Cabbages and Kings

Trophy collection

2011-12-24T10:33:00.000-05:00

Gaming accomplishments reflected by the PS3 trophy collection.

We are parents

2010-06-14T14:13:00.001-04:00

smiling
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal

"Everything in my life is now more moist. Between your spittle, your diapers, your spit-up and drool, you got your baby food, your wipes, your formula, your leaky bottles, sweaty baby backs, and numerous other untraceable sources–all creating an ever-present moistness in my life, which heretofore was mainly dry.”

— Paul Reiser, Babyhood

Performance at Sparsh 2009

2009-05-02T00:02:00.002-04:00

For the past two months or so, we've gotten together a new band. It's been a lot of fun. We are called "Ohm". We had our first show at Sparsh, a couple of weeks ago, and here we make the videos public. Stay tuned.

Part 1 of 5: Sounds check beginning

Part 2 of 5: Sounds check, clicking into beat.

Part 3 of 5: First song: Aadat

Part 4 of 5: The main body of the show

Part 5 of 5: Last song

Moving again

2009-03-02T13:41:00.001-05:00

Does not make sense to keep paying for a domain, when I rarely use it. I'll have to figure out how to post attachments in future. But for now, I'll at least continue to have a public web presence.

The Mystery of Banking

2008-10-16T16:00:00.004-04:00

I am a biologist with an economics fetish. If I had to do a PhD over again maybe that's something I'd like to study. So I was reading this pdf book, called the The Mystery of Banking. It was a very insightful read, particularly during this financial crisis. It seems that an understanding of money: how it is created, destroyed, and how it flows to add value to our lives (or not)-- that explains a lot about how the world works. And why the status quo today is just so. I also didn't know much about what the Federal Reserve does exactly, how the modern banking system works, and where the money for the bailout package is actually coming from. . . and this book explains that.

I am not totally sure about whether we should go back to a gold standard or limit the inflationery creation of money as the book suggests. By some accounts, inflation may be a good thing. But it is clear that the entities involved with the creation of money has a lot of power. As with any kind of power, it can be used for social good. Or not. Financial stability is a social good in and of itself, I suppose. Maybe this is a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" idea, amidst a larger moral question of whether guns can ever be used for good. And of course, the idea of whether any one should be entrusted with such power at all, ever. Yeah, I like economics because I am confused by it.

J-1 212e 2-year home residency waiver

2008-09-24T10:26:00.003-04:00

Getting the waiver of the two-year home residency requirement was a big step. Just wanted to share the lessons learned from this experience, so that others in a similar situation can hopefully benefit. Which probably holds true for many post-docs. This post is particularly relevant to Indian citizens from Calcutta.

The most common application involves getting your embassy to issue you a "no obligation to return to India" (NORI) certificate. There are other possibilities (Definitely visit this Department of State site), but I'll describe the NORI process here.

Depending on how much faith you have in this system and how good your contacts are in the different Indian ministries, I would recommend starting this process at least 1 year before your J-1 visa is due to expire. It can easily take that long to get the waiver processed. Some people start the waiver process (at least getting the NORI part) as soon as you start the J-1 status. And there is nothing wrong with this approach. The only thing to keep in mind is that once your waiver has been granted from the Department of State, your sponsor can no longer extend your J-1 status. So you need to have a plan about what you will do after you get the waiver.

Go to the Indian embassy website in your jurisdiction and download forms for issuance of NORI. You can then submit these forms along with a Miscellaneous services form and a fee to the Indian embassy (in person or by mail). The instructions on the Indian website page are fairly clear. The only confusing part for me was that you will need to notarize the Affidavit's from your local bank or library or notary public BEFORE you submit the forms to the embassy (along with fees, passport, Misc services form, and photographs). I guess it does say so on the website, but I initially thought the embassy will notarize it. . . and they won't. The embassy will just attest the series of four documents and send it back to you. I did this process in person at the embassy in Washington, so it took only about a week to get these attested forms.

Now you need to mail out the forms to:

a. The State Government (Department of Home)
b. Department of Education, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi
OR
Ministry of Health & Planning, Government of India, New Delhi.
c. The concerned passport office from which the application obtained passport to come abroad.

First of all you prepare your package. It should contain the following:
1. Cover letter asking them to issue you with a NORI, and telling them which address to mail the NORI out to along with the enclosures in the package.
2. Your signed/attested affidavits and forms (the ones you got from the Indian embassy.)
4. Copies of the front and back page of your passport.
5. Your CV
6. A copy of your birth certificate
7. A copy of your Xth, XIIth, and/or college transcript if these were done in India.

This is probably overkill, but you just don't know what the authorities want to look at really, so I sent them everything.

From web searches I had found out that the Department of education is fairly efficient about processing these documents. So I just mailed my package directly to:

Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Education, ES-5 Section, A-1/W-3, Curzon Road Barracks, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi–110001

Turns out I was right. I got the NORI from the Ministry of Human Resources back within a month.

My passport was issued in Delhi, and I am originally from West Bengal. The address of the Delhi passport office is:

The Regional Passport Officer,
Hudco Tricoot-3
Bhikaji Cama Place
R.K. Puram
New Delhi-1100066

The address of the desk in Calcutta where the package needs to be sent has eluded me, and I still don't know where to send it. It is in Writer's building, and I have a phone number.

For the Delhi Passport office and the state government I used the services of this company: Your man in India. They charge over a 100 bucks per package, but you have a person there who personally hand delivers your package to the required desk, ensures that the application is complete and well received, and lets you know if there is a confirmation number/file number to your application. So that you can follow up if necessary. I must say, I was fairly impressed with their service. They will send you their addresses where you mail the package to, and they will personally deliver it to the required office. It's a good option for those who don't want to bother their relatives in India.

For the Delhi submission the passport office required me to send an additional letter authorizing YMI to submit on my behalf. I got a 4-digit ledger number. For Calcutta, I got a stamped cover letter saying "received", but no file number.

All these NORI's were submitted in March of 2008. I got my MHRD NORI back by May. The RPO Delhi NORI was issued, but it never reached me. A contact e-mailed me a scan of the NORI by May. I have not reached the Calcutta NORI yet, but there was a police verification at my house in September. So I guess things are moving along over there.

The Indian Embassy might issue you a NORI based on just 2 out of 3 certificates.

Once you have received these certificates, fill out the DS-3039 form on the Department of State website, pay the fee, get the confirmation number barcode, follow the instructions with the Indian embassy for them to issue a message directly to the department of state. This part of the process is very well documented, so follow the instructions on the websites. You'll have to mail the printed documents and attachments to the DOS, while the Indian embassy sends the NORI directly to the DOS.

Once that is done, it should just take a month or two to get the waiver certificate.

It is a long and stressful process. There are many things that can go wrong, and certificates might not come through. Even after that, there is some probability that your application might be rejected by the DOS. It's not a transparent system. But by and large, this is a tried and tested method that works for a majority of Indian postdocs on J-1 visa's. I got it and so can you. Best of luck!

Some other interesting links:

New York Indian Consulate General
Discussion thread
Another discussion thread.
Umich information: questions answered.

Home Buying Links

2008-09-23T10:57:00.002-04:00

Friends have asked me for links and advice on house buying. So here are some of the ones I found most useful, from my bookmarks list:

1. Decide how much you can afford. Using your own budgeting methods. This will be based of how much money you have left over at the end of the month after paying all your other expenses, and then putting an additional cushion of say 30-40% on that to calculate the highest mortgage you can afford. This is probably one of the most important steps in the home buying process, and I recommend doing this early.
2. Bankrate is a great resource for knowing current interests. Typically the interest rate you will get will be around what this site tells you. . .maybe 0.25-0.5% lower if you have excellent credit and are lucky. The price of the home you can afford will be determined by the current interest rate, and how much you can afford to spend per month. As rates go up, the price of the home you can afford goes down and vice verca.
3. Mortgage Professor is a great resource to REALLY understand mortgages. If you have time. It also has a bunch of calculators that will tell you e.g. whether it is better to rent or own, how much your payments will be, etc.
4. Zillow is a great resource to get a ballpark figure of what your house maybe worth. You can also try http://www.realestateabc.com/home-values/ When you make an offer, you can use this and the realtors assessment to come up with your figure.
5. For us, the walkability of the neighbourhood was important.
6. If you don't want to pay for cable and want to find out whether you will get TV reception (and what kind of antenna you need), this site is pretty cool.
7. You can research schools and crime stats of your neighbourhood.
8. To find the houses themselves our realestate agent would send us MLS listings which were great. We also liked Google Base for location based narrowing down of houses, Realtor wasn't bad, and there were a couple of others.

And if you dear reader are looking to buy in the Montgomery County, or suburbs of Washington DC, we highly recommend our real estate agent, Mr. Danny Sadoun. Contact me if you want a reference. But yeah, he was really helpful and knowledgeable and good to work with.

Ok, hope that was helpful.

Updates

2008-09-23T10:03:00.003-04:00

So it has been a while. As we get along with our lives and careers, this blog does not need to be the outlet that I needed when I was in graduate school. I still do need an outlet sometimes, but perhaps it is not the same. Since the amortization sheet posted last December, I've been up to the following:

1. We bought a house in March.
2. Anyesha cleared her PE Exam.
3. My parents visited in May.
4. I went to Thailand for 3 weeks in July.
5. I got an adjunct assistant professor appointment at USUHS.
6. I got my J-1 2-year home residency waiver.
7. Over the year, we visited friends and friends visited us. We went to Mystic, CT and Valley Forge, PA among others.

Apart from that it's the little things. Bicycling and walking regularly on the trail near our place. Furnishing and decorating our place through a judicious combination of Ikea and Craigslist. Raccoons rummaging through the trash. The highs and lows of office work. And a gnawing post-doctoral uncertainty that is typical to this stage in ones career. Occasional tennis with friends. Netflix streaming movies, hooked up to the television through a 50' S-video cable. All episodes of MI-5. And now, Autumn is here. It's been a good year so far.

Amortization worksheet

2007-12-07T15:21:00.000-05:00

Mortgages are extremely confusing, even the most basic 30 year fixed interest loans. To wade through some of the complexity that the loans here is an excel worksheet that can help generate amortization schedules. Hope all of you who like my Sudoku excel sheet and Kaplan-Meier calculators find this useful!

Amortization Excel Worksheet

The idea is to fill in the values for loan amount and interest rate. The table will suggest a minimum monthly payment for P&I for different terms(not accounting for other costs such as taxes, home insurance, PMI if applicable, etc.) such as 30 year, 25 year, and so on. If you are looking at 30 year mortgages, plug that value in where it says "Monthly P&I".

This will generate your amortization table. For each row, you have a distinct payment. . . and it shows how much interest you have paid, how much you owe, and what percentage of the home equity you own. It also shows the total cost of the house (total principle+interest, if you continue paying at this rate).

The cool thing about the table is that you can modify individual payments. So if you want to pay more than the minimum amount on a given month, you type that in. And the table calculates how it affects your overall payment structure. This is particularly useful because making higher payments earlier during the process can lead to significant savings overall. Trying out different scenario's also gets you a feel for negative amortization. Hopefully this can serve as a tool to help compare different mortgage products in terms of their overall cost and how responsive they are to savings from early payments.

Travel Videos and Updates

2007-09-10T12:34:00.000-04:00

Considering that I just spent a month on the other side of the world, and that there is plenty to report, my blog has not seen much activity. Somehow I am not really into maintaining it any more, especially after I joined my new job. I am enjoying that quite a bit, and I perhaps don't have the same sense of freetime that I did in at least the several initial years of graduate school.

Anyway, first things first: the travel updates. I was in Thailand for about 16 days with a team, collecting mosquitoes from areas where dengue had been reported. Along the way, over the weekends we managed to do some site seeing. A number of the photos taken during this period can be seen on my flickr page. Here is a video compilation of the more touristy moments.

Following that I was in Taipei for a week, to attend a conference on Dengue and to give a talk at (and initiate some collaborations with) the National Taiwan University. Anyesha joined me in Taipei, and here is a video compilation of our sight seeing trips there. She does an excellent job of writing up how our trip went.

Thailand field studies

2007-08-13T11:21:00.001-04:00

Pagoda
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal

I have spent over a week now in Bangkok, Thailand and it has been a lot of fun. We already had a number of very productive days in the field, chasing down dengue causing mosquitoes and trying to pick them up using our PCR assays. Despite our equipment arriving here late, due to delays with customs. One more week here, and then I am headed to Taipei for a conference.

Quick Calcutta trip

2007-07-10T10:24:00.000-04:00

I am going into international traveller mode. Earlier this month, I made a quick visit to Calcutta. I haven't visitted Calcutta in summer in a really long time. . .so there was an overeating of mangoes and jackfruits. The rainy season started soon after I reached, making the temperatures fairly manageable. And my parents were there, en route to Moscow. So I got to meet with them.

PSA: Be careful with your luggage if you are flying British Airways through London. In fact, avoid it altogether if you can.

On the way over there, my luggage did not arrive with me. Apparently with new construction, new security regulations and all that stuff, Heathrow is a mess. So, I spent the entire trip expecting that my luggage will be delivered by the next flight, as I was told. And it never arrived. Now I am back in Maryland, and it still hasn't arrived. It's been over a month now. Calling customer service means a minimum of a half an hour hold before you speak to someone who doesn't know anything. All you can do is wait for your luggage to miraculously get to you. And file for compensation (which they still haven't acknowledged, and it's been over two weeks, so I need to follow up with them again.) But at least, I am in good company: apparently A.R. Rahman and Shilpa Shetty lost their luggage too.

Anyway. This August, I am likely to go to Thailand for a field study and Taiwan for a conference. So stay tuned for more travel stories.

