Karthik Ramachandran

2011-11-20T03:48:00.000-08:00

TRIP TO LIVERMORE

On a sunny afternoon a few weeks back, I decided to take a friend of mine for a joy plane ride around 2 pm. We were initially planning on a standard bay tour, taking off from Palo Alto and flying over the Colosseum and Bay Bridge over to the Golden Gate, and returning via Half Moon Bay. Unfortunately, there was a TFR over the SF bay and so we decided to fly in and around the South Bay area. We took off with a customary left dumbarton departure with the hope of getting to half moon bay and back before the late afternoon clouds cover the coast. As we neared the crystal springs lake, I began to realize that flying into Half Moon Bay might be a risky option, given the rate at which the clouds were closing in. So yet again, we had to change plans and this time I decided to transition over to Livermore after hovering a couple of minutes over Stanford. Catching a glimpse of the Cardinals and Buffaloes game in the Stanford Stadium (there was a TFR for a 3 mile radius around the Stanford Stadium as well), we headed over towards the Dumbarton auto bridge for the transition towards Livermore.

Once we approached Livermore, I called in to the Livermore tower and was cleared for landing on 25L and requested for a full stop. Though I have flown to Livermore a few times and have done a lot of traffic pattern work there, I never actually went on to park the plane before. As a result, when the tower asked me if I would like to park in the North parking or South, I started pondering what I should answer. As our main goal was to find a place where that we could hang out for a cup of coffee, since I vaguely remembered that the north portion of the airport seemed to have more activity, I asked for the North Parking. Once I landed, I made the silly mistake of taking the Romeo exit towards the left instead of taking alpha to the right. So the ground asked me to circle back to 25L and I crossed over 25L and 25R to take the alpha taxi way and Delta exit onto Juliet and the Guest parking. Once we parked the plane, we headed out to the terminal where we were told that there was a nice Bar and Grill restaurant named Beeb's, about 10 minutes from the airport towards the west. It indeed turned out to be a pretty good restaurant right across from the Los Positas Golf Course. They had some good options for vegetarians. Especially their veggie sandwich (which I ended up ordering) was pretty good and still is one of the best I have eaten.

After spending an hour or so there, we headed back to the airport and the return flight was pretty uneventful with the standard left traffic for 31 at palo alto and a pretty smooth landing.

2011-08-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

GRIPES WITH GOOGLE READER

I have been a loyal Google Reader user for quite sometime but there have been some nagging usability issues that either I have been unable to work around or are simply not addressed by the reader.

One of the issues is to do with a count for the starred items. I know that I can get this information from the trends tab but would be nice to be able to see it right beside the items (as is the case for other news items and subscriptions). Also, some more freedom in terms of different ways the items can be viewed would really help. For example, I generally follow the pattern of briefly glancing through news items in the day (or week for that matter) and read them in the night (or weekends). For this, I really need to be able to sort the starred items in the reverse chronological order, else it almost seems like I am watching a news version of the movie Memento with all the events happening in reverse. I know that I could just browse all the way to the bottom and start reading in the reverse order but, am sure, any normal blog reader would agree with me that it is painful to have to do that. Especially given the fact that the items are fetched as you drag the scroll bar, it takes a while to get to the last item in the page.

Again, I am not even sure if this is a genuine usability issue or if it is a simple trick that I am missing. Either way, I guess I'll have to live with it for now (atleast until I actually push myself to file a request in the reader bugtracker or write some browser plugin to achieve this)

2011-08-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

MY EXPERIMENTS WITH THE PALM PIXI PLUS

Just finished setting up my new palm pixi plus and it works like a charm. I did have some trouble getting it to work with an ATT prepaid sim initially. For some reason it was failing at the profile creation stage. I was all set to tread on the tried and tested path of installing the WebOS sdk and using devicetools.jar to bypass activation as suggested by many helpful souls, but out of some whim, I just tried using the profile credentials I had created while buying a different HP product a while back, and it just started working! I was then able to set it up for working on the wifi only mode without the cellular data plan (which was the whole point anyway
). Also tried removing the sim to see if the wifi works and it does.

