Perpetually Perplexed

A simple and interesting math game

2018-01-02T06:38:00.000+05:30

Many changes have happened in the the past few days. So I am almost unable to access to net on my laptop. But anyways.

So I was thinking, what is the reason my "Hundred" app is not getting popularity it deserves (ha ha). Is it because of lack of publicity? Or quality? Or UI?

So let us revise the app all over again. Here is the link to its webpage
https://hegdeapps.wordpress.com/shataka/

Hundred as the name indicates is a game where you need to place the numbers in a grid so that each horizontal line and each vertical line adds up to 100. It is quite simple but it hones your brain.

Why don't you give it a try?
and download the app?

Solar water still

2017-12-22T10:49:00.002+05:30

Water crisis is approaching all of us very soon. Already some where in Africa people are killing each other for water

So we need to find a way of conserving water. Water still is a machine which converts saline or dirty water into drinking water by distillation. Yes, we in India have large coastlines, and if necessary we can use sea water.

But the costs are very high and are not affordable to rural poor. The people who need it most.

An entrepreneur Garbiele Diamenti has designed a solar still which does not need electricity or any expensive parts.

This still is called EliDomestico. It works like this.

" Pour water into the spout at the top and walk away. Thanks to the circular top, no matter the time of day, it's hit by maximum sunlight. The heat turns the water into steam, which travels down through a nozzle and condenses against the lid of the bowl at the bottom of the still. At the end of the day, the bowl is full of safe, potable water."

The still is made from Terracotta and zinc plated metal sheet. Dimanti wants every household to have this still and he wants this to be made locally. So the design is under creative common license and every one is free to use it.

It is able to produce 5 liters of drinking water per day.

No, I am not writing this as advertisement for this machine. Rather, I hope this inspires other inventors to work in these lines and create something which will reduce the water woes of our country and our world.

Find the article in treehugger

2017-12-12T20:35:00.003+05:30

I thought I will atleast create a poster with some body else's funny quote. Nope.

I will take them from google

A nayi soch

2017-12-10T20:18:00.001+05:30

I have been watching some TED talks for the last few years. No, that has not made me a great scientist or an artist. But as long as I am watching them, I feel pure happiness - happiness which is not encumbered by greed, desire, guilt. It is a happiness of hope - for the humankind.

So today when Ted talks India is being telecast in Star Network, I watched it. And I am happy, I watched the program. The speakers were, Shubhendu Sharma who creates forest within cities, in your backyard, and a scientist from California who has made microscopes from papers, another engineer who is creating ink from pollution among others.

So the idea is that the world is not filled with all bad people. There are good, intelligent people who strive to make our country and our world a better place. And TED honors these people and gives them a platform to share their ideas.

So do not miss the show - Ted talk India - a nayi soch.

I remember I had blogged about Satyameva Jayate too.

Anyway we watch the same old shows again and again and again. Let us instead watch a program which makes us optimistic and inspires us to be better versions of ourselves.

Grand unified boot loader

2017-12-10T07:51:00.001+05:30

As is my habit, I was tweaking my ubuntu laptop and I deleted one unused partition. Then I continued working on the system.

After I while I turned off laptop and went to TV. Coming back, I realized my system won't boot. Leave along booting, it was not even showing boot menu - the grub menu. Instead it was going to some grub rescue.

Grub is a program which shows the OS options when you switch on the system. Yes, it is called grand unified boot loader. But currently it was not able to find the partition.

After some googling, I came to know that I should find out the partition in which grub is present using ls command, then insmod something called "normal" and then execute normal command.

And it worked, I did get back my boot loader. And hence could boot the system.

So I keep thinking about this, many people like me may post the question about grub rescue, but who has the time, inclination and dedication to answer these? But there are. There are plenty of good Samaritans who help us out.

Now we need a similar system for school children in rural India. There are smart phones with most of the children. And thanks to work of Jio, many have access to internet. So may be an app is needed to let the kids ask their academic questions - in Indian languages and get answered by volunteers. That will be one tiny step in equalizing of opportunities for these children.

Paripoorna

2017-12-07T19:12:00.002+05:30

I hear this Kannada song in Soundcloud, which has lines

   anu rEnu traNadalli paripUrNanu nInu
   kshaNakshaNake avaguNagaLa kukarmi nAnu

which roughly translates to
   you are perfect in each and every molecule
   but I am full of defects and am a bad person

Some how, the song touches my heart. By the way it is a devotional song and I can not remember how it starts.

So this perfect God has created men and women in his form and he made some of them like light, some of them like dark, some of them speak one language, some speak another language.

May be he gave one religion to some people, another religion to some other people.

