for the link]

Clusty, a search engine clustering the results

2008-04-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

I intended to write about this four days ago, when I first saw this post at Google Blogoscoped but I didn’t have the time before. In it Philipp Lenssen, the author of the blog, argues that “diverse Google results are good” because they satisfy different cases of a search, given that the semantics of the same search from two different users might be different. He gives the example of the query [google blog] which might yield at least three different classes of results: “1) the user wants to see the official blog by Google Inc., 2) the user heard about Google’s blogging platform and wants to find Blogger.com, or 3) the user is looking for an independent blog covering Google.”

He goes on explaining the case for other examples and concludes that, even though some results might be diverse, there is a problem of optimization that benefits those pages that are doing a better job at it (particularly the ones that are aware that search engine optimization matters). Further, in the comments, he also adds a comparison of the overall results of different search engines, specifically Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Live.com and argues that Google’s results are better for the keywords [google blog].

I agree that, in a general sense, diverse results do benefit a broader population of users and it is in this context that I want to introduce the Clusty Search, arguing that its results are even better than Google's. This engine goes beyond the notion of crawling and indexing pages, by also querying other search engines, combining the results and grouping them into clusters. The notion of cluster here is to try to maximize the similarity of web pages within the cluster and the dissimilarity across different clusters so that the resulting clusters are as relevant as possible as a group of similar pages.

By doing so, Clusty increases the importance of different classes of the result and gives the user the opportunity to narrow it down to the specific class he or she is looking for. Lets go back to the [google blog] example. In Clusty the query returns different classes as expected (the official Google blog, the Google Blog Search tool, and several independent blogs about Google) and, more interestingly, lists the different clusters it found on the left, allowing the user to specify which ‘kind’ of result he or she wants. Note that the engine uses a soft algorithm for clustering so each result can be in more than one cluster for the same query.

A more generic example highlights this feature even further. Take the query [star], for instance, which could mean at least the user is looking for either 1) someone famous, 2) a constellation of some sort, 3) some band, or even 4) something related to Star Wars or Star Trek. These are all real examples of clusters presented as a result.

I haven’t been using this search engine on an everyday basis yet but, overall, it is quite powerful, seems to be very consistent, and has a lot of other features. To name a few related to the topic of this post, search within a cluster, highlight the page’s clusters, and narrow the results by top or second level domain. I actually got myself playing with it for a while just to see how it organizes the different ‘kinds’ of pages into clusters, without any human intervention*.

*I’m assuming the engine is using the notion of cluster as an unsupervised learning process that groups documents based on their similarity (according to some metric). See the Wikipedia article on Data Clustering for more details.

Britannica freely available for web publishers

2008-04-22T20:21:00.000-07:00

I read in the TechCrunch and in the Standblog (in french) that Britannica was offering one-year free subscription for "web publishers" (which happens to include bloggers) that were frequently updating their content.

I subscribed yesterday and today, in less than 24 hours, I got the confirmation. Easy as a piece of cake! Good job Britannica! It is a small but important step in consolidating a strategy that may actually help the company catch up with Wikipedia.

A dream during siesta

2008-03-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

I had a strange dream this Sunday afternoon. I was in a complex enterprise of some sort. Don’t know of what kind but seemed very powerful and diverse, yet loosely organized. I was a stranger in that place and apparently had just escaped prison. Don’t know why I was in prison in the first place; don’t know how I managed to swiftly appear outside of it either.

At some points, I had friends walking with me through doors of different departments and rooms. Friends and rooms were simply popping in and out, without any explanation. Like a poor movie. Effusive were my efforts to understand what was going on. I was looking all over the place for something; at least some clue. Don’t know what. And nothing gave me any edge. And nobody seemed to care so I kept walking.

I see the prison again and a friend materializes right next to me. Don’t know how or why. Now at least we have a purpose. We need to escape, get out of there as soon as possible, no matter what. We try to pretend we have nothing to hide while walking casually. They see us, of course. It was clearly obvious that they would. The sun was shinning brightly in the sky; there was nowhere to run to.

I get rid of them. Don’t ask me. Don’t know what happened to my friend. But I meet new friends, a lot of them, all ready to go to some war. We walk past some door and suddenly we are finally outside the enterprise. We turn left and the street was empty but they tell me to stop. I see a door, everything else was blurred and I ignore my friends. I run to get inside, having some unidentified hope.