Two gigs in two days

2007-05-23T11:22:00.000-04:00

So on May 17th, I played some Indian solo music at work in celebration of the Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. This was followed by our band, the Bollywood Rockerz, performing at Sabang Restaurant on the 19th. Both the shows went reasonably well, and you can view more photos on my flickr page. We still have iron out a few things, and there is room for improvement. But it was a lot of fun and it was a great venue to play at. . . and we hope to do another show in a couple of months time.

In other news, I will be in Calcutta from June 10th-22nd.

Gig at Sabang

2007-04-25T12:12:00.000-04:00

As more and more of our band members graduate, and get busy with graduating, Antardhwani is looking for a makeover. In the mean time, I have joined a new band. It is under the overall umbrella of Minakshi Entertainments, though I am not sure what we are calling our little gig. Anyway. It does not matter. Come listen to our music-- that's the good stuff. We have had a couple of practices so far and it is sounding really nice. Also, if you have never had Indonesian food before, the restaurant is really good too. Bollywood Music and Indonesian Food-- a good way to spend a Friday evening.

Where: Sabang Indonesian Restaurant, 2504 Ennalls Avenue, Wheaton, MD 20902 Ph: 301-942-7859
When: Friday the 18th of May, 8:30 PM - 11:00 PM
Charge: $10 cover charge + All you can eat buffet @ $9.95 per person.

You can download a flier here. Do come. Especially if you live nearby. See you there!

Transitioning

2007-04-08T22:43:00.000-04:00

If you are viewing this post, that means you are viewing my new website. Thanks for visiting. And if you link to me, please do update your links. So that this site is referred.

Shifting to a new home page

2007-03-24T18:12:00.000-04:00

Now that I have graduated, I don't know how much longer I'll continue to have access to the umd webspace. So, over the course of the next few months this website and blog will be migrating to http://subhamoy.bluecabbage.net/ So, if you suddenly find this site down, visit my new home.

Watching TV

2007-02-28T18:15:00.000-05:00

So, we have been watching a couple of TV shows fairly regularly. This is unusual for us. We don't have cable, because most of the cable fare just is not watchable. We don' t want to watch hundreds of reality TV shows. And cable news is not what it used to be. In any case, we have the internet. And a pair of rabbit ears to watch what comes off the air. As long as Public television is broadcast terrestrially (with a little help from Netflix), our weekday evenings are well taken care of.

So, on mondays NBC airs Heroes. Which I might not have liked if I just watched an episode while flicking through channels. But since I have been following it for some time now. . . I guess I am hooked. The best part is that if you have a reasonably fast internet connection, you can watch all the episodes on-line on the heroes website. We are also big fans of the Office, but you can't watch those episodes on-line.

Speaking of watching movies online, I never really landed up blogging about the Ithaca trip I did towards the end of last year. Too many things had come up. . . anyway the trip was a lot of fun, and here is a compilation of the videos taken during the trip.

A definition

2007-01-01T12:15:00.000-05:00

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
--Alfred North Whitehead.

Anyesha and me

2006-12-23T00:21:00.000-05:00

Anyesha and me
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal.

I had my commencement ceremony yesterday. Big red (my school colors) graduation gown. And a vaguely Italian hat. For some reason I didn't get a hood from the bookstore, so I had to get hooded with a borrowed hood. Got my degree. Went out to lunch with the lab. Resubmitted a paper. Somewhere between the activity, I also submitted my keys and said my goodbyes. I'll post more photos of the ceremony as and when they become available.

So that's that. The day I thought would never come just came and went. With a little fanfare. 2006 has been a very important year that way, with all these life-events (such as the wedding, and this graduation) happening that I passively experience. I am happy about them, but at the same time stunned at how ordinary it finally feels.

An end and a new beginning.

Goodbye Lab Bench

2006-12-20T23:39:00.000-05:00


So today is my last day in the Wu lab. I have my commencement ceremony in the morning, and in the afternoon I'll give up my keys and say goodbye to my office of the past 6 years. Sob. I'll miss this place. Photos are so old fashioned. . .too keep up with times, here is a video of the lab in all its cluttery glory.

New Job, New Car

2006-12-15T11:08:00.000-05:00

2001 Toyota Camry
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal.

So I got the offer letter. I will be working at the Naval Medical Research Center, on various aspects of detecting the dengue virus. In a lot of ways, this is the ideal kind of job I was looking for because it is pretty interesting, very applied work, seems to have good prospects for the future, and is geographically convenient. So, I am very excited about it, and I start in the New Year.

To get me to and from my work place in Silver Spring (it would be about a 20 minute commute if there is no traffic), I bought this car.

A video can be viewed through this link. More details later.

FAQs, and the holidays so far.

2006-12-08T00:31:00.000-05:00

Here are some common questions one gets after graduating.
Q: How does it feel to have graduated?
Ans: Much lighter. It's like a big weight has been lifted off of ones shoulders. (One should answer this question as enthusiastically as possible.)

Q: What do you plan to do now?
Ans: Look for a job. Actually there is some good news on that front which I will reveal soon. And a little suspense could help my blog ratings. Stay tuned for a future episode.

Q: Do you plan to do a post-doc? Where? In academia or industry?
Ans: After graduation one is expected to have a very clear plan. Presumeably, you got into the PhD program because you could see yourself clearly 10 years from now doing ground breaking research in a very specific field that you had fallen in love with during your highschool science class. Or you want to get a chance to cure a disease that has personally harmed one of your family members. But it is difficult to categorize options into that kind of clarity; life is not a college statement of purpose. Also, answers don't divide clearly into those just academic/industrial and govt categories. And if you say I'll look for a postdoc at the NIH or Hopkins that makes people happy. . .but it isn't really saying much. Because you might be working on anything, depending on the lab you join. So I wave my arms around, appear confused, and say I want to do a "good" post-doc-- wherever that may be. Broadly in the field of immunology. . .something to do with infectious diseases and host-pathogen interaction. Just want to be doing good science that I can feel passionately about, and heading in the general direction towards gainful employment. On this note, whenever I have younger people (earlier in their careers) asking me for career advice, I keep telling them that it is ok to be unsure of yourself. Just to stick out in sharp contrast with the masses who seem sure of exactly where it is they are going. If you are unsure, I feel you can try to pick the "best" option available to you with a more open mind, instead of flowing automatically into what you "should" be doing. Of course, either way you could be totally wrong. So that's not comforting. But then, very few things are totally wrong. . .so you should be ok.

Q: So. How does it feel? Does it feel different?
Ans: Yeah. I guess. But then this is only the beginning of a scientific career. Long long way to go.

Q: (Dissapointed with lack of enthusiastic replies) Congratulations. Bye.

Anyway. I am very glad it is over. Have been spending the past few days being Dr. Pal. . .Dr. Pal-ing the undergrads in the lab and socializing and coffee-drinking with people. Finishing corrections on the thesis, and electronically submitting it.

Visiting Houghton MI for our compulsory thanksgiving get together (Photographs taken there and Chicago). A family of choice. Anyesha writes her experiences. Warm weather, projected movies, turkey dinners, and driving through hunting season amongst rural Michigan landscapes.

Returning home. Paying fee's and deciding whether to do the commencement ceremony or not. The gown costs $160 to rent (!). Got to take a ton of pictures to make it worth while. Resume preparing. Job interviewing. Helping colleagues right research proposals. Discussing science. Getting hired (stay tuned for details on that one). Filling out forms. Intending to finish some work in the lab, but the holiday spirit taking over.

Yeah. Graduation is great. Highly recommended. Am very happy now.

Toilet humor

2006-11-21T00:03:00.000-05:00

So, Anyesha usually writes up about all the stuff that's going on in our lives. Far more thoroughly than I usually have the patience to do. And she also makes it fun to read. And since our lives are getting so well reported already, I usually don't find a real urge to say anything. . .because everything has already been said.

However, this time she missed out on the most important part of our philadelphia trip. Our sighting of Ben Franklin's loo. So here is a photo of the place. . . where many great thoughts that have shaped America must have struck this scientist and statesman.

Hurrah!

2006-11-07T15:40:00.000-05:00

So, I "succesfully defended my dissertation." Hurray. Barring a few minor corrections, I am graduating this semester. The thesis defense went really well, despite all the pre-defense stress. Now, Life is going to seep back into my life. And this blog. And there will be a winter thaw, while I try to decide what I am doing after this. And life continues the way it used to.

Antardhwani may rock again. I need to discover some new computer games to obsess about. And I owe Anyesha a honeymoon. And lots of travel to exotic places. At some point, we intend to throw a big "rite of passage" party to pause and celebrate all the rites of passages in the past few years. . . the marriage, the graduation, and all the little things that led to these big things. The momentum of efficient work is still with me right now. . . so after a little celebration last night (close friends, an excellent dinner at Mandalay, followed by a little Cake Love) I am back into efficiently trying to polish up my resume, apply for jobs, and do corrections on my thesis. Which should be done before our trip to the dense forests of Michigan, this thanksgiving.

Dressed up for the Durga Puja

2006-10-18T15:42:00.000-04:00

Dressed up for the Durga Puja
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal.

Anyesha put up a photo of us, taken at a wedding we attended recently. Both of us have been getting all these compliments about the other photograph. Apparently that is the kind of photograph that our kids will look at and wonder about how their parents used to be cool/romantic (according to one reader). Here is (what I think) a better photograph of the two of us, taken this October before heading off to the Durga Pujas. Keep the compliments flowing.

In other news, I have set a defense date for November 6th. And am into the whole writing thing. Anybody who has written a thesis will know what I am going through. . .and why I am blogging now for temporary relief. Those that haven't won't. That's that. Some things are just impossible to convey. There are still a couple of potential slips. . . between cups and lips, that may delay graduation. Here's to hoping it that there are no such slips. . . and it all goes well. And this blog, Antardhwani, my life et. al. are all revived again from their present state of suspended animation.

Fruit Lesson.

2006-09-22T14:06:00.000-04:00

Interesting fact of the day:

Prunes are dried plums.

Bedroom Eyes

2006-09-01T19:38:00.000-04:00

I have been tagged by Greatbong to post a silly photograph. This is another one of those viral things like the Me Me. I don't have anything silly, but this bedroom shot is extremely sexy.
I would like to tag Snowflake, because it annoys him to be forced into such things. And Supratik, to nudge his blog into wakefulness.

In other news:
1. I could make my blog even more boring, by posting all this stuff on how my papers and PhD are going.
2. I am tempted to do just that, because I don't have much else to say.
3. Book Review: "Full Spectrum Dominance" by Rahul Mahajan, deals with American power, and implications of having an unipolar world with one dominant superpower. Very interesting.
4. Book Review: "All the Shah's Men"-- Stephen Kinzer is an excellent book about the history of Iran, colonialism, and the roots of many of the problems that have been created in the middle east. While growing up, I wasn't particularly fond of history in school, mainly because it involved memorizing dates and locations of wars. . .but I find it increasingly important in understanding the way the world works and why things are the way they are. Some sort of people's history combined with economics should be made an important part of education curriculums.
5. Tropical storm Ernesto is here. And it's going to rain all of this weekend.

Four down.

2006-08-28T11:28:00.000-04:00

Papers
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal.

Two printed. Two submitted. All experiments done. Except some controls that reviewers recommend. One big thesis left to write. At the end of the tunnel. This is the fun part. November.

Blair Apartments

2006-08-16T15:03:00.000-04:00

For some reason, my old apartment in Silver Spring is listed here at the Cicorp NASA website along with Mount Everest, the White House, and the Pyramids of Egypt.

Book Reviews

2006-07-26T15:51:00.000-04:00

I have been reading a bunch of interesting books lately. Here are some reviews:

Economics- Samuelson.
A great primer on how economists think about the problems of wealth creation and distribution. It gives a pretty good idea on how the government controls economic growth and prevents recession. It's the system we live and breathe in. . .save our money in, work in. So it's good to know how it works. It's also good to know that economists (at least in Academia) agonize over how to solve various economic problems that give rise to social problems. I also love the idea of free markets. Someone should totally try it out.

Global Values 101- I read this book very recently, and it's influencing me quite a bit. . .and making me think about the kind of career I really want to pursue. The book basically consists of excerpts from a lecture series conducted at Harvard, where they invited a bunch of activists, thinkers, and industry people and asked them about their values, and how to make the world a better place. Somehow, admitting that some of the present systems and trends in the world aren't working to create equality and ensure human rights makes one appear left of center, and I guess the individuals in this book could be called that. It's inspiring to read about modern day heroes who are working on real problems.

The Argumentative Indian-Amartya Sen. I haven't finished this book. It's a bit of a scholarly and sometimes dry read. But it is an important book. Primarily, understanding ones complex and often contradictory history ensures that individuals or political parties cannot come and rewrite your history. It can also in its own way make you proud of where you come. The book argues that India has had a long argumentative tradition, and that's a great tradition for a secular, pluralistic, democratic nation to have.

The Future of Freedom- Fareed Zakaria. The main point of this book seems to be that having a democracy alone does not guarantee that a nation will do well. The will of the people is fickle. You need other aspects of society to compliment democracy. . .protection of minority rights, grassroots level democratic systems of representation, rule of law, education, etc. It's an important thesis when exporting Democracy is sold as a Panacea for the worlds problems.

Oryx and Crake- Margaret Atwood. This is a pretty morbid and depressing book. It describes a post-apocalyptic world where man-made diseases have killed of most of the human population, and genetically modified creatures roam the earth. On the way to the apocalypse, Margaret Atwood describes a world perhaps like ours 50-60 years in the future. Corporate interests manufacturing new and improved genetically modified organisms. A huge gap between the rich and the poor. Private security companies keeping the peace. After one has the power to tinker with life any way you like, a kind of insanity sets in. And I think that aspect of the book is particularly true. . .that the ability to genetically manipulate life will make us look at ourselves in whole new ways. Change our morality. It's power and we have to learn how to handle it. It's a confusing book in many ways. Hmmmm.