So that people can hate each other and in some cases kill each other?

Doesn't sound right!

But this particular grouse of mine is not related to aptrard, siculars or any other adjectives here. I have gone global. I am watching this serial "Shots fired" and being troubled by its storyline.

I went out

2017-12-06T19:12:00.000+05:30

I went out today because I had some work in the bank.

Then? Then nothing. I went and finished my work and came back.

Why am I telling you this? I thought it was important - me going out. Because everyone around me thought so. So I thought that too.

Or may be they are wondering how do I still manage to get outside the house in spite of their slandering and mean intimidating. Is it?

Workshops

2017-12-05T21:03:00.000+05:30

I read a few days ago about a seminar for elderly regarding smart phone usage in Bangalore. A kind of workshop which was conducted on weekends.

It was a good move. A very good move. But I feel these workshops have to be conducted in all towns in the state.

See, our parents are compelled to use smart phones. And many of them struggle. They are afraid what may happen if they press the wrong button. They do not realize that the wifi on the phone should be switched on to receive whatsapp messages.

So may be either the government or some NGOs can take the initiative and start conducting workshops - workshop on smart phones for elderly. In fact the attendees don't even mind to spend some money on these. And it will be an opportunity for them to get together.

When did I become all preachy?

Yesterday.

Three musketters - the movie

2017-12-04T22:24:00.004+05:30

Today is the fourth day of sanyas from coding. Why is it? For how many days? Don't ask such meaningless questions. If you haven't understood so far, then you won't understand.

So things are going good, I can say. Because TV is there. And it is OK for me to watch TV, I think.

So I saw this movie today "Three musketeers".

The story is that of young boys who leaves his small town in search of musketeers and wants to become one. He is bright, courageous and a little bit cocky (- only on Tuesdays, so he says).

In Paris he meets the original three musketeers - Athos, Parthos and Aramis - a bunch of disillusioned warriors who have fallen into drinking and brawling. Because apparently they have not much to do.

D'artgan, I think that is the boy's name - name is quite long and difficult, brings out the soldier in them back. They together fight with Cardinal's men. And are arrested for that.

This Cardinal is de facto ruler because the King is very young and innocent and depends on the Cardinal for everything. And when there is lot of power, the person turns a little bit arrogant and some times becomes greedy and evil.

Cardinal plans to punish the musketeers through the king for their arrogance. But queen convinces the king not to punish them. The king instead arranges new suits for all of them and reprimands them.

But now the a real problem arises. Cardinal wants to over throw the king with the help of a lady. They together plant some love letters by the Duke of Buckingham to the queen and thus making the King suspicious. They also steal queen's diamond necklace and hide it in London.

When king confides about the love letters to the Cardinal, Cardinal suggests the King arrange a ball and request the queen to wear the diamonds - which according to the letters, were given to Duke. So the absence of necklace will prove her guilt.

When queen finds about missing necklace, she realizes the culprit is Cardinal. Queen's help - asks D'artghan to help the queen and now the musketeers go on an adventure from Paris to London.

This was the first time I saw a "flying ship" in a movie. It has a balloon like structure surrounding a ship and sails in the sky like a plane. Interesting!!

Not bad for period film. My rating is 3.5/5

Plan with citizens

2017-12-04T12:40:00.004+05:30

Articles are appearing about master plan for the city of Bangalore.

There is a need for citizen partnership in this huge plan for our city.

As we have seen this year like previous years, city struggles with lack of water and when it rains the streets are flooded.

Few years ago, people would have found the idea of flood in a city with no rivers or seas ridiculous. But not now. Now every city in India shivers when it rains.

Why? Why is the much anticipated rain becomes a curse?

Because of our craze for cement. Every inch of the roads and houses and courtyards are cemented and there is no place for the rain water to percolate. What can water do, except to flood.

There was a talk about rain water harvesting being compulsory few years ago. Is the rules still there? Is it being implemented? Is it being implemented in large corporate buildings? Government buildings?

If all the possible buildings harvest rain water, many of them become self sufficient.

And the pavements. They can use some kind of self locking bricks with a gap of few inches in between for the water to percolate. Is it possible?

And for storm water drains, why can't these drains have a pit with some gravels on top every few hundred meters? So that what ever amount is possible is drained inside the earth.

And the lakes. Bangalore has a large number of ~~filthy~~ lakes. Sorry for being rude. How many of them can be renovated with corporate and citizen partnerships? Will it help in water conservation and flood situation?

What about roads? Just like NICE, the maintenance of roads can be completely handed over to private companies and they can be made liable financially for accidents caused by bad maintenance.