The building is tall but thin. It is just stairs and the door I came through. Not even windows, just grey walls and cement stairs. And again I run up until I find another door. The top of the building is a small balcony and I can contemplate my tiny friends down the street. No other building is as tall as this one so I cannot jump. They engage a huge fight with another group. I am passive.

After a while, some of them go through the same door I took before. I hear a friend shout: “I will take care of them! I will leave only the easy ones for you!” Am I not able to take care of myself? I see I can go up the structure built around the exit door. It’s not simple to reach the top so I climb it. Up there I lay down. It seems like a plan to attack anyone who comes out the door and push them off the balcony. But I’m worried: What if it is my friend? I wake up.

How many open source developers does it take to change a light bulb?

2008-03-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

The answer is 17!

17 to argue about the license; 17 to argue about the brain-deadness of the light bulb architecture; 17 to argue about a new model that encompasses all models of illumination and makes it simple to replace candles, campfires, pilot lights, and skylights with the same easy-to-extend mechanism; 17 to speculate about the secretive industrial conspiracy that ensures that light bulbs will burn out frequently; 1 to finally change the light bulb, and 16 who decide that this solution is good enough for the time being.

From Peter Wayner, cited by Steven Weber's book, The Success of Open Source, p. 81.

Incy Bella, a bookshop of note

2008-03-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

In Cochin, Kerala I found a rather small and yet very charming bookshop this weekend. Kerala is a south Indian state known for its rich natural beauty and cultural diversity and the bookshop ended up being a very appropriate example of these characteristics.

The place was full of books on India and its many faces. Religion, culinary, cities, history, economy, rituals, landmarks, dances, music, you name it… It was all there translated into pictures and text. What was even more impressive was its collection of books on Kerala. I certainly didn’t expect that and I was obviously glad with the finding. I simply couldn't leave the place! It was so attractive that a word of caution is necessary: do not enter with a full pocket – you'll want to spend all of it.

Incy Bella - The Bookshop
Synagogue Lane
Jew Town
Cochin
682002 India
T 0484-2228049

What a great F1 race... for the public!

2008-03-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

The first grand prix of the 2008 season, in Melbourne, Australia, was very exciting! And I would bet that at least part of reason was the prohibition of the traction control system, which helped the cars to stay on track. Life is harder for the pilots now and we could see this even before the race, during the qualifying sessions.

As for the race, what to say? Only seven (of 22) cars finished it. A lot of accidents and mistakes were the tone of most of it. Even last year’s world champion, Kimi Raikkonen, did not escape spinning twice in his impulse to reach better positions, and ended up abandoning the race with some technical problem.

Of the seven, I must highlight Barrichelo’s sixth place, finally scoring points for Honda after more than a year, and Alonso’s performance with his poor Renault car. For most teams this was a nightmare weekend, for me it was great fun!

Update: Barrichelo was disqualified because he left the pits while the red lights were still on. Too bad for Honda which remains with no points since 2006.

A sunset on sundays

2008-03-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

Central Park, New York

Are you tired or sleepy?

2008-03-08T21:22:00.000-08:00

For Wiktionary, which in this case borrows the definitions from the Oxford Dictionary, “tired” and “sleepy” are synonyms. However, in other dictionaries and sites, the definition of “tired” is slightly different:

1. From Babylon:
"fatigued, dead-tired, exhausted (Informal)"

2. From Wikipedia, not Wiktionary, where it is a synonym of fatigue:
"It is ubiquitous in everyday life, but usually becomes particularly
noticeable during heavy exercise. Mental fatigue, on the other hand,
rather manifests in somnolence."

3. From Wordnet:
"depleted of strength or energy;"

In these cases, sleepiness might be just one manifestation of being tired, but someone can be sleepy without being tired (when taking a pill, for example). Therefore, in some circumstances there can be a causal relationship but these are independent words in my opinion.

I know this is a rather silly discussion but I started it with a friend the other day and now I want to settle it down. I even opened a thread on Wiktionary, proposing to change their first definition of the word “tired”.