Being one of the smallest smart phones in the market, the pixie guys have really made a phone that fits in the palm of your hands (not including the fingers!). At first it took me sometime to get familiarized with WebOS, especially the notion of 'gestures' and some basic functionality like closing an app (just a swipe over the app to push it out) etc, but the more time I spend with it, the more I am convinced that, the folks at HP have really goofed it up in terms of bringing down the curtains on this amazing piece of software.

2011-08-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

CHOOSE TO PREPARE OR PREPARE TO LOSE

Looking at the tame Indian submission in the third test and the fact that a single English batsman was able to pile up more runs than what the entire Indian team could manage, it really makes you wonder as to what exactly constitutes the Indian team's notion of preparing for a high profile series like this one.

It was more than obvious that most of the Indian top order looked like bunnies in terms of their ability to play deliveries pitching on or around the off stump and moving away towards the slips. The simplest and most effective approach towards fortifying India's batting on seaming tracks would have been, to make the Indian top order have a long date with a modern bowling machine. I would imagine, with the kind of technology the current bowling machines pack, it shouldn't be difficult to simulate what Broad, Anderson and co. have been bowling at the Indians. Not only would that have helped the Indians prepare better for what they would be facing from the English bowlers, but, it would have also provided an objective assessment of where each Indian batsman stands in terms of being able to face a seaming attack. While a bowling machine might not have the intellectual tactfulness of a Broad or a Bresnan in terms of conceiving an adaptive strategy to get the batsman out, faring well against the machine would have definitely given the team some self assurance as far as possessing the technique to flourish in such seamer friendly conditions is concerned.

All in all, while injury did play some part in India's school boyish performance, the lack of preparation would definitely have to be the main cause for the whipping India have received from the English seamers.

2010-12-13T01:15:00.001-08:00

MY CHECK RIDE

        Finally the day came for me to put to test the skills I had acquired for the past 5 months to an FAA examiner in order to obtain the much desired private pilot license. It was the Friday of the Thanksgiving weekend and I had taken the day off from work (ya sadly, we had a working day that Friday) and decided to go for it.
       The day started around 930 am when I met my instructor at my club to go over my cross country planning, enroute weather for the same and, the weight and balance for the aircraft. Since the check ride was scheduled for 1 pm, and the examiner was based out of Santa Rosa, our plan was to finish up everything in an hour or so and leave for Santa Rosa around 1030. By the time we finished the weight and balance and planning the cross country, the clock was ticking 11. We left for Santa Rosa in a Cessna 152 (the one I had been training in for the past few months), and planned to practise all the maneuvers enroute. Once we crossed the bay with breathtaking views of the Golden Gate bridge to the west and Bay bridge to the east, I started practising some of the customary maneuvers: slow flight, steep turns and stalls - essential skills a pilot learns for his private license.
        We reached Sonoma County airport around 1145 with 15 minutes left for me to go over the coded weather information for my cross country, which, I have some times found difficult to decipher, especially codes that are so difficult to associate with their meanings. I could never figure out why mist would be coded as BR and not MI or MS until google told me that BR actually referred to 'Brume' which is a poetic reference to heavy mist or fog. Once we reached Santa Rosa, my instructor introduced me to the examiner who seemed like a really nice guy. The three of us went to his office and after reviewing the initial paper work for the airworthiness of the plane and my legality for appearing for the check ride, my instructor left me with the examiner for the oral part of the check ride. The oral went really well, partly I guess, because of the great score I obtained on my written. The examiner then asked me to meet him near the plane for the practical part of the exam. I did the standard preflight and got into the plane with the examiner and left for the cross country. One thing I missed (and I still don't know how) was to note down the altimeter setting as part of the ATIS. Guess I subconsciously assumed it would be the same as what it was when we landed. Once I reached the runup area, my examiner reminded me of it and told me that he had noted it down for me. We then took off along the planned cross country (towards St Marines) and after a brief flight along that course, the examiner asked me to divert towards Healdsberg airport. Along the way we went through some of the maneuvers and some flying under the hood and as I approached the airport, he asked me to do a series of landings in a given order. Luckily I was at close to my best as far as landings were concerned and all of them were pretty smooth. The examiner then asked me to navigate back to Santa Rosa and once we landed and taxied back, he got out of the plane and I heard the golden words 'Congratulations ! You are a private pilot'.