As to the question that is asked too often: "When are you graduating?"

I had a committee meeting recently. I was hoping to defend my thesis by October, and I might still be able to do that if the paper I submitted to JBC over a month ago gets accepted for publication. We'll be submitting another manuscript. . .this time to EMBO reports within a couple of weeks. After that I'll start writing my thesis. I need an acceptance on either Journal paper. Sometimes it can take a long time for a manuscript to get reviewed and accepted. Which is why I was hoping to have a defense date set at the committee meeting. Anyway. It will happen. It's only a matter of time.

Me Me.

2006-06-28T16:12:00.000-04:00

I have been tagged by the Meme Virus. Not to be confused with Meme, which is a cool tool used to find motifs and discover transcription factor binding sites.

Here goes:

I am thinking about...
Graduating.

I said...
Do we really need five vials of fly food?

I want to...
do something meaningful with my life, and am at the same time terrified of the personal sacrifices that may require.

I wish...
there was some sort of direct democracy using the internet.

I hear…
"The scientist", Coldplay.

I wonder...
if this is all there is?

I regret...
Not doing things better the first time round.

I am...
procrastinating.

I dance...
only when I have to.

I sing...
rain rain go away

I cry...
haven't done that in a while

I am not always...
the most positive person around.

I make with my hands...
music

I write...
poems

I confuse...
almost everything

I need...
unstructured free time, that I can use to do my own stuff.

And finally...
Ashok
Snowflake
Shirsho
Anoop

World Philatelic Exhibition

2006-05-27T20:22:00.000-04:00

We went to the World Philatelic Exhibition today. It must be the largest in the world. . .it was held at the DC convention center, and in 4 hours we must have covered only a small fraction of all the stamps out there. People and stamps from all over the world.

There were many stamps from way back when. From a time before stamps. Edicts written in Rome, sent through horse couriers. Envelopes from all over the world. Also saw the most expensive stamp in the world. . .The Alexandria Blue Boy.

In other news, I will be teaching Genetics this summer, starting next week. That should be fun.

Shenandoah Trip

2006-05-22T13:47:00.000-04:00

Appalachian trail
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal.

We went to Shenandoah this weekend. It was a much needed break. . .a one night stay in the wilderness. We got a very cute tent-cabin near Lewis Mountain, and spent the weekend trekking up and down the Appalachian trail. At night it got pretty cold (in mid-May!). . .but fortunately we had a pot-belly stove that we could fill up with coal and wood and that made things warmer in the tent. We also saw a lot of wildlife. . .LOTS of deer, and chipmunks. An owl. The best thing about the trip was the solitude. . .there were very few people around.

I have posted a bunch of photographs of the trip on my flickr account. And Anyesha's already blogged about it.

Kaplan-Meier Curves

2006-05-17T22:57:00.002-04:00

Continuing with my Excel-spreadsheets that do stuff theme, here is a sheet that helps calculate Kaplan-Meier curves, and does a Log-rank test. There is a web-resource that does it, but lately its ability to generate a Log-rank P-value statistic has been down. So, we had to improvise in our lab to continue calculating these things.

This tool is usually used to calculate the effect of a particular treatment on the mortality of an experimental population, compared to a control group. At least, that's what we use it for in our lab. Hope it helps someone who needs to do these statistics and finds no on-line resource to do it. . .

In other news, I have been spending my time writing. As a result, there isn't much news from my life. And I don't want to blog about progress (or lack thereof) on my thesis. And Anyesha has already written about the cupcakes, the highpoint of last week. So there. More later.

Deal or no deal

2006-05-07T22:37:00.000-04:00

So they have this show on NBC called Deal or No Deal which has apparently become a big thing world wide. I chanced upon it the other day, and could not make sense of what was going on. Why were people picking different suitcases. And what were they thinking? So, I finally managed to figure out what the game is. . .and like a true geek, wrote a little Excel spreadsheet to figure out whether one should say take the Deal or not. I wonder whether they would allow us to take the spreadsheet to the gameshow.
YOu didn't need to see this score to know this. . . (this post would have sufficed), but here it is anyway.

The Wiki entry on the game goes like this:

The basic format of Deal or No Deal consists of a number of cases (usually 26) each containing a different amount of money. Not knowing the sum of money in each case, the contestant picks one case which potentially contains the contestant's prize. They then open the remaining cases, one by one, revealing the money they contained. At predetermined intervals the contestant receives an offer from the bank (run by "The Banker") to purchase the originally chosen case from the contestant, the offer being based on the potential value of the contestant's case. The contestant must then decide whether to take the deal from the bank, or to continue opening briefcases. If they decide not to take the deal and reveal low values then the next bank offer is likely to be higher (as the contestant's case is proven not to contain these low values). Alternatively they risk revealing higher values, lowering future offers from the bank.

Writing and worrying

2006-05-02T16:22:00.000-04:00

A month has passed since I last updated this blog. I have mostly been writing and worrying. Here is a quick update.
1. A lot has been going on academically. Wrapping up experiments and writing. Still on track to graduating by September. Looking for jobs, and interviewed at a couple of places. Keeping fingers crossed.

2. Antardhwani performed at Sparsh on April 15th. It was a pretty good show, and I think all of us played pretty well. We did have some sounds issues though (again), but we could have done little to prevent it. All in all, a succesful performance. The band is now going into hibernation as many of us gear up towards finishing our academics. . . but will re-awaken once this storm has passed. In other news, Anyesha and Greatbong as a team won both the quiz and the Antakshari competitions during Sparsh. Wow.
3. After the wedding we have been doing lots of Photo things. So, there were the wedding photos and we made this photoworks book with it. Instead of printing out the photos individually and sticking it onto an album. A book wedding album. It has come out impressive looking, but not exactly the coffee table book that I had hoped, partly because the pages are not too thick. I still do recommend photoworks though to anyone who wants to document memories.
4. We also got back a bunch of old photographs from Calcutta. So we have been scanning them and organizing them, and sticking them into new albums so that they can stay protected. There are a bunch of mine (and my father's) growing up photographs in there. This burst of scanning and archiving also inspired my parents to scan some of our more recent photos from when I was growing up. . .so suddenly now we have all these photographs. Here is a really old one, probably dating back to the 1940's, of my paternal grandfather with my grandmothers family.
5. We went to Maryland Day at the University this weekend. It was fun, and they had a HUGE cake that has probably already made it to the Guinness Book of World Records. Here are the stats:

"Just how big will it be? Dining Services Director Pat Higgins says simply, "It's a monster!" 16 feet by 24 feet in diameter, the cake consists of 3 layers and is 8 inches high. It will weigh 5,040 pounds. There should be enough to feed 50,000 guests! And anyone who eats a piece will have to do a lot of walking on Maryland Day. This strawberry shortcake packs an estimated 6,500,000 calories!

Dining Services says this cake will be bit bigger than the current record holder from the Philippine Islands."
6. We went to the "Save Darfur" Rally in DC. There isn't much moral ambiguity when it comes to genocide. . .everyone agrees it is wrong. I urge all of you to visit the site and send the postcard to world leaders everywhere, because on some level it is the worlds indifference that is killing these people.
7. I made Pizza.
8. Supratik and Ritaja drove us to Costco for our bi-annual stocking up of groceries.
9. While backing out of the parking lot in Han Ah Reum, our new car received it's first bump on the bumper. That sucked. It no longer has its all new car perfection.
10. It's May. And it is still cold. The weather is beatifully bright and sunny though. While I sit indoors, trying to keep myself focussed on the writing.
11. Anyesha and I managed to register our wedding at the Consulate here.

That's all for now. Till next month.

The wedding.

2006-03-16T19:25:00.000-05:00

Looking back, it passed off rather smoothly.

We landed in Calcutta on the 12th of February. The first couple of days were spent shopping for stuff: dhotis, suits, and saris. Anyesha’s parents were in town for two days, so anything having to do with tailoring stuff to our vital-stats was a priority. Upon landing the forgotten but familiar realities of life in Calcutta like mosquitoes, heat, and car exhaust took some getting used to. . .and while things got better through the course of the trip, I don’t think any of us really got used to it. On Valentines Day, Anyesha and I managed to slip out for a little date, before she left for Jamshedpur. The next couple of weeks were spent mostly doing nothing. My parents were busy with inviting people personally, and organizing the reception. The editor who was reviewing my book chapter e-mailed me with some changes, and I managed to get that finished during this period.

The wedding ceremonies really started on the 19th of February, with the Narayan Puja. The idea is to invoke the name of the Lord before beginning on some big auspicious event. The ceremony lasted for a couple of hours. And it was followed by Holud Kota, where area women (including mom) ground raw turmeric in a metal bucket. Part of this turmeric was to be sent to Anyesha’s house, to be applied on her before the wedding. I had this Gaye Holud ceremony on the 27th, and the idea here is that you have a good bath after the application of turmeric and mustard oil on your skin by area women to clean you up before the big day. We also had the Briddhi Shraddha on the 27th, where you invoke the name of your ancestors and ask for their blessings for what you are about to do.

In the mean time, my uncle in Jamshedpur was sending the Totto (a set of gifts for the brides family) over to the brides house. This needs to include a dressed fish. Anyesha was having her Aiburo-bhat. . . technically her last meal in her parents house. Because technically, neither of us were supposed to eat on the wedding day. Here is a photograph of me eating on my wedding day. On the 28th, we woke up at 4:00 AM to catch a train at 6:00. . . I had to stand on a Piri and eat some yoghurt before I was bid farewell. We also forgot the Darpan, which was apparently critical to the wedding, and I was told how the priest would ask for it during the course of the rituals. . . but I was never asked for it so I still don’t know what it was supposed to be used for. The Darpan is what you see me holding in my hand in the wedding photograph (the round cloth thing with). Anyesha had to hold a similarly useless thing in her hand during the wedding too. In any case, we came back home to get it and then caught the train.

In Jamshedpur, we stayed at Hotel Smita which I will remember for its excellent food. Watched Cable television and hung out. The borjatri arrived the following day on the 2nd of March. . .comprising of Ishan, and Chottu (Niloy). We went to Bishtupur market on the morning of the wedding to explore the city. In the evening, I proceeded to the venue in a flowery car: Nirmal Mahato Bhavan in Sonari. The venue was crowded with lots of people. After feeding me sweets, I was escorted by Anyesha’s dad to the seating area where a bunch of photographers took lots of photos. Then one by one relatives from the brides side of the family gave me gifts, and I did pranaam, in a ritual called Ashirvad. They also put grass and rice grains on my head. In the meantime, my relations were doing the same for Anyesha who was seated in another room. . .and I hadn’t met yet. After that Anyesha’s dad took me to the wedding area. . .and in Sanskrit effectively said “Here take these clothes and put them on”. So I did. It was a silk dhoti. ..in Bengali weddings you are apparently not supposed to wear stitched cloth.

Then I came back to the wedding area without tripping on my dhoti. After some more Sanskrit stuff, Anyesha was carried in on a Piri (really small stool) by 4 guys (Ishan was among them). She had her face covered with Paan leaves, because I am not supposed to know what she looks like. When they were setting the Piri down, Anyesha dropped her glasses and it was narrowly rescued by one of her sisters gallant friends. Then they put a towel over us so that we could take a look at each other.

After that the main ceremony consisted of Anyesha’s father giving his daughter away to me. . .and me accepting. Somewhere in between, when the priest was getting his act together a bunch of women tried to tie my wrists and feet, and they wouldn’t untie me until I said “Baa”. So I did. I didn’t really get what was going on. It was fairly funny though.

After the main wedding, we took a 5 minute breather, before the “Bashi Biye” (literally, “stale wedding”). . .which traditionally happens the next day. In the Bashi Biye, I get a fire going, put a bunch of ghee into it to keep it going, and throw stuff into it like bananas and rice puffs, and generally accept the bride in Sanskrit. We also walk around the fire 7 times, and fire is the witness of the union. We threw rice puffs in together, and Anyesha inhaled smoke fumes. . .so she couldn’t eat much after this was all over because the smoke made her lose appetite. There was also something called Shindoor Daan, where I used a ring to put a bunch of vermillion on her head. The whole thing lasted about 2 ½ hours. . . which wasn’t too bad.

The next afternoon, we headed back to Calcutta. Upon arrival, Anyesha had to walk up the stairs while rolling up a Sari and then we were greeted and accepted into the house. More grass and rice grains on hair. And some other stuff like Anyesha had to dip her feet in milk, and wear an iron bangle. The next day, in a ceremony called Bhaath Kapor, I thrust a plate of food and a Sari into Anyesha’s hands and declared “I take responsibility for you.” That night they decorated our bed with flowers, and we were supposed to sleep on the Phool Shojya, which was fine until there was a freak power failure and all the mosquitoes zoomed in on us. So at 2:00 in the morning, we were fumbling around in the dark trying to put on a mosquito net getting pricked by wires that were used to stick the flowers on the bed.

We had the reception on the 5th of March. It was great that Jasho, Abilin, Ishan, and some of our friends could make it to our this. . .really nice to have young people to chat with. The remaining days, we were mostly expected to stay at home to meet with visiting relatives, who would drop by to see us. We did a rudimentary Diragaman by visiting Anyesha’s aunts house in Behala on the 7th. Towards the very end of our trip. . .around the 7-9th of March, we managed to get out and do some shopping for our home in the US. We even managed to catch a show of “Rang De Basanti” with Chottu and Mohona, in a fairly impressive mall in Salt Lake called City Centre. We also went to Swabhumi for some handicrafts.