Of course I’m ignoring the other uses of the word which don’t apply here, for example:
1. Fed up, annoyed, irritated, sick of: “I'm tired of this”
2. Overused, cliché: “a tired song”

The Firefox add-ons I use

2008-03-06T00:04:00.000-08:00

When I saw this post and a print screen of a Firefox window in it with a lot of add-ons, I wondered about which were being used. Some I could guess as I also had them installed but I ended up asking Luke about the others. The question resulted in a follow-up post where he lists all the nice and cute third-party features he uses that you can add to your browser to make it even better!

From his list, I also use Adblock Plus, Fasterfox, Faviconize Tab, Firebug, Google Notebook, and PDF Download. They are all excellent utilities that come in hand often. Now, before I get into the other add-ons I use which are not listed there, let me add a word about the difference between Adblock Plus and Adblock. The second, in my opinion, is very obsolete right now and the maintenance of the project is almost abandoned. Besides, most pre-made block filters developed by other groups are only being updated for Adblock Plus these days. In any case, however, you can improve both with another add-on called Adblock Filterset.G. It essentially adds and maintains its own set of filters for you.

Now, to my add-ons:

FireFTP
This is a very simple and fast FTP client working inside your Firefox tabs. It is really easy to use and support many nice features such as SSL and integrity checks. Besides, it offers you the ability to store profiles of FTP servers you work more often with.

Resizeable Textarea
This is a tiny add-on that lets you resize textareas. Very useful in forms of blogs and forums that offer you a limited space for all your great set of arguments!

Locationbar²
A recent addition to my collection. I discovered it reading the comments of a post evaluating the new IE8 beta release on Google Blogoscoped. A new feature of this new version of the Microsoft browser is basically a copy of this add-on: It highlights and decodes the URL you are current on for a variety of reasons:

Helps identify spoofing;
the readability of the address;
Allows you to quickly click a directory in the address to navigate through the hierarchy of the web page.

Forecastfox
There are many weather forecast add-ons available for Firefox. I use this one when I’m travelling because it is the less obtrusive among the ones I evaluated. Just add your cities and voilà!

Understanding Quantum Computing

2008-03-04T03:17:00.002-08:00

For readers interested in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing, here is a list of topics in order of difficulty or deepness.

For a basic and fun overview of interrelated concepts, refer to The Elegant Universe documentary. The official web site of the show also has a number of other useful resources.
For the necessary mathematical understanding, watch the comprehensive set of video lectures from the MIT on linear algebra;
Get into the world of Quantum Mechanics with the introduction from Wikipedia or a series of fundamental concepts by Professor Richard Fitzpatrick, from the University of Texas;
Go deep into the Wikipedia articles on Quantum Computing and on Quantum Mechanics;
Read the book Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang.

After that, you are all set to start understand this crazy world! ;-)

A sunset on sundays

2008-02-17T04:18:00.000-08:00

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. That's Christ the Redeemer on the left side of the picture, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

A filthy rat at the restaurant

2008-02-15T20:26:00.000-08:00

This was the first (and probably the last) time I tried Harima, a Japanese restaurant recommended by a friend here in Bangalore.

The place was organized, had a good variety, and tasty food. It was not the best Japanese I've been to but I was satisfied with my friend's tip... Until the very last minute.

We were waiting inside the restaurant for the cab when we saw a really NASTY, DIRTY, VILE, AND FILTHY RAT coming out of the kitchen running though glasses and bottles at the bar. What is worse, the waiters didn't seem to care about the ongoing episode. They simply looked at the rat as if it was the place's mascot or something...

It really puts the whole "nice restaurant experience" into perspective, right?

In the news: Obama and Saraswati Puja

2008-02-11T17:45:00.001-08:00

This is a cut picture of today's newspaper Times of India. First of all, try to look for the price in the red box: It's 3 rupees or 4.50 along with the Economic Times. 3 rupees is less then US$ 0.08 for a colored newspaper with 40 pages!!

About the headlines, Obama is in it, of course, after winning three states in a row (plus Maine now which was still going on when the journal came out).

More interesting, however, is the small mention to the Saraswati Puja in the green box. According to Wikipedia, "Saraswati has been regarded as a river goddess and in recent times a goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. She is the daughter of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation." Puja is a religious ritual performed by Hindus for all kinds of reasons and for all kinds of gods. The purpose, as I understood it, is usually to offer something (fruits, mostly) or an acknowledgment in exchange for the god's blessings.