2010-09-04T04:58:00.000-07:00

A TRIP TO TWO CONTRASTING TEMPLES

Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the city of Hyderabad, has heard about the famous Birla Mandir, an iconic marble temple, and, the Birla Planetarium, both built by the Birla foundation in the mid 70s. In an attempt to enjoy what seemed atleast initially, a pleasant evening to be outdoors, yesterday, we (my parents and I) decided to visit Naubhat Pahad, the hill that houses the two structures . Once we reached the base of the temple, after the customary rituals of surrendering footwear and cell phones in return for a gold-ish token, and being subject to a clothed physical examination by a security guard, we headed towards the flight of stairs that lead to the temple. Once atop the stairs, the path to the main sanctorium is a rectangular loop, ambling along which gives a beautiful view of the twin cities in all directions. Towards the north-east, there was the bustling evening traffic along the tankbund and queens necklace areas, on either sides of the Hussain Sagar lake. Not far away, on the east, was the green campus of the Osmania University, a relic from the Nizam times, that has stood the test of time, and is today, one of the oldest universities in India. Looking down south, one could not go beyond the mammoth floodlights of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium rising tall above the local skyline, which reminded me of the India Newzealand match I had witnessed there a few years back, where India trounced their opponents by posing an imposing 376 with Tendulkar scoring a sublime 186. Far along the horizon towards the South-West, we could see the silhoutte of the Shepherd's Hill (Golla Konda) in the sunset, and the majestic Golconda fort, once the capital of the Kingdom of Golconda juxtaposed on the hill. Inching along the corridor, identifying and locating a few other landmarks along our way, we finally entered the sanctorium, for a tryst with the Lord himself. Though I would hardly describe myself as the religious type, leave alone the pious, devout theistic variety, be it the inviting fragrance of incense, or the mysticism in the chants of the holy mantras, I have always sensed a divine serenity encompassing the sanctorium, one that can only be felt inside it. The 'darshan' with the Lord lasted a few seconds, after which, we walked towards the open marble patios in the temple, where people make it a point to spend atleast a few seconds, as is customary while visiting most Hindu temples. After spending a few minutes in the temple, we decided to head back to the base of the temple and amidst a slight drizzle, we headed towards the planetarium .

As we were walking, I tried to recollect my last visit to the place. Though I wasn't able to fixate on the exact memories of my previous visit, I was able to remember bits and pieces from the past. A time that was so different from today. A time, when, the term 'cell' referred primarily to an invisible microscopic entity, that is the epitome of all biological life, rather than, a lifeless, inanimate object, that you could fit in the palm of your hands, but had the power to carry your views, thoughts and ideas thousands of miles across the planet. Those were times, when, a trip to the planetarium was something that was planned days in advance, and something that brought a rush of excitement in every teenager's mind. After a short walk, there we were: at the gates of the famous Birla Science Museum and Planetarium which was once, a dwelling place for the Sceince affcionados of the city. Twenty years on, it looked somewhat jaded and rusty and apart from the odd vendor, and a few employees who were obliged to be present, there was hardly anyone around, indeed, a sad sight to witness. Nevertheless, we booked our tickets for the next show, which was about Chandrayaan-1, the latest feather in ISRO's cap. Inside the planetarium, apart from us, there was this one other family of five with a hearing-impaired couple, whose presence, ensured that the show was not a private family (ours ofcourse) affair, but, an event open for the public. While waiting for the previous show to finish before we could be ushered in, I saw something that really assuaged my concerns about the meagre attendance in the planetarium. There were these exhibits and displays on stars and constellations, that graced the walls of the planetarium. As I was ambling along, glancing through the displays, I noticed the hearing-impaired couple walking from exhibit to exhibit, spending atleast a minute or two at each one of them, communicating with each other through sign language and exchanging ideas and thoughts on what they saw. One of the exhibits was that of the Bhaskara satellite and I could vaguely make out the husband explaining to his wife, how satellites are launched and how they circled the earth providing information on weather. The idea that there are still people in this world who have the inclination and curiosity, to come and spend time in a science museum and make an attempt to understand the world around them against all odds, really made my day. Really happy with what I had witnessed, I went into the planetarium and relaxed and watched the show (which had a narration in telugu, in a very sweet female voice). Though I felt the content of the show could have been a bit more detailed, I thoroughly enjoyed the show and came out very satisfied with what I saw. Space is the final frontier for mankind, and any time and energy spent gaining insight into human endeavours to explore it, can be considered spent wisely.