All in all, the trip was good. I spent a substantial portion of the trip grumbling about this and that to Anyesha over the phone (and she to me), and silently accepting my fate in an existential way. But looking back, it actually went fairly smoothly, and even the unnecessary stuff I guess served some purpose. Our parents survived the process, and were I guess happy with it. It was an event for our families. . . providing an opportunity to meet and bond with relatives with whom you wouldn’t otherwise. And it was good to have some of our friends over too and catching up with them after all these years.

So there. A clinical look at the Bengali wedding. You can view some more photos on my flickr account, and I'll upload an album later on my website. We didn’t manage to register our wedding legally yet because of some paperwork issues, and plan to rectify that soon. Now I am back to the realities of life here. . . paper deadlines and graduation worries. Antardhwani is also having a show on April 15th (looks like this is going to be our last). . . so the next few Sunday afternoons will be spent getting that together.

A thousand words.

2006-03-13T11:11:00.000-05:00

Yeah. It pretty much sums it up.

Will write a detailed post soon. As soon as we recover from jet-lag, and settle back in.

All I have been doing is thinking. . .

2006-02-25T06:53:00.000-05:00

More thoughts.
1. I want to go home.
2. Who are these people?
3. Anyesha sums it up.
4. There must be a generation of people somewhere who can live perpetually from one wedding to another. If you are distantly enough related to a bunch of people (you are) and have the time to spare (if you are reading this blog, you probably don't have the time). I was doing the math the other day, and calculated you could spend at least 30-40 days in a year attending weddings, if the cards are played right.
5. Anyesha and I have been planning to do our own stuff, after the wedding is over. Happy thoughts. Thoughts of having a life and doing what we want to do.
6. A wedding is like ragging. You do what you are told, and when it is all over, you are inducted into some sort of exclusive club that everyone else already belongs to.
7. Resistance is useless. You will be assimilated. The Marriage Borg.
8. Funny word of the day: Piri. Whatever happens, don't lose the sense of humor.

Anyway, sorry for the negative post. Things aren't really that bad. Got some work done. . .the editor sent changes on one of the manuscripts. . .which is good because it gave me something to do. And for what it's worth, these periods in India do make me yearn to get back to my life in the US (which I might have been growing tired off. . .) so it plays a positive role.

More thoughts.

2006-02-20T02:38:00.000-05:00

1. Had the Narayan Puja yesterday. Technically, it marks the beginning of the marriage. So the whole thing is beginning with my B'day and ending on Anyesha's.
2. After evening falls you have to stay continually on the move so that the mosquitoes don't get you. So I am walking around all evening.
3. Ishan and Jasho are going to be part of the Borjatri. Ishan came over a couple of days ago, and we had a long chat about this and that. Which is good because at least there will be someone of my age apart from Anyesha at the wedding.
4. My passport reached me safely. With the visa.
5. I am learning a bunch of stuff about Bengali culture. Some of it is interesting. Others, I'll make fun of later.
6. Napit-- Funny word of the day. Diragamon-- Not even remotely funny.

Pre-wedding experiences.

2006-02-15T00:21:00.000-05:00

Quick update:
1. Anyesha and I arrived pretty much on time on Sunday. There was a two hour delay at Heathrow.
2. Kolkata is really polluted. We have been shopping by taxi cab mostly for the wedding stuff. . .and the smoke from car exhaust is unbelievably bad. Nausea inducing and eye watering.
3. I have been using the jet lag to shift my body clock to wake up at 6:00 in the morning every day. I didn't do it on purpose. . .but might as well use it to my advantage.
4. Totto. It's a funny word.
5. We bought a whole lot of stuff. Lots and lots. And our parents have been buying stuff even before we arrived.
6. My visa interview went well. I should receive my F-1 Visa soon, by mail.
7. Anyesha and I managed to slip away for a little while yesterday to spend some quiet time catching up on the hectic premarriage activity.

Off to India.

2006-02-10T12:09:00.000-05:00

I am off. See ya later. And all my readers are invited to the wedding. The main wedding is in Jamshedpur on the 2nd of March, and there is a reception on the 5th at Calcutta. Drop me an e-mail if you can make it.

So long.

Music News

2006-01-24T22:32:00.000-05:00

Between the stresses and strains of things I ought to be doing, there is always room for the little distractions of life. My latest distraction was Reason Adapted 2.5. This software had come packaged with my M-Audiophile 2496 soundcard, and because it was a stripped down version of the original I hadn't really used it much. I started playing around with it recently, and started really enjoying the wonderful subtraktor synth and the possibilities of analogue sound making. The Redrum is also a great place to create rhythms from scratch, so it one can come up with some very interesting creations with just a few minutes of tweaking.

The next breakthrough came when I figured out how to switch to the ASIO driver on Project 5, which is a similar music making environment by Cakewalk. Turns out I had to switch to 32-MSB instead of LSB as "justification". . . I still don't know what that means exactly. Until now I wouldn't use it much because of latency issues, but now with latency down to 6 ms it's been great fun layering different synths to produce lush atmosphere sounds to back up the Casio. Furthermore, the surround speakers and subwoofer are now adding to the overall impact, so that's cool.

I feel I have all the tools at my disposal to making professional quality music. All I need is the time and dedication to do so. And skill. Perhaps watching someone who is really good at using this stuff would also provide new insights.

Anyhow. In other news, we have been preparing for our upcoming India trip. Shopping. I have to get my F-1 stamped again in Calcutta, so have been doing a bit of worrying for that. Also had to get a Direct Airside Transit Visa for passing through UK. . .which thankfully came through without a hitch, except for the 70$ fee.

I guess there is nothing left to do except go and get married. Which seems to be a fairly passive albeit hectic process. Our friends Vinay and Vidya got married recently. Neither Anyesha nor I have attended a wedding in over a decade, so it will be a new experience. . .especially so because it is our wedding. Hoping to submit the second paper before going to India. . . but a setback occured (I need to make a cross-breed flies to produce a new one that I need to test), so I hope I can stay on schedule. Life goes on.

What do I want to do?

2006-01-13T14:31:00.000-05:00

Thinking aloud about some big questions in my life.

A bunch of important events are about to happen soon. I will be graduating and seeking employment. And I am getting married. I am often asked "what do you plan to do after you graduate?" I have never been particularly handy with an answer. Most of my life has just happened, without me taking very many active decisions. I have often picked something I like from a bunch of choices, but the choices have been fairly simple, almost taken by default because it seemed the best thing to do at the time. I have never really rebelled against what was expected of me, or questioned prevalent notions of success in any radical way. . .instead I continued just trying to do well in whatever I was doing and moving onto the next step. School, College, and now a PhD just happened with me mostly hanging on.

There are a bunch of things I enjoy doing. I like the scientific method, and I like being around smart people. . .I love the academic environment. I like music. . .both playing it and the social aspects of making it in a group. I like writing overall, as long as it's not for my thesis. I like learning new things when the fancy takes me. I would like to travel and experience life in a meaningful way. . .and if possible, make a positive difference to the world. I would also like to settle down and grow some roots. . . something I didn't experience while growing up. Having money and power would be nice, because I would hate being kicked around or exploited. . .but I feel I will outgrow them if I do achieve any significant status. Freedom is really nice. A good work-life balance would help.

At an age where many of my peers pursuing very specific career goals, in the interest of honesty, I find myself very lacking in focus. On some level, settling down to a job and a house in the suburbs seems too settled. Travelling in a transferrable job too unsettling. Academia seems too competitive and requiring too much personal sacrifice. . .though a tenured faculty position does seem like one of the best possible jobs in the world. The industry might be a good place, but I wonder about my temperament and how it will fit in a corporate environment. The Government seems to be good too from a "making a difference" point of view, but I am not a citizen. I think I'd thrive in an international job. . . but molecular biology or pharmacy is done inside a lab. Also (in spite of preparing for this for the past 7 years), am I really ready for marriage?

If my past life is anything to go by, things will work out. I will get a job. And I will probably make some sensible decisions when the time comes. . . and go for stability over adventure, marriage over singleness, a house over a rental. In the absence of very many clear ideas of what it is that I really want, I'll just wing it based on what comes my way. In some ways I am truly like this. In other ways, there are parallel lives I might have led. I am very fortunate to have as many options as I do. . . the position to dream so globally. Maybe thinking aloud on this blog is as far as I'll go to exploring the big wide exciting world of options and experiences that is potentially open to me.

Anyway. I'll get back to living my life. Instead of thinking about it. The nitty gritty of graduating. And when people ask me what I want to do after this, I'll confidently reply "I am looking for industrial postdocs and R&D positions in research institutes and pharma companies."

2006, Sudoku and Munich.

2006-01-03T23:30:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year everyone!

I pray that I graduate and get a good job and get on with life. That all my friends and family do well and find happiness and contentment. I hope the world at large grows towards a greener, more sustainable, future and that our policies are shaped by more long term self interest. So that we don't see huge weather changes and natural disasters that seemed to bug us through 2005. World peace would be a good idea too. Rule of good liberal laws to make the world less of a dog eat dog place. Basically, best wishes to all. One can hope.

Here is my Excel based Sudoku solving helper file. It completely solves all easy and medium levels puzzles at the Websudoku site, but it does get stuck on the difficult or evil ones. It's an easy way to cheat and get a fast time for the Telegraph Sudoku, where they'll display your name. But I guess that's not ethical. It basically can't do scenarios or anything using higher level logic, when the logic itself begins to get fuzzy. Come to think of it, at that stage I tend to get stumped on the puzzles too. . . maybe if I could figure out how to do them, I could teach my Excel sheet to do the same. Anyway, if people have comments on how to improve it do send me a line.

Saw a bunch of good movies over the holidays. The Squid and the Whale is a touching portrayal of a slightly obnoxious failing writer, his wife, a divorce, and the effect of it all on their two kids. Laura Linney is becoming one of my favourite actresses now, for her roles as silent and complicated women. . .like other intense women like Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. The other really good movie was Spielberg's Munich. It is a fairly violent but thought provoking movie about justice, revenge, and how far one can go to find these things without losing ones self.

In other news, I have (finally) submitted my book chapter. Hopefully it will come out in print soon. Hurrah. Now back to work.

Computer Christmas: Fried motherboards and other stories.

2005-12-28T23:43:00.000-05:00

It all started about a week ago. My computer screen, an old Samsung 753DF had been growing progressively darker. . . even with huge gamma compensation from my windows settings, one would have to strain to read stuff. So, we decided to buy a new LCD monitor that would both save on deskspace and provide better readability, an Acer AL1914. And since I am lugging around documents between work and home, and having a flash drive is cool. . .we bought a 1GB Corsair Flash drive. The pre-christmas package arrived on the 23rd evening, and I was very excited. We managed to admire the colors of the new screen, and try out the flash drive, before going out that evening for grocery shopping and a nice dinner at the Lebanese Taverna.

The next day, the excitement prompted me to do routine maintenance on my computer, to keep it in tip top shape. MSI, my motherboard manufacturer, comes out with an utility called Liveupdate, which checks with the manufacturer for new updates for motherboard drivers and utilities. It also checks for the latest BIOS, and I found that I was using an older version. I have done BIOS flashes before without a hassle using this Liveupdate utility, so I decided to go ahead and flash while having breakfast on New Years eve. The BIOS failed to flash giving write verify errors. After trying 3 times, the computer became unstable and I had to restart. And the computer refused to reboot.

So, I spent a miserable day trying to feed the computer a healthy BIOS through floppy drives and stuff, and the motherboard refused to eat. I did manage to retrieve my papers (on which I have deadlines), by assembling my old computer together and hooking my harddrives to that. By evening, I had to get out of home, because it was beginning to dawn on me that there was little left to be done. Except buy a new motherboard.

So, we got a new motherboard. I got it in the mail today at 3:00 PM. I got the computer up and running by 6:00. Hurrah. Alls well that ends well. Still, I am shocked at how codependent I have become with my computer. . . and the profound feeling of loss I experience when it is not there.

After getting the system together, I uninstalled Liveupdate. Never again.

In other news, Ishan, Supratik, Bugs, Manocha, et. al. gifted us with a kickass home theater speaker system as a wedding present. Though ideally we should be hooking it up to our television using a receiver, for the time being I decided to hook it up to my computer. So now, I have a 7 speaker surround (including a big subwoofer) to enhance my Half-Life2 experience. The sound effects are especially cool when watching movies over the computer because things sound like they are zooming past you.

Audio. Video. Memory. It's been a great Christmas.

I have also discovered the joy's of Sudoku. It started off with a puzzle in New Scientist. It had 17 clues on a Sudoku board. . .apparently the minimum possible number of clues that a puzzle can have and still have an unique solution. That took my two-late night before-bedtime sessions to solve (3-4 hours). . .but it got me hooked at trying to figure this whole Sudoku thing it. Over time, I figured I was approaching the whole thing too probabilistically. . .and that the whole thing can be done far more intuitively without writing possibilities of numbers in every square. That got me writing a piece of software that I will put up soon on this site (it gives great suggestions, but gets stuck in some tougher sections of the puzzle. . .I'll post it after I have ironed those issues out). I also managed to get Anyesha hooked. . . so that's good.

Voss

2005-12-20T01:03:00.000-05:00

This weekend we went to Union Station to pay homage to Voss. It is absolutely the best water out there. Pure from Norwegian springs. In fact, it is not really water. It's an experience. Our first experience with it was at a rooftop bar in a skyscraper in Chicago last Thanksgiving. The condition for getting a place to enjoy the awesome view from the 100th floor was that one had to order drinks. Some of us ordered water. Nay, Voss. And it was the best we ever had. At $4 for a small bottle, it better be worth it. Order your bottle today.

At the Union Station we also saw the big Christmas tree. But trees don't have the same purity of design.