These are few ideas a house wife can come up with. You can image if ideas are crowd sourced by experts and intellectuals, how great it is going to be.

Because we need our city to live for us to live. And we should find ways to do that.

No end?

2017-12-03T12:44:00.001+05:30

Almost convinced that people are accessing my system and trying to find ways to stop them, I spent more time on various linux commands.

And as I should have expected the terminal stopped working. I tried going to dash and again searching for terminal, shell, sh etc. I even went and checked whether I am running some script instead of original bash.

bash, dash, sh no. I can not go to tty1 and run commands and come back to graphical ui every few seconds. I tried, tried and finally gave up and went back to TV.

Luckily for me nothing interesting was running. So I half heartedly googled about no terminal. There it was. I should have looked at nome terminal. Not shell program. So I checked the location of that terminal program. And there was a python script in place of exe program. I corrected it and got back my terminal.

Now I am even more convinced of rogues and rogues accessing my system. Ha ha.

Liars

2017-11-30T16:46:00.000+05:30

Today I was sad. No, this is not going to be another one of my endless stories about my "victimhood".

No, I was sad because "Pretty little liars", the TV serial was over. May be for 100th time. Out of which I may have watched 50 of.

We have shared so many meals together. Me, Aria, Hanna, Emily and Spencer. No, not Alison. I don't like her. She was wicked, once. Correction, I would bring in my meals and sit with Zee cafe.

The story is about 5 childhood friends from a small town who are being harassed (!) by an anonymous 'A'. A would ask them to do bad things failing which their dark secrets would be reveled. They are unable to find out who this A is, and why is she "harassing" them. For over 8 years!!!

Alison, one of the liars goes missing presumed to be dead. But the turn of events convince the girls that "A" is Alison.

After many episodes, Alison reappears, who is also a victim of A. Then there is a blind but vicious girl Jenna. There is a smart but conceited girl Mona. And there are parents, brothers, sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends. The cast list is almost infinite.

And there are murders, kidnaps and betrayals.

On the whole it is a good thriller. More so for us - house wives who have to watch, rewatch, re-re-watch the same serial many times. Because of the complexity of the story, it still remains a mystery. (May be I might have spoiled the mystery this time by reading the story in wikipedia. So, don't do that. Who knows, you may have to watch it many more times).

Laugh it out

2017-11-24T06:33:00.001+05:30

Looting

2017-11-21T23:01:00.001+05:30

She was a little girl and had dengue. When the small clinic she was being treated advised, her parents took her to a very large hospital - part of huge network.

She was kept in ICU for two weeks. Parents unable to understand anything would stand outside ICU praying. Many a times, no doctors were available. But her situations was getting terrible.

When the father saw that her skin was all blue and wrinkled looking, he asked the hospital to discharge her. They did not agree. They wanted to do some "plasma transplantation" which would add another 10 lakhs.

Finally she was discharged but with "against medical advice" tag from hospital. The original clinic tested her now and declared her dead.

And the sad thing is the parents could not save their daughter even after spending 18 lakh rupees.

No, I am not copying from some "crime story". This is the story of little Adya from Guragaon. I saw this in youtube channel akashvani and he was saying TV channels may not get time to air this between all their programs on Congress, BJP, Congress.....

But one channel did. Today in Mirror now, this issue was brought up. And "nation" was informed that how some hospitals loot innocent and helpless citizens.

I have seen Faye D'souza discussing many issues which really matter to the citizens of our "nation". Because she does not go in infinite loop of congress, raga, soldiers, kerala or bjp.

Neenu hodare?

2017-11-21T13:27:00.002+05:30

When I visit my parents, I will have a feast waiting for me. Literally and figuratively.

I get to read various left leaning kannada magazines. So in one of those magazines I read about the famous quote by Kanakadasa "naanu hodare hodenu". I may go?

Well the backstory goes like this. In a meeting of many poets like Purandaradasa, Kanakadasa etc., someone asked a question. "Out of all of us, who may go to heaven (after death)?" And Kanakadasa said "naanu hodare hodenu". How arrogant is he? He thinks he is the only bhakta (devotee, not in its current form).

But he meant that if we leave our pride, self centered behavior, we will go to swarga.

But I think, we don't even need to do that. We just need to stop thinking about others. Feeling jealous about others, anger, hatred, revenge all these feelings are our worst enemy. They not only stop us from reaching heaven (we are not so worried about that). They make our present life hell.

But we say that because we have others in mind. I know some one who is always jealous. I certainly know another person who hates everyone. And so on.

And we are under delusion that we don't do that. We don't hurt others. Physically or emotionally. Not knowingly.