All in all, a very nice trip that started off with an enigmatic experience, interacting with elements from the creationist spectrum of the "Science vs God" debate, and culminated with some extremely pleasant moments from the scientific spectrum of the very same debate, under an artificial blanket of stars and constellations, brought to life by the accompanied narration, covering details of their creation, existence and destruction, a true testimony to man's thirst for understanding his own origins. A few hours very well spent, I must say !

2009-09-11T02:29:00.000-07:00

A SMALL STATUETTE FOR RAHMAN, A COLOSSAL RECOGNITION FOR INDIAN MUSIC

Not long ago, in one of my previous posts, I had envisioned the scene of an Indian, occupying center stage at the Kodak Theater, holding an Oscar statuette in his hand. Finally that has become a reality, with Rahman winning not one but two oscars for the music he composed in slumdog millionaire. For many young Indians who have turned towards Rahman's unconventional scores to quench their thirst for quality and original (to the best extent possible) music, it is tough not to give a thought or two about what could have happened, if this south indian prodigy had encountered an earlier opportunity to showcase his captivating music on a much larger international platform. Could he have runaway with oscars every year with the same certainty that he does with the Indian Filmfare awards? Among all the MJs, Madonnas and myriad stalwarts that enchant us through their eternal music beamed on a plethora of FM stations throughout the world, would we suddenly be listening to a Rahman score? Well, Rahman still has age on his side and the only challenge he seems to be facing at this point, is, to keep up with his innate urge to continuously innovate and to ensure that no form of redundancy ever creeps into his music. But only time will tell if Rahman would be remembered as this extremely talented Indian musician who managed to create minor ripples in the western music scene every now and then, or, if he would go on to cast his name in gold, in the who's who of World Music and be remembered as the Indian genius who, in addition to championing for the already well known classical genre of Indian music, expanded its horizons to encompass the interests of a much broader World Audience !

2007-09-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

INDIA PEAKING AT THE RIGHT TIME

In more respects than one, India's progress through the 20-20 world cup has been very similar to the fairy tale saga it went through in the 2003 worldcup. Starting off as outsiders and coming up with back to back dynamite performances and to reach the final. The one thing in India's favor in this world cup though, is meeting the Pakis in the finals rather than the Aussies. This coupled with the fact that, the performance of the Pakis has been quite scratchy to say the least, could favour India. Hopefully, the final of this world cup would be drastically different from the torment India went through in 2003.

2007-07-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

A SPIRITUALIST AND A RATIOCINATOR - A CONVERSATION ON LIFE AND GOD

The Spiritualist : Do you not have faith in God?
The Ratiocinator : I have a lot of faith in an almighty but I don't necessarily believe, in it being aware of everything that is happening. The COSMOS could be seen as the almighty. According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, everything in this world happens only with a certain probability.

The Spiritualist : Then what does it mean by almighty , if it is only physical? And I do believe, God might have had a big hand in fixing those probabilities. But even he cannot predict the outcome with certainty, since, it is only a probability. Once you say it is a probability , then nobody has any say on it, am I correct?
The Ratiocinator : Nobody has any say on the outcome. But as you get wiser and wiser, you start getting a hang of the exact probabilities. Thats why even great sages talk in abstract terms. They never ascertain any of their views/sayings.