Anyway to recap my life since my last post:
1. I almost finished writing my book chapter. I was supposed to hand it in on the 15th of December, but I came back with more corrections. Now I am blogging in between the rewrites. . .because at least here the words flow freely out of me.
2. Christmas is all around. The spirit of not working is all over the University when I do go there. When I don't. . .after a day of writing at home, I usually need to get out to stretch my legs and see living creatures. On days we don't go to the gym and it's too cold to walk outside, Anyesha and I go to nearby malls. God bless Christmas consumerism.
3. Watched some good movies.
Syriana is a highly recommended thriller about the way the oil business runs. And the world runs. Both revolve at their own pace, in a continuum of action and reaction. At the end, you don't completely understand it. It is vaguely troubling, but you don't really see how things could be different. Because no one really has the power (or so it seems) to change anything by themselves. Governments, oil company executives, green peace activists, CIA agents, and terrorists are merely pawns in a gigantic game where nobody really has any power and everyone is merely reacting to their conditions.
Brokeback Mountain is a sad love story. The idea that it is two men who love each other is incidental. But then, that is what the movie will be known for I guess.
4. I am currently reading Vikram Seth's "Two Lives". Halfway through. It is a well written account of the lives of Vikram Seth's Indian uncle and German aunt who lived through some of the most historic events of the 20th Century. The first hand experiences of the second world war and the holocaust, through their letters to friends, family, and each other, bring their life and times alive in a touching way.

Anyway. These updates to my blog will continue to be somewhat erratic. . .relegated to times when my brain stops functioning towards my thesis work. This spottiness is likely to continue until I graduate. Hmmm. Happy Holidays everyone.

A meeting of friends.

2005-11-28T15:10:00.000-05:00

Abhishek, Sunayana and Amlan flew down for our annual Thanksgiving tradition. It was a fun and eventful distraction from all the work at hand-- four days of talking, shopping, arguing, watching movies, sleeping late, and doing what friends who are practically family, do. Ayush, Theron, and Supratik also joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, which was a massive culinary affair. Anyesha has been planning and conspiring with Ayush, Theron and Abhishek for weeks now over the menu. It was quite a spread-- chicken, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce out of a can, pot pie, sparkling peach drinks, stuffing, rice appetizers. . . After stuffing ourselves sillier than our chicken, we watched "Salaam Namaste". It was a hoot, watching it in an irreverent group.

The next day we decided to find out what Black Friday is all about, and went shopping to Anne Arundel Mills. Amlan bought some fleece jackets, Anyesha and Sunayana bought shoes. Among other things. The evening was spent creatively painting pots at Color-me-mine. I tried recreating my Potter's Life pot on a mug, and Anyesha made a coffee mug with warm colors. Theron added a pastel-blue dragon to his dinosaur collection. Abhishek made a Salsa bowl with elemental stick figures dancing around a central fire. Sunayana decorated a Jewellery box. Amlan wrote recursive statements and Maxwells equations on a Grecian urn. Ayush made a nice vase, and dripped paint over it for effect. My friends are like this.

After some Burmese cuisine at Mandalay, we decided to retire to College Perk for some hanging out. Amlan, Abhishek, Ayush, and I launched into a big argument about the gay rights movement is all about. The discussion wasn't so entertaining for the rest of the gang.

When we got home, it was only 2:00 AM. So we decided to watch Parineeta. . .which was a watchable passable movie with good songs.

Saturday, we got up late and planned to go to Indique for lunch. But we got up late. So we had lunch at Le Madeleine's instead and hung out in Bethesda. We couldn't convince Amlan to buy an i-pod, and window shopped at artsy-fartsy stores. This was followed by a little Ikea, before heading home and having some good old home cooked khichuri. After a round of singing obscure songs from the 1950s, we settled down to watch "Sarkar". . .which was made in intense and comical slow motion.

Singh and Sunayana left on Sunday morning. Amlan and I discussed the dangers of selling out to the forces in Academia, and in the evening we hung out with Ayush and Theron over tea. In the evening, we watched the new Pride and Prejudice movie at Greenbelt theater. . .which I liked very much. Because they took the upper lip and grounded Britishness into reality-- like pigs, farms, hay, and stuff.

So that was that. Thanksgiving 2005. Hmmmm. Now, back to the grind.

If I had more time. . .

2005-11-16T15:38:00.000-05:00

If I had more time nowadays, I would be playing more Civilization 4.

I wouldn't be finishing my second paper, and beginning work on my Book Chapter on Drosophila innate immune systems mechanism for recognizing pathogens. I wouldn't be chasing down references, beginning to worry about jobs, thinking about my future, and writing frantically. I wouldn't be facing writers block, and finding myself unable to write the simplest technical sentence, paralysed by an editorial mind that finds nothing written good enough. I would be taking my Settler, and founding a mighty capital city near a river.

Then, I'd get some warriors and scouts and start exploring the nearby terrain. I'd be building on farms one every irrigated area, roads to resources, mines, and other improvements. I'd focus on infrastructure and science, while I just maintain enough military might to deter other neighbouring civilizations from attacking me. I'd inadvertently found a couple of religions, and not having played civ 4 before, not know what to do with the missionaries. . .and not convert my neighbours to my religion effectively. After expanding my borders and focussing on education and diplomacy, trade, and creating good infrastructure within my borders, I'd be a mighty civilization. I'd be churning out great artists, engineers, and scientists who'd usher my civilization into a Golden Age. Being a peace loving nation, I'd embrace a representative emancipated type of government, with free market values. . . which would make my government extremely wealthy. So I can afford to keep upgrading my military to continue to be an effective deterrent to agressive neighbours. In time, I'd embrace environmentalism and embrace Conservationism and pass UN resolutions using diplomatic maneuverings, to convince everyone to adopt a sustainable developmental goal.

I'd found an empire that's a beacon of freedom, democracy, and possibility in the world. I'd trade with everyone, discourage conflict, and be a force for peace in the World. My people would love me, and celebrate with fireworks over half of my cities.

But I don't have time. Because I am busy trying to graduate.

Lots been going on.

2005-11-15T01:36:00.000-05:00

Writing academic papers has left me bereft of expressing emotions or writing like a normal human being about anything non-specific. That sentence didn't make much sense. So there. So in bulleted text, I will summarise my past few weeks.

1. Anu dropped by from Buffalo for the Neuroscience conference in Washington DC. We were meeting after 4 years, and the Lucknow gang along with respective better halves went to Silver Spring for a Tex Mex Lunch.
2. Vishnu gave a press conference at the Neuroscience conference and likened it to the Kumbh Mela. The Dalai Lama spoke at the beginning of the conference about meditations effects on the brain. That's Lama with one L.
3. Went to a bunch of book signings. First, Jorge Cham dropped by to promote his book "Life is tough and then you graduate." I won a PhD mug (lucky me! the event had a p-value of roughly 0.01) It was a very entertaining talk with a kernel of wisdom in it. . .that it's ok to let your mind wander and procrastinate. . .sometimes great things have come out of procrastination. There is always something you should be doing, but it is ok to do other things. Usually.
4. The grass only grows where it is watered. The Dalai Lama might have said that. Or Jorge. Or someone wise.
5. Vikram Seth gave a great introduction to his new book "Two Lives" at Politics and Prose. He is one of my favourite authors of all time. This particular book seems more like a memoir about the life and times of his Indian uncle and German aunt in England. His Golden Gate turned me into a poet. That rhymes.
6. Amrit wrote wonderful things about everyone in the band in his website.
7. Here is a photo of Nandini and her baby Anika. Who turned three months yesterday. I haven't blogged about this earlier, (or have I?) but Anyesha and I went to the hospital three months ago. . .when she first arrived. So we are watching the baby grow in front of our eyes. Which is interesting because time seemed to have slowed down in many other aspects of my life.
8. I just finished writing the first draft of my second paper. It is 2:00 AM. I should go to bed.

Diwali Show

2005-11-02T18:52:00.000-05:00

I have been extremely busy lately with writing 3 papers in as many months, and generally trying to wrap up my PhD. In between it all, we managed to give a performance for Diwali Last Night. The audience was about a hundred strong, and the performance was one of the best we have ever done. This was also the first time the venue was public and free, therefore most of our friends could come and see what we have accomplished over so many months of practicing. The songs we have written were very well received, and we were well rewarded by a very enthusiastic crowd. . .with two encores after our program had officially ended.

After Ayan and Sowmya left rather suddenly, with both going off to pursue their careers in Arizona and Georgia respectively, the future of Antardhwani had become extremely uncertain. Meanwhile Mainak was expected to be out of town during the Diwali performance night, leaving us without a percussionist. As luck would have it, Anyesha's childhood friend Bhismadev was visitting us from Cambridge for an internship thing at the NIH. . .and he is an extremely gifted Tabla player. Rajat and Mathangi decided to pitch in with the vocals, and they gave a stellar performance last night. To top it all off, Beer played the dholak on his drums adding some unmistakable impact to our "Taal se Taal mila" performance. Thus, though things seemed bleak at one point. . . they worked out serendipitously at the end.

SCI took us out to dinner to Plato's afterwards.

In other news, I have been extremely busy. As a result, I haven't been updating my blog as often as I'd like to. And this irregularitiy will probably continue until I graduate.

What else.
Watched the Durga Puja at Kali Bari when it happened. It was crowded, homely, and nice.
Watched "P.S"-- a movie where Laura Linney and Topher Grace give an excellent performance. It was one of those movies that I don't completely understand, but know it is very good. The director conveyed something intangible about age, death, and experience. . .I just don't really know what, or whether I completely see life that way. But I am also young.
I am not looking forward to this wedding in India. The more I think about all the rituals, being the unwanted center of attention, and all these people whom I don't know thronging around, it gives me the creeps. I guess it will just have to be tolerated somehow. As confuscious said, ". . . relax and enjoy it."
Got hold of a copy of Civilization IV. I am not playing it. If I do, I will never graduate.
Happy Diwali to all.

Sold.

2005-10-13T19:34:00.000-04:00

Now She is gone. She was a good car.

New-s.

2005-09-28T14:59:00.000-04:00

Since I last blogged, the following has happened:
1. We bought a brand new white 2006 Toyota Corolla LE. It’s beautiful.
2. We are trying to sell our old car. Buzz me if you are interested in buying a trusty black ’92 Honda Accord LX with 115K miles on it. For about $2500.
3. Busy with work. But then, who isn’t.
4. Watched “The Lord of War” and “Constant Gardener”. Both are great movies. Makes you think about the value of human life, and the nature of exploitation. “The Lord of War” particularly makes you confront a kind of evil that underlies the weapons industry. M. Scott Peck (Of “The Road less traveled” fame) describes it as the “the evil of compartmentalization”. That you could be doing your job, but in order to maintain a clear conscience, you don’t connect the dots and see how that job may hurt people who you wouldn’t normally want to hurt. The idea that the Nazi concentration camp wardens were merely, “doing their job”, and that “if they didn’t, somebody else would have”, and stuff like that. It’s also interesting how we apply similar logic to less sinister situations, as justification for something that would otherwise prick our conscience.
5. The Hurricanes happened. They blowed. Though there is limited concrete scientific causation between global warming and these hurricanes, I personally suspect that there is one. Then we promptly went and bought a car.
6. Anyesha’s parents left. They reached India safely, and it seems like they had a nice trip here overall.

7. We hit a deer. It was 7 in the evening, traffic was moving slowly (50 MPH) on MD-295 and visibility was good. I have driven faster there when it has been darker. This deer just walks onto the road, stares at me, I swerve the car to avoid it by going onto the buffer road area on the right near the rumble strips, and the deer tries to run back into the woods and onto my headlights. Headlights smash, car dents. We stop the car. The deer is still alive. It is removed to the side of the road. We call park police. And then go on our way. Shaken. We dish out an extra 250$ for headlights on a car that we were planning to sell anyway.
8. Anyesha tagged me. Because of the tagging, I haven’t updated my blog. Because of this huge pressure to write a witty 55 word short story, and that pressure is squelching the activation energy required to write my thoughts down. At some point, I will do the tags and pass them on.
9. Statcounter is cool.
10. Antardhwani recorded two songs, and we are about to make our own CD of original compositions. Sit tight. . .they’ll be published shortly. Recording songs is hard work though.

The cabbies of New York.

2005-09-06T13:55:00.000-04:00

This Labor Day weekend we all went to New York. Taking gasoline prices ($3.5 a gallon), toll, and parking into account, we decided to take the Greyhound into the city. Also with Anyesha's parents in tow, we didn't want to exert ourselves too much walking around. . .so we took a bunch of cabs. Anyesha's blog says that I won't write about my cabbie conversations. So I am proving her wrong.

The first cabbie was from Bangladesh. He transported us from Port Authority Greyhound Terminal to Pravin's house. He told me how he knew lots of people from Calcutta. And how he used to work for an IT company in New Jersey, and is currently employed with a smaller IT firm. How the cab actually earns him more dollars per hour worked, than his real job. How once you have the cab driving license, you can rent cabs to drive around. . .for all the non-taxable income.

The second cabbie was a Greek dude who didn't talk much. He took us from Pravin's house to Madame Toussauds later on, Saturday evening. He was angry at the authorities, making all cabbies record where they picked up passengers, and where they dropped them off on a table. Once, while he was busy writing all this stuff to please the beaurucrats, his passenger stepped off of the cab and got hit by a speeding bicyclist. The lady was fine, but his cab door had to be fixed, at his own expense. He was waiting for the day when GPS installed in cabs will automatically record his movements, so that he doesn't have to waste time on paperwork.