A sunset on sundays

2008-02-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

Kuusamo, northeast of Finland.

To fish or not to fish

2008-02-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

My father likes to fish. These days he doesn’t do it with the same intensity but that deep feeling of struggling with the fish when it bites the bait and try in vain to escape will probably always exist. I never had the same feeling. For me it was mostly boring to fish or to see my dad meticulously preparing the fishing rod, the hook, and the bait, for only then throw the line in the water and wait for hours before a first bite. “I’m an angler and anglers have patience!” he proudly used to say after I got too bored and started to complain. He was, of course, referring to the practice of angling, that is, catching the fish with an angle or a hook which indeed can take hours if the sea decides not to be helpful.

Sometimes we went to open sea with my dad’s friend. He had a motor yacht with all kinds of weird and technological stuff to “enhance the experience of angling”: An equipment to measure the tension of the line, artificial lures of all sorts and colors, chairs attached to the yacht, designed to facilitate the fight with the fish, and electric fishing reels to reduce the work of pulling the rod. I never had any excitement for any of those things. Sure it was fun to fight with the fish but all the preparation and the wait weren’t worthy enough for me. I enjoyed going to open sea for the ride and to swim and to dive when we were near a coral reef.

But these boat trips were rare. Most of the times we were at beaches or platforms built along them to increase our reach of the sea. One day, after one week going to the same place without catching any fish, I lost the patience and asked my dad: “Why the hell do we keep coming to this place if we don’t get any fish anyway?!”. Of course, after this, I knew something had to happen. My dad had to say something but he didn’t. He patiently prepared everything in the same routine of the days before. And throwing the line, he waited and I couldn’t do anything but to wait with him.

I guess he really wanted to get at least one fish that day. He probably had a whole speech prepared for that. But we left the beach with empty hands again. And in the car he looked at me and said: “If you don’t try, how do you know you will succeed one day?” Then he started the engine but before leaving, looked at me again: “Besides, these are good moments to spend with you, my son...” I never again complained about fishing with my dad.

Next week: more about fishing techniques around the world.

PS: I know it has been more than 4 months since my last post. Sorry for that but at that time I had lost the control of my activities so I had to give up this blog. Now I’m back and I will try to keep this a weekly exercise for me.

Music of the World - Part 1

2007-09-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

Around the world, I had the opportunity to get familiar with many different types of music styles. This is a very rich aspect of different societies and one way to distinguish them. Take Brazil, for instance: The country was heavily influenced by a mix of African and European styles plus a little something of what Native Americans previously had. The fusion produced incredible results and among them is the well known Bossa Nova song called The Girl from Ipanema composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim (or simply Tom Jobim).

More than that, Samba, Choro, and MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) are among the most traditional genres and the Wikipedia article about the country’s music covers all of them with great detail and richness.

One Brazilian music style that is missing there, though, is called Pife, named after the instrument, a kind of flute. It has a controversial origin often attributed to Native Americans of Brazil. Carlos Malta (Official web site in Portuguese) is a singer that is doing a remarkable work of bringing back the Pife under the label of “Modern Pife”. His compositions include famous Brazilian songs performed almost solely with the instrument. His style is very unique and very creative; his concert is a must-see if the opportunity comes.

Going up from Brazil to Mexico, Lila Downs is the name that comes to my mind. I went to her concert in Washington DC last year and I simply have no words to describe what I felt there. Her music is powerful and yet touches the heart with the rich Mexican culture.

She is well-known in Brazil because of the Academy Award winner song Burn it Blue for the movie Frida, performed with Caetano Veloso, a prestigious Brazilian MPB composer and singer.

Back to Bossa Nova, it is necessary to highlight the work of the American jazz musician Stan Getz. He is responsible for the recording of the English version of The Girl from Ipanema with Tom Jobim, João Gilberto and his wife, Astrud Gilberto - the song that won a Grammy Award.

The box-set called The Girl From Ipanema: The Bossa Nova Years is beautifully performed during what is probably one of the best moments of his career. It includes many of the classical Brazilian Bossa Nova songs and provides endless enjoyment.

In the US, the mix of genres is perhaps best shown nowadays through the distinctive voice of the leading vocal of Pink Martini, China Forbes. The band’s songs include genres of music as Latin, lounge, classical, and jazz.