The Spiritualist : Everything in life does not happen logically.
The Ratiocinator : I would say things in this world happen with a reason. Just that, some of the reasoning is beyond our understanding.

The Spiritualist : If you can't find the reason then you have to agree that it is an event without any reasoning.
The Ratiocinator : The problem with accepting something as ' without any logical reasoning ' is that you stop trying to understand it in a rational way. The moment you accede to the fact that some things in this world dont have logic,you are doomed to apply this philosophy to everything that doesnt go your way.

The Spiritualist : Atleast u should accept you can't find out the logic ( may be beyond your reach) in few of the cases in life.
The Ratiocinator : Why should you accept until you are alive. If Einstein had accepted that he can't understand how the cosmos works, we wouldn't have had theory of relativity. He worked on it for 10 yrs before he could understand it completely.

The Spiritualist : Leave science, what about spritual things.
The Ratiocinator : I don't believe that spiritual things are any different. Anything that we cannot explain through science, we call it spiritual. But that doesnt mean it doesnt have an explanation. It is just that we haven't understood it yet. But once you brand it as spiritual, you imply that you can never understand it and that bothers me.

The Spiritualist : Are we capable of finding out the reason for each and everything happening in life?
The Ratiocinator : Yes we are capable. Given sufficient time and resources.

The Spiritualist : Don't you feel we will be wasting our time in finding out the logic for everything in life?
The Ratiocinator : That is a different issue. I don't say we should spend our time understanding everything. All I say is, our approach towards life should be one of logic and reasoning. It should not be one of superstition.

The Spiritualist : Then atleast should we accept things as it is where , the logic is not candid?
The Ratiocinator : That could be a solution for simpler issues in life. But if it is critical, you must make every attempt to undertsand it. The Universe is like a huge nuclear reaction where a few initial atomic particles start off a chain reaction. The chain reactions are events in ones life. The initial parameters for the reaction, are the initial probabilities that God sets. Once the parameters are fixed, the reaction begins and takes different courses along its path. The events in our life are the different chain reactions. Just as how you cannot predict exactly what would happen in a nuclear reaction, you cannot predict with certainty as to what events would happen in this world. God is as important to this world, as a nuclear physicist is, in starting off a nuclear reaction. The only way to learn is to analyze things logically and adjust your future responses based on past experiences. If you start going down the road of "things happen because they are destined to happen" or " I did this based on gut feeling" etc, you don't learn anything.

The Spiritualist : Were you successful so far using this approach in your carreer , life etc.
The Ratiocinator : Not sure. Lets see. But I think you should practise this philosohy beyond success in life. The ultimate goal for a human, should be, to die as knowledgable as possible. That should be everybody's ambition.

The Spiritualist : If it does not help you to understand better, then what is the use? Is it giving you happiness in life or are you just becoming a philosopher.
The Ratiocinator : The happiness that you get by gaining knowledge is something beyond anything else.

The Spiritualist : Knowledge comes to a person, who has peace of mind in life.
The Ratiocinator : I don't completely agree. Even some of the villagers in remote villages have a lot of peace of mind. But they dont have that much knowledge. All I am saying is, peace of mind is important. But we need to aim for something much beyond that.

The Spiritualist : They have peace of mind because they dont break their head with logic for everything happening in their life.
The Ratiocinator : Exactly. And so they never experience the bliss of understanding how things around them work. They dont understand that, the one thing that has brought our race so far from bacteria to mammals to apes to humans is "Our curiosity to understand things around us".

The Spiritualist : That I agree. But you can't have logic for everything happening overnight.
The Ratiocinator : At different points in evolution, man made the right decision of actually giving up superstition and trying to understand the nature around him and that is what has brought us to where we are today. That is true. We cannot explain everything overnight but we must never abandon the basic necessity of mankind which is "To understand and to be understood".