After clicking a bunch of photos at Toussauds and walking through Times Square to the Rockefeller Center, we took a cab with this guy from Nigeria. He guessed I was new to the cab hailing business, from the unsure way in which I apparently hailed the cab. He wondered aloud whether some of my uneasiness was because he was black. He told me about the greater physical strength that black people possess, and that in groups they can easily overpower those who aren't. "Look what is happening in Iraq", he said. I pointed out that some of the reason why the US was "winning" the war is because of superior technology. . . mental prowess rather than physical force. Then he said something about whether I really thought the US was winning, and we fell into a short silence. Before he guessed that I am a PhD student. He said he can tell these things just by looking at me and the way I talk. His day job was with a bioremediation company, and he wanted to know whether I study the immunity of fruit flies so that I can get rid of them. Flies are pests that transfer disease. I said we study flies more because of the similarities between their immune systems and ours. Then we arrived at Pravin's place.

Next Morning, this cabbie from Ghana picked us up. He works for 5-6 months in NYC as a cabbie, saving up money. So that he can go back to Ghana the remaining months to visit his family there. His kids were born in the US, and they are US citizens. But he felt that kids grow up without a sense of cultural identity in this country. . .and he wants to bring his kids back here after they have finished their basic schooling in Ghana. He guessed we were tourists because we asked him to take us Ground Zero. His other story was, that he had taken a flight out of JFK airport on September 11th. . .he was on a KLM flight headed towards Amsterdam when the incident happened. He described the ensuing chaos afterwards at Amsterdam, and how lucky he felt that he wasn't inside America with all the airports shut down, in the aftermath of the tragedy.

We checked out the financial district, Staten Island Ferry, took a subway up to Penn station, ate at Manhattan Mall, and didn't check out the Empire state Building because of a 4 hour queue to get on top. We took a cab back, and the guy didn't say much.

Monday afternoon, we were heading back to Port Authority to catch our bus back to DC. The cabbie was a Lata Mangeshkar fan from Pakistan. We got into a discussion about sound proofing ones basement, and expensive audio recording equipment. He professionally is in the music business. He spoke about how great Lata Mangeshkar, Noosrat Fateh Ali Khan, Asha Bhosle, are. He played a tape of Lata on the cab. He seemed a little disappointed that my band does modern stuff. . .that it doesn't aspire to the greatness of those original masters.

The closed mind.

2005-08-26T10:56:00.000-04:00

Over the past two weeks, I have been arguing more than I usually do. With a variety of people, over a variety of issues. Most of which are of no consequence (because we don't actually have any power to do anything about them), but we all feel very passionate about them. Arguments generally tend to drain me emotionally. While I like the general sportsmanly duelling of ideas between friends (much like a game of tennis), and indeed that is what my friends and I do when we meet. . . I don't like having to do it with people who I regard as closed minded.

Closed mindedness stems from some sort of belief in absolutes. It is a relatively black and white type of thinking, with the idea that there is only one (or few) right road to Rome. The individual can intuit the right way, know it from "experience", or argue for it with all the legitimate reasons why that road is best. And often the closed mindedness is not because the reasons are not right. . . but rather because there are many other good roads to Rome, and it is a matter of personal choice which one takes. Because all these other possibilities are rejected without proper consideration.

Somewhere down the line, the choice of the road to take has been confused. Because it is a choice. It is not written in stone. And even if someone has written it in stone, we don't have to follow it. We have to do what takes us where we as humans want to go. We have to take responsibility, for our security and our future. We are not stuck in some circle of cause and effect. . .self awareness and thought can allow us to take proactive decisions to break out of undesirable cycles and get into desirable ones. We decide what Rome is and what it will look like. With a very healthy dose of realism (acknowledging those cycles and understanding them) so that we are not just building Roman castles in the clouds.

One of the most pristine forms of closed mindedness is Extremism. It is a pure ideology. It goes all the way, being pure and extreme in whatever it is saying. Therefore, it has a simple unambiguous message that everyone can understand. Though in practice nothing is simple, and faced with the complexities of decision making in a complex world. . . all that extremism manages to do is dull the mind down enough so that you have followers who follow a leader. Closed mindedness is basically a phenomenon of not-thinking, an anti-ideology. And it is ironic that most ideologies in their most pristine form, taken out of context, cleaned up, and put on a pedestal. . .become anti-ideology. As dead and beautiful as idols in a temple. Inside the temples, you can worship it, but you can't really think with it. (Though what these idols represent are concepts, which are the building blocks of thought and discussion).

There is a place for not thinking. Corporate and military structures. . .indeed any hierarchial human organization would not function if followers did not follow. . .and started second guessing their commanders. Patriotism and Professionalism are beautiful idols. And these organizations can get things done with great efficiency. It seems that as nations on the whole try to get more efficient, this kind of stratification will become more and more prevalent. Trust your leader because they know what is right.

Most everyone in the world wants Peace. Yet there is war. Sometimes it is because of limited resources that one has to share, or about one ideologies prevalence over another. War is a very emotionally draining and mostly unnecessary argument. Henry Louis Mencken said: "If you want peace, work for justice."

It is difficult to have an openminded conversation about anything one does not have the power to do anything about. We don't argue about whether we need to vacuum the house, or buy a new car. Not usually anyway. Those are decisions we take, and we live with the consequences. We argue about politics mostly. Economics, Environment, Human rights. Abortion. The war. The lack of knowledge simulates a closed minded condition. Sometimes vested interests don't want us to know. Sometimes, knowledge does not solve the basic dillemma and one needs to look at the consequences of the choices, to decide. In either case, when one thinks this way. . .considering all the different possibilities. . . that is when it is fun arguing. It's like trying on different clothes in a department store. . . trying on different thought models. . . without getting too fanatical about a pair of Jeans.

So that's that. My meta-level argument for not getting to attached to ideas. Moral relativism they call it. That way one can flit, float, take responsibility, have fun, and die. That is how I am: closed mindedly standing for open mindedness.

Seven Years and computers.

2005-08-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, we recorded "Seven Years". Do check it out. Words by Alap and Amrit, Music by Amrit, Alap. I did some of the music but mostly the mixing and production. It is a lot of fun, even a somewhat obsessive process, doing these compositions. One of my favourite quotes, that make me feel like my head is going to explode is by Andrew Koenig: "Abstraction is selective ignorance". I feel there is something of that in the composition process too.

In the movie "school of rock", Jack Black says that Rock music is all about "sticking it to the man". You need to be angry. Or in love. You need to feel strongly about something. Can't just sit back and be harmonious and complete. Can there be a music of completion and contentment? That wouldn't be music. . .that would sound like. . .cows mooing in a meadow and birds chirping on a sunny day. When a melody hits you, you can't think its antithesis. . .that causes destructive interference and silence.

Ok. That's enough pseudo-intellectualism for one day. I am also reminded of this line from Cactus flower (which can be adapted to read): "A tune struck me. I struck back."

Anyway. I am going to try to be ticked off about something. There is plenty in the world that I am ticked off about. Work up a frenzy. Write some music. Hmmmm. (All of this is really me, looking at the water and not jumping in.)

Not to lose my techie touch, it's time to talk about what is cool in the computer world. This guy has built a computer with just fans. It's fairly ugly, but cool. Apparently it does not cool PC's any better than the one/two fan conventional towers. It must be making a lot of noise though, the whirr of all those fans together.

The other cool thing is this computer desk from Lian Li Industrial. It is truly made with computers in mind. With power sockets, wire holders, multimedia ports, all built into the main desk unit. It's the desk of the future. But then, I think it costs as much as all the furniture we bought from Ikea to furnish Anyesha's appartment. So one needs a hi-tech salary to lead the hi-tech life.

Jatra poster inspires inspection into origin of musical culture.

2005-08-09T10:43:00.000-04:00

I just love this poster on BBC. It is for a theater production, discussing the prominent issues of the London Bomb Blasts and the Asian Tsunami. The colors and dramatization. . .the cultural synthesis. So at home stuck on the walls of public places in India, yet so caricaturable from this distance. (The rest of this post isn't about the poster at all).

It's the same way when we look back on the 70's, we can caricature it. A time of bell bottoms, Abba, and bad hair. From today's perspective. We can caricature something in retrospect, standing somewhere else. But if you are living and breathing within the times. . . say right now. . . we won't really know what makes us distinctive. If our band writes a song now (and we have been writing several. . .check out Amrit's site.) it sounds normal/neutral to us. We have explored all the possibilities to make a sound that. . .just sounds right. Someone else listening to us from another country, planet, or time would say, "this sounds like so and so". Maybe we will be grouped in with Rock musicians in the 90's. It is astonishing how all the bands breaking the rules, exploring sonic space with the then available technology, can today just be grouped as bands from the 70's. . .and how we can make out a 70's sound. . .a very specific feel of 70's music. What then is our real capacity for innovation?

I admire bands who have found their own sound. I find the process somewhat mystical. And while we lose biodiversity on this planet, we appear to be losing cultural diversity too. Because it is very hard to hold on and continue thinking like a different culture, when all these other influences are available to you. This is not really a problem. . .in fact it is what makes modern society rich. But as I sit around at my keyboard and try to compose stuff, I realize that the lines between "Indian" and "Western" music. . .between hollywood and bollywood are blurring. And a pure form of one or the other doesn't really. . .come out of me.

Which leads me to believe that the creative process is really dependent on limitations. Something has to constrain you e.g. the piano can't sound like an elephant. But by trying to play the piano as if it sounds like an elephant (really stupid example). . .you get at a tonal character that can be new. And in the process of breaking free of limitations, new stuff gets created. Furthermore, I believe certain genres of music get created because of the inherent limitations of certain instruments. . . pianists really discovered the piano with some intricate sonatas, and spanish guitars did their gypsy songs with guitars. . .and it almost seems as if sonatas and gypsy songs as genres wouldn't be created were it not for people trying to see where their instruments take them.

Of course, while writing this I am also aware of the antithesis of this point. . .of how new technologies give us so many more options to create and express the sounds we want. Choices. Where would modern music be without samplers, sequencers, soft-synths, and unlimited sonic capabilities?

Anyway. I am glad that music as an art form still hasn't gone into the levels of meaninglesness as modern art. Pleasing your listening audience (as opposed to making a rich person feel good and cultured about himself by selling him esoteric art that his less cultured friends will not understand) is a way to ground oneself into reality. Provided, musicians as artists want to be grounded that way. Perhaps that is a limitation in itself, that can be explored for creative wealth.

In other news, I have lost my wallet. I can't drive, and have cancelled my credit cards. Anyesha writes about my anguish here.

Boring Politics and Opinions

2005-08-05T15:06:00.000-04:00

My life is mostly boring. I do research, and every once in a while something cool happens. I also have some other interests such as music. . .which are mostly of interest only to me. A narrative on what I did on a given week, in my blog is as a result. . .equally boring. Politics on the other hand is exciting, and controversial, and something that can be argued about. It improves readership, encourages discussion, and raises my blog in rankings with sites such as technorati.

So should I sell out and discuss my uncensored controversial opinions on various topics, and add to the hustle and bustle of political debate (or lack thereof)? Or is that boring too?

I figured, I think like someone in my demographic can be predicted to think. I am a graduate student in a scientific career path. Therefore articles such as this enrage me. . .and make me want to shout out to the world all the scientific arguments in favor of evolution. And you don't even want to get me started on how many loopholes. . .and the lack of predictions. . .and problems that "Intelligent Design" has. Nobody can argue against a healthy debate, which is what the statements appear to imply. Teach both as parallel, equally plausible, theories. But science is fairly good at encouraging and having competing theories battle it out in Journal publications, until at the end (hopefully) the truth triumphs. Like other human enterprises it is not perfect. But overall, the scientific system works. So I believe. Because I am where I am.

Which leads me to wonder. . .are my opinions boring too? They are so predictable. If we can lump the opinions of all those red-state, bible belt, evangelical potato farmers into one big pro-intelligent design demographic. . .then they can say the same for us. Us and them. I am sure some very well paid people do the math when they are trying to decide what their political parties should stand for. . .and what issues the media should hype so that the talking points during the elections, favor their parties chances of winning, by matching the majority opinion.

So there is a powerlesness in being a statistic like this, that I resent. I, we, have all been accounted for. Our voices have been used or drowned, and our consent manufactured by creating artificial boundaries of them and us. One constant in all this, is that we will always fight for "US", especially if we are threatened. We are driven by necessity. We are behaving exactly like how we would have been expected to behave. Everyone is.

We are born into a huge continuum of cause and effect, that is the world. At some point, it becomes a question of "Where do you want the your life/the world to go?" and how do we get there. It becomes all about acting towards that vision, which should be as global as possible. . .instead of reacting to the past. And in order to have as globaly a vision as possible, we need the truth. . .and science is a great human institution designed specifically to study these material truths. India's national emblem says "Satyameva Jayate"-- Ultimately truth wins. If that is true, it gives me great cause for hope and optimism. That can be the basis of real leadership.

In conjunction with the meaninglesness of my opinions, Amlan wrote a post on whether penguins believe in God. Which goes very nicely with this theme.

In other news, Anyesha's parents and I went to Luray Caverns this Saturday. The drive was amazing, and the caves were spectacular.

Our car is also having some issues. On Thursday it had broken down in the middle of Langley Park with Anyesha and her mom. We repaired the distributor, which apparently was the problem. . .but the mechanics must not have put the car back together right. After returning from Luray, we find engine oil splattered all over under the hood. I love my '92 Honda Accord, and I hate it when stuff like this happens. Got more fighting with the mechanic tomorrow.

The Island

2005-08-02T01:35:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, on the spur of the moment, Supratik and I decided to head off after school to watch Island. We were fairly entertained by the movie.