But what about our thoughts? How often we think ill of others? Some of us may express it (I am on the verge of putting some snide addition to that. No!). Some of us may not. That does not deny the thoughts we have.

Life would be so beautiful. World would be so beautiful, if all of us just worried about ourselves, leaving others alone.

ಪರ ಚಿಂತೆ ನನಗೆ ಏಕಯ್ಯ
ಕೂಡಲಸಂಗಮ ಒಲಿವನೋ ಇಲ್ಲವೋ ಎಂಬ ಚಿಂತೆಯೇ ಹಾಸಲುಂಟು ಹೊದೆಯಲುಂಟು

Krishna nee begane baaro

2017-11-19T18:39:00.000+05:30

I have posted about this song earlier. But I do love the song very much. As it is much more relevant in these disturbingly divisive times.

So please watch this video by Colonial cousins

And here is the lyrics of the song.

Some beautiful product ideas

2017-11-18T22:26:00.001+05:30

Before I was obsessed with these motivational or satirical quotes which are some times lame, I was interested in design ideas. No, I was not an entrepreneur then, nor am I now. But still I would look at those pictures and be "awed" by them. Now I don't even remember the site I used to visit.

Today I went back to old hobby. And got some of them in pinterest.

Do you like this mobile and pen stand?

How about this scissors with its holder?

And this cozy looking cave bedroom! Wow, who wouldn't want to sleep here?

Get these colored showers in your home and your children will be too eager to take a bath.

How about these beautiful bowls for chips and dip?

Pool table cum dining table! Red chairs which hide the entire table.

If only we knew carpentry and build at least one of these!

You would certainly want to buy this for your child. Doesn't matter if your child is all grown up and adult now.

Simon game

2017-11-16T12:12:00.000+05:30

Simon was a popular game in USA in 80s and 90s.

The device has four colored buttons, each producing a particular tone when it is pressed or activated by the device.

A round in the game consists of the device lighting up one or more buttons in a random order, after which the player must reproduce that order by pressing the buttons. As the game progresses, the number of buttons to be pressed increases.

There are some apps in google play which try to replicate the game. So does my my app - memorypro. As this is also memory colorful and melodious (almost) memory.

Here is me playing simon game in my memory pro - not so well.

Well, I personally like playing Simon game as it appeals to one more sense, that of auditory.

You can see and decide by downloading the app from google play

Thoughts

2017-11-13T16:16:00.001+05:30

Thoughts From A Secular Humanist

April 20, 2012

by Anita Jose

I have no invisible authority

I am not mentally enslaved,
I am not an unworthy sinner
Who is waiting to be saved.
My actions are my own
Responsibility for which I will take,
Credit for the good and penalty for the bad
The payment for my deeds only I can make.

I’m not the innocent, confused child;
‘Humble’ messengers try to find,
I’m a skeptic with adult reasoning
Who has left Faith behind.
The answers gifted by logic and reason
Are far more appealing to me,
I keep searching for the still unknown
Not fitting baseless assumptions dishonestly.

Morality for me is not derived from an ancient book
With tiring tales of brutality and occasional verses of love,
To be good and to care for my fellow beings
I don’t need promises of gifts from above.
The knowledge and wisdom accumulated by science
Sincere and provable, without disguise,
Is what I find more comforting and reality revealing
Than ones given by power-hungry cults fighting over lies.

I’m not someone who thinks women
Compared to their men, are any less,
When her right to say ‘No’ is violated
I don’t blame it on her dress.
Her body is her own, her character not just her face
Rather than a world of fear and suppression,
They deserve a better place.

Things that others do without harming anyone or you
Are reason enough to make some disgusted or depressed
But when I come to know he loves another ‘he’,
I find myself hardly distressed.
It is better to judge people based on their actions
Not for ‘what’ they are,
Whether your genes played well or decided to change the rules
All of us are equal humans, who’ve managed to come this far.

I don’t believe that the Universe was ‘designed’
With a specific purpose, keeping any of us in mind,
A creator-free Universe is not uninteresting or colourless
But a lot more spectacular with added wonders to find.
Meaning is what we derive from the things that we strive
To achieve during our brief stay on this dot,
Knowing that none is bestowed with any special privileges
How many less battles would have been fought.

My love for this world and concern for its inhabitants
Is not restricted by any boundary line,
Whether you’re from the West and I’m from the East
We’re still on the same beautiful planet
So ought we not to get along fine?

I respect your right to believe what you want
I respect your right to choose,
But at times when what you believe and choose has a bearing on me
Don’t expect me to keep shut or not refuse.
As you read these words, if you find yourself offended
And feel that you need to complain,
I hope you’ll first pause for a second and try not to forget
How not being allowed to say it had once led our species
Into the Dark Ages of suffering and pain.