Sympathique music clip

My favorite is Sympathique from their debut album with the same name. The song with French lyrics is original, erudite, soft, and passionate. Truly one of the best songs I’ve heard.

Speaking of the French, the Amélie soundtrack composer, Yann Tiensen, also deserves mention here. He is a multi-instrumentalist very versatile and intense. His songs follow a running heart beat.

Monochrome by Yann Tiersen (playing the piano)

In Europe, beyond explanations are the rock bands U2, Keane, and Scorpions to name a few that range from pop to hard rock. HIM, a Finnish alternative rock band, is also doing a good job and is the first and only rock band in Finland to sell Gold in the United States.

I know I’m in India right now but I can’t really recommend anything yet. If you go through the YouTube video clips of Indian bands, you’ll find very weird and funny stuff – clearly not what I am looking for.

I’ve already seen some dance presentations and they all include traditional music that I still don’t know how to classify. Again, the Wikipedia article about Indian Music is very rich and detailed – a good starting point.

I will cover the Asian Pacific music with more detail in a later post. I know I’ve missed a lot of great songs and artists but this is the resemblance of my experience and feelings towards the music I’ve been living with.

Short Story: Where was You last night?

2007-09-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

Where was You last night? You didn’t know how to answer.

Tired of the long day that burdened him, he was reluctant. He didn’t want to share yet what he was going through. It is true, he knew how to answer that question, he simply didn’t want to. You’s face was pouting when the question was reinforced and kept echoing in his head. For a moment he thought about shouting back an argument for everyone across the globe to hear, satisfying him and the present people, setting free his friend who was supposed to answer the question in the first place.

- We were mowing the grass – said You at last, trying to end the situation as quick and as painless as possible. Nevertheless, after saying that, his voice trembled and weakened by the stress, he wished he could disappear. It was a stupid excuse for a very delicate situation. The whole scenario seemed like an interrogatory now and the surrounding people were also murmuring oddly and suspicious looks. You was wobbling. All he wanted was to relax and sleep and dream about last night and keep last night only for himself and his friend.

“Mowing the grass” wasn’t exactly going to help and his friend now crying and screaming nonsense words were enough for You to understand that. He knew that the truth had to be said. And he looked at his friend again. Even stared at her for a moment; maybe their last moment together. She was on the big wooden chair of her father, almost in the middle of that ample and bright room on the back side of the house, next to the others, howling.

He got, then, all the courage he had left, raised his head again and started to tell the story, word by word, gently looking at each and everyone’s flabbergasted face. Story told, there was nothing else to do. His friend wiped the tears away…

Multiple mice in a single computer: Simple and innovative idea to help disadvantaged schools

2007-09-05T08:31:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading an article about the use of multiple mice plugged in the same computer to help children in disadvantaged schools.

The idea is to give the opportunity to all the students sharing a computer to interact with it instead of being passive while only one had the mouse control. This is done plugging in as many as necessary mice in the USB port and using a specific designed software to let all the students interact with the computer. In the authors field work, there were a maximum of 5 students using one mouse each but in lab tests they had tested up to 15 mice simultaneously.

The software - an educational prototype - has two modes of work: a racing mode where the students had to compete to click on the correct answer first; and a collaborative mode where all the students had to click on the same answer for the software to evaluate it as right or wrong.

Their findings, although slightly limited, show benefits in the learning process using the practice above.

For me, this is one of those ideas that make you think: "Why didn't I come up with that first?" When I was a kid, I had to share a computer at school and later, during a time when I worked as a teacher, I saw my students facing the same problems when they had to share a computer and one or two had to be passive while the other was actively following my instructions...

As of today, the article is available online here (PDF file), if you are interested. More publications of the TIER Project (Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions) can be found at the official web site.

Photos of my hometown in Brazil

2007-09-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

I just remembered that I had uploaded to Picasa some photos of my hometown, Vitoria, in Brazil. The city is located in the coastline, 600km north of Rio de Janeiro, and its going to be 456 years old this September 8.

What I miss most about it right now? My girlfriend, friends and family, our traditional fish dish called "Moqueca Capixaba", and the beach.

You can see my pictures here. Also, take a look at the city's official English Portal for more touristic information.

