lucis

Interesting word. Came across this word while reading about popular halftoning algorithms. Here is what it means:

boustrophedon - An ancient method of writing in which the lines are inscribed alternately from right to left and from left to right.

Apparently halftoning algorithms improve greatly if images are processed in a boustrophedonic pattern instead of simple scanlines…

I knew that I just had to watch The Passion of Christ the moment I learnt that it was in Latin. In fact, Mel Gibsion had initially wanted to release it without any english subtitles! I find non-english movies made for an english speaking audience really appealing. The very fact that they are not in the native language of the viewer makes them non-mainstream, thus better (imo).

The movie is about the last 12 hours of Christ’s life. It shows Christ being captured, tried, convicted, tortured, tortured and tortured a lot more before he is finally crucified. It is one of the grimmest and most horrifying movies I’ve ever seen. It is hard to imagine such a thing ever really happened.

Think about the war scenes in “Saving Private Ryan” and imagine all that and much worse happening to a single person. And the movie shows it all in great detail. There are times when I had to close my eyes and remind myself that it was just a movie. I think this is one of the best compliments a movie can get. You could literally hear a pin drop as the movie ended and the credits rolled on the screen!

What I did not like was the lack of character development. Very little is shown about the other characters in the movie. I’m not Catholic, and have never read the Bible. This made understanding some parts even harder. But then that is partly my mistake.

One thing to remember while watching this is this is only one interpretation of all the evidence available of the crucifixion. The movie shows the Sanhedrin, a governing senate composed of the leading Jewish priests and Pharisees, to be the real conspirators of his death. Personally I find it hard to believe that the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate was as innocent as he is shown. And this is what the controversy is all about.

Definitely a must watch. Be it for religious reasons, or just watching a great movie.

I recently came across Head Fi. This site has a bunch of discussion forums for talking about all music related hardware. This includes headphones, amplifiers, cables, portable players, etc. The people at this place are crazy! A $100 pair of headphones is considered cheap and pretty useless. Listening to music without a portable headphone amplifier is a strict no-no. $1500 is considered a tight budget for a decent sound system. CDs are considered evil, and real quality lies in vinyl (forget about the oh so lossy MP3s). This is the world of the hard-core audiophiles.

Based on recommendations here, I decided to get a pair for the “ultra cheap” Koss KSC-35. These are widely regarded as the best pair of headphones under $100, and they cost only $30. After using these for about a month, I am really impressed. At first I was concerned by the seemingly soft bass, but after the burn-in period, I think it is far better than what I had expected. The music is sounds more alive. They seem to be better than my older Sennheiser HD-497, and are far more portable.

For some wierd reason Koss decided to discontinue this model though. It was replaced by worse sounding and ugly looking KSC-50. This is still available on the Koss website until they sell out. I’ve heard of people buying them by the truckload so that they can continue using them forever!

It is hard to imagine how the sound quality can improve further. But then thats what I always thought when I was using my crappy Sony headphones. Up next for me is a little DIY project to build a CMoy headphone amplifier, followed by a PIMETA, or a MINT. And then the Sennheiser HD 600. I can dream, cant I?

A famous philosophical question goes: If you can go back in time to a point where intelligent life was just starting on earth, what single piece of information would you like to leave back to help in faster and/or better development?

Some of the standard answers have been, information about God, the concept of atoms making up everything, and even Hari Seldon’s encyclopedia of complete human knowledge.

Here is my humble take on the question. I would like to leave back nothing. I feel that it would be better to let a civilization learn from its own mistakes. There are always multiple ways of doing anything, and it would be better to start with a clean slate rather than having a biased view to begin with. Maybe if we start again from scratch, we might come up with a better explaination of how matter is formed, and even of God!

The same is probably also true with any kind of Research. When starting off with a new problem, it is always better to do some thinking and try to come up with your own solution instead of reading about related previous work (even if you end up duplicating effort). Of course, at some stage a literature survey would be necessary, but it is a very bad thing to start off with.

I guess my previous post calls for some explaination. So instead of adding a comment, here is another post…

What I posted in the previous post is probably the best way I could describe it from the limited knowledge I have about the stock exchange.

I guess the main problem I have with stock exchanges and shares is that I dont quite understand what sets the price of a share. Again, from what I have seen, the stock price has absolutely nothing to do with how well/poorly a company is doing. Sometimes the potential that the company has is a contributing factor, but this is rather rare. What really baffles me is how even the most intelligent and knowledgeable person (even those who work high up in the company) can not predict with any degree of certainty how the share would perform in the coming weeks.

The best way I have come to understand this is (like a friend once put it), collective foolishness. If the price is going up, the stock must be good. Who cares what the company does!

Then there is that even more fundamental problem of why trade stocks in the first place. Why would anyone want to pay several hundred times the cover price of a share? The only rationale I understand is the hope that the “price” would increase in the future. Its not like the person would be getting huge dividends on the share she owns. The person simply depends on the collective foolishness of the population and his gut feeling when she decides to purchase any shares.

What value does a stock exchange add to the society? No wealth is generated. Wealth only exchanges hands. Why have a stock exchange at all?

The only semi-plausible explaination I have is that the stock exchange is an incentive for the public to invest in a company. This makes some sense. If there is no real incentive to invest, why would someone want to invest in a company! Thanks to the stock exchange, and the collective foolishness, there is a possibility that the price of the stock would increase in the future, and someone who invested wisely stands to gain a lot. But again, the collective foolishness is a primary requirement for it to work right.

One thing I should mention is that I have nothing against stocks/shares as such. Having shares and going public to raise money is great. This is what helps companies to grow. What I dont understand is the Stock Exchange.

Also, I must say that I am not at all qualified to talk about stocks, finance, and other such stuff. I barely manage to get my IT returns filed on time! I am quite sure that I am making a fundamental mistake somewhere. I would love to be proven wrong.

One last thing. An interesting movie about predicting the stock exchange behavior is Pi by one of my favourite directors. (you knew a movie reference was coming!)

The collective foolishness popularly known as a Stock Exchange is flawed by definition. Any better and it would be called a Grocerry Store.

It takes a genius to crack into it and exploit its imperfections.

Got to watch a couple of hindi movies after a long time recently. One was Munna Bhai MBBS - it was a torture to watch this one. I wonder why so many people recommended this trash to me! Horrible, horrible acting. Stupid, inconsequential and unoriginal story. Awful music. Nothing original. Perfect example of how to get everything wrong in a movie! What is surprising is that so many people liked it so much! Well, it was better than most hindi movies, I guess; but nowhere close to being enjoyable.

The other was Ek Hasina Thi. I kind of liked this movie. The end was disappointing, but the movie was great overall. The story was again not original, but was rather well presented. Nice music too! Also, I thought the acting was above par (yea, Saif Ali Khan can do some good stuff!). Definitely good for a hindi movie.

And best of all, a major part of the movie was shot in New Delhi. Got to see a glimpse of delhi after a long time! And the icing on the cake were shots totalling about 5 minutes around PVR Anupam (a movie theater) in Saket [see picture above]. I lived about two blocks away from Anupam for more than 10 years, and used to hang out there qutie often! I have also used one of the ATMs shown in the movie a few times! Delhi is not shown in movies that often, and this was just great!