The movie is about a company called Mereck (sounds a lot like Merck) in the business of growing clones of wealthy patrons in a controlled environment, so that they can be harvested for organs should the patron succumb to an accident. To prevent ethical issues involved with this process, the company keeps the whole operation a secret. As one of the characters points out, "Just because you want to eat a hamburger, doesn't mean you have to meet the cow". It seems the normal humans would rather not know how their organs were grown. . . or want to meet their clones in person. We'd rather not know how society really functions, as long as we get to live in a nice house in the suburbs and we can feel good about ourselves.

By taking the slippery slope very far, the film does present a somewhat pro-life messages. The clones are babies. They are human. Is it ethical for companies to own, grow, mate, and harvest humans for. . . the betterment of other humans. . .or the progress of science.

While I personally see great promise in Biotechnology. . . both in terms of amazing advancements in healthcare and nutrition for all humanity. . .I do sometimes wonder how these benefits will be shared and distributed. It seems, life can today be patented. This understanding led to a mad rush to patent the Neem tree and put a copyright on Basmati. This trend is pretty disturbing.

I tend to argue with my friend Amlan a lot about "evil" biotech corporations, and I usually side with the companies. . .defending their right to research biology, and justifying profits for their motivational role in driving this great machine of progress. But I often do feel, that at some point. . .capitalism has to be put in its place. At some point, one does have to ask the question: benefit/progress for who? And ask whether the system really promotes the greatest common good. If not, do the rest of us really have to accept it? For some reason, wealth is not wealth unless it is owned by an individual or corporation. . .thereby providing very little value for clean air, or the unpatented biodiversity. And once the slippery slope of drawing borders around property starts. . .the picket fences around houses, the borders around countries, even life has to be catalogued and owned. If we truly want freedom, we have to learn to share some of these things. . .so that we don't all become commodities.

Hmmm. I usually try to keep this blog politics free. This movie didn't particularly inspire me to go on this rant. But I feel there are some large forces shaping our world today. . .winds of globalization and resistance against it. . . technology making the world smaller, yet also hypnotizing us. . .dividing us into small clusters of "people just like us". I struggle to understand these forces, and try to judge the paradoxes they represent. . . never quite sure who it is that we are really working for.

Anyway. Scarlett Johansson is really cute in the movie. She starts off looking average. . .and then she starts to grow on you. Also watch Lost in Translation, and In Good Company, for more Scarlett. Overall rating B+.

Sowmya's Graduation Party

2005-07-31T02:26:00.000-04:00

This Saturday, we had a great time at Sowmya's graduation party. Antardhwani was there in full gear, to make a night of it. After dinner, we started with our main repertoire, and went on to some free style jamming. Though we weren't playing too loud, I suppose it did go on till fairly late (11:30 PM). . .and
the lady upstairs was fairly bothered. She called the cops on us. And screamed at us. I guess it is one of those milestones in a groups career. Improves our respectability as a band to be a little anti-establishment.

But anyway. The music was good. And we performed our heart out to friends and family. Anyesha's parents couldn't make it. Earlier that day, we had all gone to DC to visit the Natural History and American History museums, followed by the white house. We did the 3D IMAX show, which was pretty awesome. . . and her parents loved it. So they were tired, and decided to retire early.

In other news. . .we got very well compensated for our Delhi School of Economics concert. So that was yet another thing to celebrate today. Financially we have managed to recover all our expenses so far. So I guess we have been having all this fun for free. This whole music thing has become the focus of my weekends these days. But then we don't have any shows lined up in the near future. So we can spend some time recording and composing. Growing in those very necessary directions.

Delhi School of Economics Show

2005-07-26T15:23:00.000-04:00

It was a complete success!

Actually, the whole weekend went pretty well. On Friday night we had a dress-rehearsal/party at Amrit's place. Sowmya happened to drop by. And happened to agree to join us for the big show. Which was wonderful, and we quickly incorporated her into the main practice routine. . .which we did in front of a live Audience comprised of many of Amrit's girlfriends. Amrit's pretty resourceful at this sort of thing. The real fun began after the rehearsal ended, and the impromptu singing began. There are few things better than being in a band.

Saturday, DU Economics group got together at Nyumburu. It was a very official, professional affair with most of the "delegates" suited and booted. Our show started at around 9:30, and went phenomenally well. The sound mix was perfect (thanks to Anyesha). This was also our first debut of all our new gear. . .Mainak's HPD-15, Amrit's V-amp system, Alaps bass guitar, and Supratik's new rhythm guitar. . . and our sound was completely professional. I am fairly amazed at what we have become. . . and the quality we are beginning to achieve.

In the midst of it all, we snapped a D-string on the lead guitar. . .and Amrit took a breather while he tried to fix it. In the meantime, Ayan, Sowmya, and the rest of us did some impromptu numbers. . .including Pehla Nasha (which I love playing). . . I particularly liked how we had the coordination to just keep going. It was a very satisfying 1:30 hour performance.

Barcode.

2005-07-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

If you scan this code, you'll get: The barcode value for a 27 year old male that lives in India, is 67 inches in height, and weights 165 pounds is: $0.36.

(The value of a person living in the US is a little higher, but the country code {the first number of the bar code} is a boring 1). There. Scan me.

New Gear

2005-07-14T10:12:00.000-04:00

Last week, in anticipation of our upcoming performance at Nyumburu, Amrit, Alap and I went to Guitar center to buy a bass guitar. The store is more "corporate" than Washington Music, and is very organized and clean. I personally love the Washington music store, but its main showroom is packed with instruments and too many people are around browsing them. . . this makes for a distinct lack of peace. When I had gone there to buy my keyboards, I was not impressed with the Korg Tritons, simply because I couldn't hear them properly and play with them in peace. . .there were too many people in the room. The Guitar Center at Twinbrook is a relatively quite, spacious place. After a point these chains start looking like Disneyland.

But I wasn't complaining. . . while Alap and Amrit tried out many different bass guitars, scrutinizing the crunchiness, reverberence, and sustains of their individual sounds, and trying out different pick-up settings, I'd pop over to the keyboard room and play the good stuff. Yamaha Motifs, Roland Fantoms, and Korg Tritons. I kind of figured what makes a professional keyboard professional. .. and what the big deal about them is. I suppose these keyboards require a different kind of thinking. For my purposes, the casio was still the best buy. . . but I admire the sound making potential that they have packed into some of these big boys.

We finally settled on an Ibanez bass guitar. Prior to this, the bass phat sounds in our music had to be provided by me holding down the chords with the left hand. . .now we fill in those frequencies beautifully and expressively with Alap's picking. . .and since the stuff is picked it goes better with the prevalent rhythm of the song. We have to record some of this stuff.

We also ordered the Behringer V-Amp 2 to add all the effects to the electric guitars. And this unit is really cool. For 80 bucks, we are getting a library of effects that would have cost us many hundreds to buy individually. I can't wait to get together this sunday and do a proper run of Sayonee. . .with the electric distortion and the playful bass, the song is bound to rock.

Professor Amlan and Anyesha's parents.

2005-07-11T13:21:00.000-04:00

Too much has been going on over the past two weeks. Amlan came down on his whirlwind USA tour to spend 3 days relaxing at Maryland. We did the usual fun stuff: "discussed" all the "isms", coffee'd at New Deal, hung out at Silver Spring, and went to the Folk Life Festival.

Shortly after that, Anyesha's parents came over. They have been settling into life here over the past week, and feeding me every night. The digital cable at Anyesha's new place is quite interesting, so we have been playing with that. And the weekends are spent showing the parents around the area. This photo was taken at Baltimore, inner harbor.

In other news, Alap has bought a new bass guitar, and it has changed our sound. We are also about to receive a Behringer V-amp 2 digital fx box for the lead guitars. . . which we are hoping will take our "Sayonee" performance to a whole new level of authenticity. All this, with the immediate goal of giving a great show on July 23rd, at the Delhi School of Economics Alumni Meet.

Fagelbo

2005-06-27T18:18:00.000-04:00

Over the past few weeks, we have been setting up Anyesha's new apartment. This is a picture of the actual Fagelbo that we bought.

Committee Meeting

2005-06-16T10:25:00.000-04:00

My committee meeting yesterday went fairly well. I did get grilled pretty intensely grilled. It hurt. I guess the take home message is "publish and we'll let you graduate". Which is the message I was expecting. And in order to publish I need a lot more work. So it was a sobering experience. I am going to start writing my paper today. . .and then proceed to plug in holes in my work as I watch my paper materialize.

Ikea shopping.

2005-06-10T11:44:00.000-04:00

Here is a photo of the sofa I mentioned in my previous post. Anyesha and I went Ikea Shopping this Wednesday. We have been trying to track down the Fagelbo. . .the sofa that I am all excited about, for a while now. It turns into a bed, and has a whole bunch of storage at the bottom. It was always out of stock. Finally, on Wednesday Anyesha got the call that two fresh Fagelbo's have just come in. We rushed in and booked it.

Dinner with the band.

2005-06-06T17:55:00.000-04:00

On Friday night, all of us went toSkewers to celebrate our first "professional" performance. It was a nice enough place, and the kababs were pretty awesome. Later that night, Mainak demo's his new Roland Hand Percussion unit.

The HPD-15 seems to be an extremely versatile instrument with very realistic sounds. Crystal clear expressive tablas, congas, drums, along with a bunch of really unusual and exotic instruments that we haven't ever heard of. There is a pretty large Indian percussion section, which is good for us and our kind of music. All of us had a lot of fun strumming the D-beam and the ribbon controllers. . .

On Saturday Anyesha borrowed a Nissan SUV for getting a desk from a lady in Germantown. . .she had found it in an ad on SCI forums. So picking all that stuff, lunch, and then grocery shopping took up most of the day. Later at night, we had a wonderful dinner at Jason and Megan's place. . .mostly a relaxed affair-- good dinner, good conversation, topped off with a little pictionary.

Sunday was spent walking up and down Ikea, coming to terms with their complex ordering process. We really want this one sofa called the Fagelbo. It is an awesome sofa which turns into a bed, and I am excited enough about it to have cut out it's picture and put it up on my collage. Sadly it is out of stock. We'll keep trying until we do get it, I guess.

Abhiram's Birthday Performance

2005-05-29T23:50:00.000-04:00

Our Performance at Abhiram's Birthday Party.

The Performance Went Really well. On Saturday night, we had all the rental equipment, so we did a whole bunch of live recordings, and compiled it into our first live CD. It sounds great. Then today, we did our performance. . .and the sounds were perfect, and the whole thing played off really well, and the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves. I am very happy with the whole thing.

Dil Chahne Laga

2005-05-27T11:15:00.000-04:00

The realization is beginning to creep up on me that Antardhwani is the biggest thing I have been in musically. So far in my life it has been playing for one or two people, Durga Puja performances, sometimes even with guitars and percussion and vocals. Sometimes the audience has been huge, e.g. 1000's while performing for Oasis with the BITS music club. But this is the first time that we have a small, core team with whom we can make creative leaps and write stuff on our own. There is something amazing about bringing a completely new song to life. (Though more work is needed to scrub the song into a beautiful final piece.)

This is also the first time that the individuals haven't gotten together for just one performance. . . and this is certainly a lot more continuity than I am used to. Anyway. This is big. We are crossing over from repetition to creativity. We are discovering and playing with our sound, and expressing our culture. This stuff is big.

Listen to our initial attempts here. It still needs more work, but there is a gem in there.

In other news, I had my MOCB Retreat on Wednesday where I presented a talk. On the "Role of Rel transcription factors in mediating specificity in the Drosophila immune response." My talk went decently, I thought. . . and was mostly a repeat of my fly meeting talk earlier this year. It was a very well organized meeting, and I particularly enjoyed Dr. Jonathan Yewdell's talks on his own work, and later on How to succeed in science. He spoke of the glories and the challenges, and put the scientific career in a very nice perspective. Above all, he stressed the importance of loving what you do.

I am still looking for a career that I can love. And his talk did convice me, that perhaps the sacrifices and the single minded dedication that an academic career appears to require, may not be my idea of a perfect life. Maybe a job where my scientific skills are used for R&D, but where I don't have to worry about tenure and all that, would be ideal. I also feel I have a lot of other skills mainly Organizing, People skills, and handling Computers. . .and a job which also utilizes these strengths would probably make me happier. As I get closer to graduation, the search is on.

Pro-Life.

2005-05-24T16:42:00.000-04:00

So every once in a while, a bunch of people put up these ugly photos of dead babies in front of our building in Hornbake Mall. Side by side they have photographs of the Nazi Holocaust. They ask: how can abortion be right?

So here is a satirical article in the Onion archives about how tremendously fun the process is.

Horsing Around.

2005-05-22T22:26:00.000-04:00

The sights and sounds of Preakness.

Anyesha and I received some free tickets to the horse race in Baltimore this Saturday. Apparently this is the famous race that Seabiscuit ran at. It was in inner city Baltimore, and we saw pretty much everything other than a horse race. . . a wild party with plenty of beer, and drunk young people in the hot sun. We also learnt, that police officers don't mind if you pee in front of them.

We also went to Patuxent wild life refuge which was distinctly more quiet.

Ridiculous Links.

2005-05-20T13:10:00.000-04:00

Here is one: http://cryingwhileeating.com/

It's about people crying while they are eating. Different people eat different things, and cry about different issues in their life. The issues and the meals are neatly labeled.

And some bizarre art here: http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/wearefamily/index.php?sec=yf&pg=01

I especially like the still life with stem cells.

Moral Relativism.

2005-05-20T11:49:00.000-04:00

Ayush, Supratik, Anyesha and I went and watched "Revenge of the Sith" last night. And we got into a discussion about the core principles behind the Light and Dark side of the Force, and what defines good and evil.

The Light Side involves kindness, compassion, and selflesness. It does not allow or encourage attachments. It worships the cycles and balance of nature and tries to not interfere in them or control them. It seeks power to maintain these cycles and maintain its order. . . and if the Jedi win, there is peace in the galaxy.