India's social contrasts

2007-09-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Take a look at the picture below:

Now take a closer look at the amplified version:

This is a construction site in Electronics City, Bangalore, located between Siemens and IIIT-B (An Information Technology Institute). Although all the buildings in this region are really sumptuous, the same cannot be applied to the ones under construction.

Some of the workers actually live in these aluminum houses behind the construction. They have no hygienic conditions and the dirt floor looks like a swamp to me. Besides, the workers have almost no protection; some of them wear helmets but they don't have proper shoes (they wear sandals) and they don't have any cables to support them while working in the higher floors.

And guess how much they get paid... I can't confirm this yet but some fellow students here where I'm living told me that they earn an average of Rs. 40 / day. That's about US$ 1 /day!!! And of course with that daily amount they need to work even during weekends and holidays to get at least US$30 at the end of the month...

I have no more to say about this...

Multilingual India

2007-08-29T05:31:00.000-07:00

One thing that drives me nuts in India is the country's multilingual culture. Indian constitution recognizes 22 languages as National languages. Plus, 114 languages are spoken by more than 10,000 native speakers!!

So, to give you an idea of this, can you tell me which language is used in each picture below - Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, or Tamil?

Happy Onam

2007-08-27T23:42:00.001-07:00

Onam (ഓണം), a harvest festival, is celebrated in Kerala, a state in India. It generally falls in the months of August-September. Onam is a celebration to mark the annual return of the spirit of the mythical King Mahabali to his kingdom, and a commemoration of his benevolent rule and his sacrifice. The festivities are intended to assure the King that his people are happy and to wish him well. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onam)

Actually, this is also being celebrated in Karnataka, another southern state in India where I'm currently living. Arrangements like the one in the poor picture below (sorry, it was taken with my mobile) are spread along some places downtown Bangalore.

First time in India

2007-08-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

I arrived in India at the end of July in a traumatic fashion: Bombay can be very frightening if you are not ready for it; especially if you arrive at a rainy night and some security freak tells you that there is a bomb threat in the domestic airport.

I discovered later, after spending a $100 in a hotel nearby, that everything was part of a scam that seems to be pretty common in Bombay and Delhi. In another type of scam, some indian may tell you that the hotel you are heading to is closed or has been destroyed for some reason. Don’t believe it, my friend! In fact, here are some tips for your first arrival in India:

First, you should try to arrive in India during the day. That can be hard because most flights come to India during the late night but it is extremely recommended.
If you are not going to Bombay, avoid its airport at all costs! Otherwise you will need to switch between the international and the domestic airport. Believe me, that’s a 10km ride you don’t want to take just to switch airports.
Do not believe anyone you don’t know near any airport. Just ignore the people and do what you gotta do.
Try to get a pre-paid taxi. Usually there are offices of the government authorized taxis inside the airport.
Do not let anybody you don’t know or trust discover that it is your first time in India. Doing that is like feeding the sharks: they will hunt you…
Do not accept help from anyone. They will try to carry your things, they will try to get a taxi for you, and they will do anything to get some money from you. So, don’t let anybody (ANYBODY) help you; even if she is the most beautiful woman (or, in case you are a woman, the most handsome guy) and have the greatest and whitest smile. Yell if you have to!
Finally, when you reach the taxi, pay attention to the traffic signs. All big towns I know have signs giving directions of the common places and roads. Beware of the direction you are heading.

I’m not trying to scare you as it may look… Really, India is a great place and I love it now. But you don’t want to have a bad impression of the country on your arrival here as I had…

The Productivity Paradox Revised

2007-08-23T19:03:00.000-07:00

The Productivity Paradox, a concept to refer to the lack of return in productivity as investments in Information Technology grew, started to appear in many studies during the 80s. Managers begun to question their investments in technology as there were no evidence of return. This led researchers towards attempts to understand this relationship between productivity and information technology, what produced results confirming, to some extent, the managers’ view.

According to more recent firm-level and country-level researches, this misconception of lack of return in IT investments is becoming outdated (if not already). When taking into account a broader view including intangible aspects of investments and cross-country data from the past through more recent years, researchers have shown that investments in IT, mostly when aligned with business processes and strategies improvements, do result in gain of productivity.

You can read more about the Productivity Paradox at Wikipedia. ~~For a deeper review on the topic, take a look at the paper I wrote (PDF format), after reading some authors working on it.~~ Update: Sorry, I removed this link for personal reasons.