The Spiritualist : Our life span is so short, we should have a blend of logic and reality in life.
The Ratiocinator : True but nothing can be more real than logic itself. Trying to understand and improve as many things in you short life span should be the ultimate goal of every Homo Sapien. Think about it this way. Any ambition should fulfill two goals: incremental achivement which means you should be able to move closer to your ambition incrementally, so that, you dont get frustrated, and infinite scope which means that you should never be able to achive your ambition completely, or else, you will become satisfied and not have a reason to live. The quest for knowledge satisfies these two criteria beautifully. Theres a beautiful saying : "The more you know, the more you realize how less you know".

2007-03-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

THATS THE WAY THE INDIAN COOKIE CRUMBLES !

For all those billion Indians who hoped, wished and prayed that the Indian team pull out a sterling performance against the Lankans, it is indeed a time of disappointment, frustration and despondency. A cloud of gloom has descended over the otherwise cheerful Indian supporters who have stood behind the men in blue at all times. For a team that boasts of three batsmen in the 9000+ league, to falter so dismally when it matters most, is miserable to say the least. The days to come will be hard. Questions will be raised, answers will be sought, heads will roll and every member of the Indian squad would be put through a scrutiny, not very different in intensity from what the NASA folks underwent after the Challenger and Columbia debacles. But in the midst of all this tumult and hodgepodge, at some level, should we Indian fans not hold ourselves responsible (though in a microscopic way) for India prematurely bowing out of the world cup? Considering the kind of encumbrance each member of the Indian team bears on his shoulder before stepping onto the field, the pressure of expectations weighs so heavily on him, that his strength to perform and eagerness to succeed is mitigated by his fear of failure, even before the first ball is bowled. It is indeed well known, that the Indian team chokes under pressure, but under what kind of pressure? Is it really the pressure caused by the situation in hand? Or is it the pressure of having to perform day in and day out knowing that, for the millions of Indians glued to their television sets, failure is simply not an option. More often than not, it is this huge pressure of expectations, that causes any realistic chances of success to go kaput, and then, the familiar sight of the Indian cookie crumbling is witnessed all over again!

2007-02-25T22:02:00.001-08:00

INDIAN MOVIES ... NOT QUITE THERE YET

Yet another Indian movie bites the dust at the Oscars. Purists might argue that Water went in as a Canadian movie, but considering the fact that the director is Indian and the star cast is mostly Indian, it might as well have gone in as an Indian nomination. Not that many people were expecting it to win. But the very thought that the Indian film industry has been churning out close to 800 movies a year for the past 50 years and yet no Indian movie has ever won an oscar, is a bit scary. But going by the number of Inidan movies nominated for the Best Foreign Film category in the past, we definitely are making progress. While in the past half a century, only four Indian movies have been nominated for the Oscars, two of them have been in the last decade (again assuming that Water is more or less an Indian nomination). It might not be completely hallucinatory to envision an Indian standing on the stage at Kodak Theatre accepting the Oscar statuette in the near future.

2007-02-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

UNINTUITIVE C++

For the past few weeks, I have been pouring over a lot of C++ material trying to create a set of basic concepts that I could use to derive and reason out the others. But with C++, it just seems so tough. There are so many exceptions to expected behavior that it is really difficult to summarize the language. I was reading Scott Myers' Effective C++ book where he mentions that the book was actually a downgraded version of his idea of a tool that could enforce some guidelines and C++ principles so as to avoid basic pitfalls. I guess the non intuitive nature of C++ might have been one of the reasons why he gave up the tool idea. But I guess that is one of the charms of this great language.

2006-03-12T17:43:00.000-08:00

Welcome !

Hi and welcome to my corner of the vast cosmos. As most of you might have rightly guessed from the name of this blog, this is a place for the logical, the sane and the rationalists, who believe in scientism and the ability to explain things through the incremental but extremely powerful methodology of reasoning. As Edwin Hubble once said,

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science"

So welcome to this world of logical reasoning and critical thinking.

2006-01-01T08:28:00.000-08:00

QUOTES

"The more you know, the more you realize, how less you know." - Socrates
"Nothing in this world defies logic. Just that some of the logic defies you." - yours truly
"It is more important to make history than to record it." - unknown
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
"A single machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men, but no machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." - Elbert Hubbard
"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Albert Einstein