Borrowed from Nirmukta

Phones and computers and my perpetual woes

2017-11-10T18:47:00.001+05:30

I have written so many times about people trying to malign me in so many different ways.

Now there are some people sitting across the road with their mobiles and I don't know maybe with the laptops. Do they get connection to my computer? I know you call me paranoid. But this is what happened since their "hiring". And they go away when I switch on my TV in the hall. They can not certainly hear the TV noise from so far. What is happening?

And today a new situation has come up. Since this morning, all our land line calls are getting redirected to some other number. I am phrasing it wrong. They are not getting redirected, but they may come via some other number. Phone rings, when I pick up there is no sound. And when I check up the logs I see some unknown land line number. And the call was coming from my parents. Wow, things are only getting better.

Now I do not understand the situation, but I may have some idea behind the motives. I need to find a solution. But I am unable to.

Bloom

2017-11-10T11:57:00.001+05:30

This year the chrysanthemums have decided that they will bloom generously and provide some solace to this poor soul.

The reason could be incessant rains in the months of september and October. I really do not provide much care for these plants. I water them when there are no rains. And some times, I picks the dry leaves littered all around the terrace and place them inside the pots. I do not take the help of any gardener. I rarely put any fertilizers.

OK, let me stop glorifying my laziness.

Roses would bloom now and then, though their quality is deteriorated now. Even hibiscus flowers bloom now and then. But chrysanthemums are a real pain. They are like me - they follow no rules, nor do they feel any obligations to any one.

New version of number game published

2017-11-08T23:11:00.001+05:30

Finally an endless trial and error of UIs, background, buttons, fonts is ever.

This is not how I am supposed to announce the new release of my app, right?

OK, I have renamed my app - Shataka to "Hundred- a number game". To appeal to more users.

One major change (other than the name ) is the simplicity of the game. The initial levels have many solved cells. In level 1, Out of 9 cells, 6 are already solved for you. How is that for simple game?

And also there is a tutorial. Not just text with images. The actual step by step instruction to play the game.

Download the game at least now. I am sure you will love it.

Listen to them

2017-11-05T15:38:00.001+05:30

I was really touched my this youtube video about the problems European muslim kids are facing and why so many of them are turning to terrorism.

We should always keep in mind this quote from the video

If the young are not initiated into the village

they will burn the village just to feel its warmth

- African proverb

Arts in pinterest

2017-10-30T06:26:00.003+05:30

pinterest not only has LOL quotes and lists for quick fixes (drink this and in one week you lose 10 kgs!!). It also has pins of these amazing, wonderful painting and sketches. Bless these individuals for painting them and sharing them with us.

When there are beautiful contents, you can expect funny drawings too. Here is one for you.

Monolisas can be like us too.

ಈ ದೋಸೆ ...

2017-10-27T23:14:00.000+05:30

It all started with this song "ಈ ದೋಸೆ ಯೋಳ್ತಿಲ್ಯಲೇ ". My parents sent me this song which is a kind of comic song about making a dosa - or rather unable to make a dosa.

At the end of the audio, a voice told me that you can get other songs like this in the app h-fm . Ha, my favorite thing - downloading the apps (thanks to Jio - yug yug jio).

The app has some havyaka songs, some havyaka recipes, and other stuff. If you are a Havyak, download the app and have a look at it.( In fact you find more than 5 apps if you search for "havyaka" in google play. )

Thus my curiosity being triggered, I searched in the wide wide web about havyaka songs.

See, these songs are unique. In traditional families, the festivals and pujas should be accompanied by these songs (they are called haadu). There are songs for each step in a puja like "aarati ettiddu", "huu bediddu", "naivedya maadiddu". And there are songs for different Gods and Goddesses. And for different festivals.

All of these are in our own version of Kannada. In my childhood, people would write books of such songs and sell them. Now many women make CDs of the songs.

In youtube, you can find many havyaka songs and bhajans. For a sample, have a look at this video on havyaka wedding in youtube

Also there is a website which has lyrics and mp3 of some such songs - havya kavya

One famous songs seems to be a satirical song called "appayya yenge beku" where a girl tells her father what kind of groom she would want. The reason for its popularity is the difficulty in finding brides for havyaka boys - which is because of skewed sex ratio in our community like everywhere else in India.

Coming back to havyaka songs, I am happy to find these songs in the net. At least these efforts help to save the traditions before they are completely lost from us.

P.S.
Havyaka : is a small brahmin community found in coastal districts of Karnataka, and Shimoga districts. We have our own dialect which sounds like old kannada. We grow and eat (most of it :) ) betel-nut.