Walking on the grass is good for eyesight

2007-08-22T01:07:00.000-07:00

That is something I didn't know: walking on the grass is (supposedly) good for your eyesight. An indian friend just told me this.

I, of course, immediately went to Google to try to find evidence of this. In a quick glimpse, the two links I found are related, I think, to popular belief. They are not from a trustworthy or scientific source. One is a Yahoo Answers reply and another, which is quoted below (my emphasis), comes from the site tips4me.com.

So what do you think? Is this something already known around and I was the only one who didn't? Being true or not, this can be a good excuse for walking on the grass where you are not allowed to...

WALKING BAREFOOT IS GOOD THERAPY
Shoes trap energy around the feet, and that could be one of the reasons for feeling tired at the end of a long day. So take them off whenever you can and give them as much air as possible. Barefoot walks help tone the muscles of your feet, keeping them young and strong. An early morning barefoot walk on cool, dewy grass is refreshing and invigorating for the entire system, not just your feet. It is also believed to have a very good effect in improving eyesight. Do walk barefoot as much as possible to help the bone structure of your feet function according to its natural shape.

Wiki Scanner

2007-08-21T02:35:00.000-07:00

I got this today while listening to This Week in Tech episode 110: WikiScanner is a web site created by Virgil, who is currently working at Indiana University.

The idea of WikiScanner is to list edits done by organizations on Wikipedia based on their IP range. For instance, you can see how many edits within Wal-Mart's IP range were meant to make the company look nicer on Wikipedia. Wal-Mart, I have only one word for you: Busted!

Now, funny thing, when Virgil was asked why he created such a tool, his answers were:

To improve virgil.gr 's Google pagerank for the query 'virgil'
To create a cornucopia of minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike.
To see what "interesting organizations" (which I am neutral toward), are up to.
Every time I hear about a new security vulnerability, I look to see if it can be done on a massive scale and indexed.

Why Blogger?

2007-08-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

Why did I choose Blogger for this blog? First, you may want to read some comparisons done across the web. Just Google for it but I liked this, this, and this reviews (in chronological order).

I mainly compared Blogger to the Wordpress hosting service at wordpress.com because I'm already familiar with those. So below are my reasons for choosing Blogger. I of course took into account the fact that I'm already hosting a WordPress blog in portuguese.

Reason 1 - WordPress can be too complex
Although the WordPress software (note the distinction between WordPress software and the hosting service) I'm using is great in many aspects, I didn't want to go through all the setup involved to put online a new WordPress blog. Especially because my actual domain name doesn't make sense in English.

Besides, although there is a great plugin called Gengo for administering multi-lingual blogs, I didn't want my English blog to have the same content and translations of the portuguese one. It is true that I might do that one day but it is not what I had in mind for now.

With WordPress software out of the way, I had to choose between online tools. Since TypePad was excluded without a thought because it's not a free service and I didn't know it, I ended up with two options - Blogger or WordPress Hosting Service.

Reason 2 - With Blogger I can host my files on my own server
Another important reason for choosing Blogger is that it allows me to host my files and content wherever I want to. Since I have enough space on where my other blog is located, this sounded like opera to me! I simply hate to leave my content in places where I can't access the source and that, for me, was a big flaw of WordPress hosting service.

Reason 3 - Blogger allows templates customization
WordPress hosting service doesn't. Customization is a big deal for me and WP had its limitations: I can't change templates and I can't add plugins. I know Blogger doesn't have plugins and, even worse, categories but at least that are some hacks that can be done.

Reason 4 - Blogger seems cleaner and faster
I read in one of the reviews above that Blogger has issues with FTP connections when your blog gets too big. Right now, though, it is working flawlessly; it's fast and clean, just as needed for Small Bits of thought.

Conclusion
The conclusion I make is that if you want power in your hands, go for your own server and setup WordPress software in it. If you are like me, looking for simplicity with a little power in your hands, and you don't mind doing some hacks to have a category system, than go for Blogger. Right now I'm happy with it.

Hello World

2007-08-20T02:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this an start... I always wanted to have a blog in English but didn't know what to write. It turns out that I think the best option is to write small bits of text, fractions of the everyday life of this Brazilian living in Bangalore, India.

Let's see how it goes...