The Dark side involves a "survival of the fittest" type admiration of power and competence. There is a clean, lack of corruption in this system, as only the truly powerful survive, while the rest are eliminated. It is all about the self, and is about taking self interest and passions to huge proportions. It chooses to control and bend natures cycles to suite the interests of the self. It seeks power to maintain personal power. . . and they also provide peace in the Galaxy.

In the middle of these power-grabbing seeking extremes is the quiet, family, human life represented by Padme in the movie. It is a mix of both selflesness and attachment, but without the single minded pursuit of power. . .and is therefore of no huge consequence to the Universe. It is nevertheless, a choice that Anakin is faced with. . . to run away from it all and raise a family.

What do these abstractions in Star Wars tell us about good and evil in real life? Hypothesis a: The self is illusory, transient and we are merely a part of the larger whole, and Hypothesis b: The self is real, can be made permanent, and there can be power, glory and greatness in pursuing a system of machiavellian self interest and self preservation. . .
Can a difference in these starting assumptions (which are not really testable hypotheses) lead us down to completely different paths. . .and might these paths tell us something about the nature of good and evil?

To some extent, both philosophies denote sustainable equilibria-- one with the law of the jungle, the other with the laws of democracy. After a point it becomes a question of the true nature of human beings. . . do we have what it takes to get along or would we justify a might makes right principle of survival? In civilization today, within a country we promote democracy and try to solve our problems the light way. . . while Internationally many people justify unilateralism and respect the powerful nations right to do as they please. . .an indicator of the dark side. Peace does lead to inefficiency and corruption, while a continual jungle conflict does lead to evolution and weeding out of weakness. . . and finally a hindu concept of creation, maintenance and destruction comes to mind. A balance of light and dark is I guess, the most human. As Obi Wan says in the movie: "Only the Sith would see the world in absolutes (black and white)."

I feel political and economic systems that base themselves on this understanding of human nature (the light dark mix) are bound to perform the best. . . giving its citizens the amount of happiness or sadness. . . competition or social security. . . that they want. Of course, each person is different. . .and I suppose societies can evolve along with their systems to embrace as much power as possible. And then you only hope that after amassing the power, the balance isn't tipped one way or the other.

Suddenly, leading the simple human life (which is perhaps not so simple) with Natalie Portman (She is a stunner, and I am a fan). . .sounds like an extremely promising prospect.

That was my rant of the day. In other news, I have created two new websites. My home page has been upgraded/updated. In fact that's what I have been obsessing with all of last week. Do check it out, and let me know if there are broken links and stuff. . . or too much information. I also created Cookerificfor Anyesha to store her recipes. . .and now the gang are using it to bond through shared culinary experiences. I contributed to the discussion the only way I know how. . .by making a webpage.

In other news, our band is performing at the Lighthouse Apartments Community Center at Beltsville in a private party. So some hectic practice is in order next week. That's that.

Making it official.

2005-05-16T15:46:00.000-04:00

Anyesha and Me at Pilani
Originally uploaded by subhamoy_pal.

About a week ago, Sunayana called up to congratulate Anyesha and Me. We are getting married after all, around March of next year. Now you know.

The intent to marry has been there for a while now. . . it's been in some stage of discussion or the other, for almost two years now. Finally, when greater confirmation came through it seemed like a natural thing. Until I heard Sunayana all excited, and realized that. . . maybe this is a big deal.

Anyway. Here is a photo of Anyesha and me in Pilani, 1999. Yes, we did have a very beautiful campus.

On a different note, I haven't been updating my blog for a while, because I have been obsessing on upgrading my website. This is in preparation for a larger reorganization in my life, gearing up for graduating, getting a job, and of course marrying. I felt I needed a site that employers could see and be impressed by. . . also something that integrates better with this blog.
I have been working late nights for this, new and improved version. You will see it soon.

Bovine Unite and Lightsabers.

2005-05-05T14:12:00.000-04:00

So today is "C-Day". C is for Cow.

There are people around campus who have been handing out cow bells, promoting the bovine revolution. They have blogs, a message board, their main website. . .and a lot of enthusiastic cows to promote the cause.

The other cool link of the day is the How Stuff Works featurette on Light Sabers. I have always wanted one. . .and in Knights of the Old Republic, I got myself a green lightsabre with "Heart of the Guardian", Solari, and Upari crystals. Worked wonders against the Dark Jedi in the Starforge. In the new game I am playing (part II), I haven't received a lightsabre yet. . . I am still walking around the mining station. But anyway. . .glad that legitimate websites like howstuffworks have started taking light sabre technology seriously.

Maryland Day

2005-05-03T00:34:00.000-04:00

DSCN0226
Originally uploaded by anyesha.

This year we didn't go to Maryland Day. It was raining, and we helped Nandini move into her new house instead. This photograph was taken one year ago. . .and since I don't have a photo of Anyesha and me up on the blog, it seemed to be a good time to put one up.

Apart from that, we recorded Pehla Nasha at yesterday's jamming session. This is perhaps our best mixed song so far. . .so do check it out.

Sparsh 2005

2005-04-25T12:16:00.000-04:00

Sparsh 2005 went pretty well. There was a sounds issue towards the beginning of our performance. . . feedback from the microphones caused quiet a few shreaks in the middle of the songs, and the keyboard and electric guitars were turned on too high. About halfway through our performance, a sounds engineer came and fixed most of the problems. I am really looking forward to viewing our video recording, especially because I am curious how it sounded. What we heard on the monitors were way off from what it sounded like to the audience.

Here is a photograph of me with my rig at the performance. More photos are available on the Sparsh website.

People appeared to appreciate our music. But considering the high we were on before the performance. . . this bang with the reality of sounds issues did sober us all down a little. We have some ways to go, and lots to learn before we become professional grade.

This performance did seem to bring the band together though. Now we have a common history. . . a shared experience.

We recorded two new bengali songs yesterday: Shokhi bhabona kahare bole, and Ei monihar. Check them out on our soundclick page. Ayan sang them with a lot of feeling, and they came out really nice. Especially in the shokhi bhabona song, Mainak's tabla really sparkled.

Finally Anyesha and I (along with Nandini, Rajesh, Vinay, and Vidya) caught the last movie of the DC International Film Festival, titled Hazaron Khwahishe Aisi. It is a North Indian perspective on the last burst of idealism in India around the 70's, when young, bright, and often rich kids would go off to join the Naxalite movement. The movie manages to maintain neutrality, using a narrative story telling style involving love letters exchanged its main protagonists. It struck a chord with me, particularly because it seems to show how an idealistic movement can go astray. . . without losing sight of the real need for improvement in India's villages.

Anyesha reviews the movie in her blog.

My haircut.

2005-04-14T15:19:00.000-04:00

So my hairdresser moved. She was very nice. . .a middle aged Turkish woman "Shikera", who knew exactly how my hair needed to be cut. I didn't need to describe anything and I wasn't expected to have taste or judgement. Anyesha liked her too. She moved to Waldorf or Upper Marlboro or some other place that is too far away to drive too for a haircut.

So I went to Greenbelt center this time round. And had to answer all the usual questions: how short do you want it? Is this short enough? Do you want more off from the top? The fact that I don't have strong opinions and cannot describe how to cut my hair particularly well, creates a bunch of awkward situations. And then Anyesha thinks my hair is too short. And Sheryl at New Deal Cafe, made some jokes about the "screaming eagle" air force hair cut.

Meanwhile I found The world beard champions. They wear their facial hair proudly. They will not listen to some woman telling them to cut their hair. . .and look good. It's very touching.

Reminds me of the proud old days when a Rajput could give a strand of his moustache as a token of honor. . . in big historic transactions people trusted the man with the mooch.

Anyway. I got my haircut for Saturday's performance. Practices are going really well. Last night we didn't make any noticeable mistakes. We seem to have come a long way in merely a month. Let's hope our performance goes well at Sparsh.

The rig

2005-04-11T01:26:00.000-04:00

Check out the photograph on the link. Both keyboards are hooked up to my mixer. The mix along with the microphones goes to the analogue inputs of my soundcard. MIDI outputs of the keyboards go into the digital inputs of the computer. It's really cool.

The fly conference

2005-04-01T18:53:00.000-05:00

I have come to sunny San Diego for the Annual Drosophila research conference. It's pretty sunny, but gets chilly in the night. Among fly conferences that I have been to, San Diego tends to offer the best food. And the intellectual atmosphere is pretty inspiring.

The conference has been fairly enjoyable so far. It started off with a talk by the Nobel Laureate Nusslein-Volhardt, whose screens identified mutants such as Toll that we use in your research work. She gave a historical perspective on the way the science of using Drosophila has evolved over the years.

Apart from some interesting plenary sessions, the most rewarding aspect of these meetings is the discussions that take place around the posters.

My talk is on tomorrow. It's on the mechanisms by which specificity is regulated in the immune response by Rel proteins. And I go back to DC on Sunday afternoon. Ishan and gang were supposed to come down to San Diego this weekend, but it turns out that their plans have been cancelled. Which is fine, because I couldn't have spent much time with them anyway. I'll probably take Monday off from work to recover.

Reviewing the WK-3500

2005-03-26T15:34:00.000-05:00

I reviewed my new keyboard at Harmony Central. I guess that says it all.

I have also been working on my presentation for the Fly conference at San Diego. . .
as an afterthought.

Casio WK-3500

2005-03-21T11:01:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, I bought the Casio WK-3500. It is wonderful.

I am getting used to its 16 channel MIDI, gazillion sounds, 140+ rhythms, built in digital special effects, and other presets. The presets appear to be carefully arranged and organized so that one can harness some of the sound-making potential of the casio with relatively ease.

However, part of the reason why I bought this thing is for its "tweakability". It has a 1.44 MB floppy drive and Smartcard drive. These can be used along with a computer to do sampling, rhythm creation, special effects creation, and tweaking of existing sounds. . .both through a vintage Hammond type draw-bar organ analogue synthesis, or using preset patches as a starting point and changing their ADSR envelopes and other characteristics. The creation of rhythms appears a bit tedious in the sense that there seem to be strict guidelines about programming in fill-ins, beginnings, and endings. However, it makes sense to have that.

Unlike the higher end workstations, the sampling and rhythm creation does need to be done on a computer. But I don't mind that at all. And using the computer panel to generate new sounds is. . . more intuitively satisfying than navigating the menu system of the small blue screen of the casio. I feel this keyboard was built with computers in mind. . . while still maintaining its capacity to do the many of the same things through relatively complicated menus.

To summarize, so far this unit is a great live tool. And one can program it to do amazing new sounds, rhythms, and effects. Save those effects as registrations which can be accessed with a touch of a button. That makes it great for performances with bands. . . all parameters can be pre-tweaked, and be ready for performance in seconds. I am looking forward to letting it do its stuff for Sparsh.

From Juno to Triton to WK3500

2005-03-18T12:03:00.000-05:00

So over the past week, I have been obsessed with keyboards. I wrote a review for my old trusted CT-670 here, while I lusted after younger, sexier, and high maintenance models. I haven't actually used any of these boards. . . so these are just my theoretical opinions.

It all began when I visited the music store last weekend. That's when the bug bit me. Since then, I have been looking through the feature sets of potential keyboards I'd like to buy. Tweaks Guide recommends the Juno-D as a low end studio keyboard. Without having played it yet, my impression is that it is a very good value for money in terms of features and sound. It seems to be perfect as a MIDI controller, and for playing along with bands, with its awesome sound making potential. It has some in built rhythms, which can be played using different drum-sets, but the auto-accompaniment isn't what I as a fingered-chord player am used to. It does have a bunch of preset arpeggiations though. . .which would add loads of style to any performance. If it didn't feel like cheating to be using these pre-programmed flourishes instead of actually playing it. The Juno also has some very nice controllers. . . I particularly like Rolands D-Beam which allows one to control modulations using an infrared sensor. . .that detects your hand movements over it. It must look cool on stage to be doing that. The damage: c.a. 600$.

There was an awesome deal on the Triton 61-key LE. Selling at 1000$ it seemed to have most things Triton, without the sampling component, which can be obtained with an upgrade. People seem somewhat dissatisfied with the piano sound. But in terms of features, it seems to have all the synthesizing functions of Juno D, with an additional 16 track sequencer and external memory built in. Most of the presets appear to be better tuned for dance music. The Triton workstations are a bit of an industry standard. . .some people sell all their equipment and buy one of these . To some extent, the cost is because of the cool Triton sounds. . .and I obsessed about its plethora of features for a while. . .but figured I don't need my music to have their sound. Any good piano will do.

Which finally brought me to writing my review for my old and trusted CT-670. While writing it, at the end, I wrote a little wishlist of what I wanted in my keyboard. And this prompted to me to check out the gear Casio has been churning out recently. It seems, that they have taken every suggestion of mine and implemented it. In the lower price ranges, I think Casio has better sound than Yamaha, or Kawaii. And the features appear less gimicky and more sensible. I zeroed in on their high end WK-3500 model, featuring velocity sensitive keys, smart media and floppy drive storage, functionality to create your own rhythms, 6 track sequencing, pitch and modulation wheel, GM compatibility, and small time synthesizing capabilities. For 400$ it seems like huge bang for the buck, and the reviews are all stellar. So this is the board I am currently drooling over. . .I can totally see this complimenting my computer music making home studio set up, and for small gigs. It's not considered a studio level keyboard, but I don't care about these labels. As Amlan might say. . .they are mere social constructs.

Now I have to hold on to my horses, and not buy the keyboard until my heart has calmed down and stopped lusting, and my head is back in charge.

I also read somewhere that my CT-670 is now considered "vintage". Apparently they sell like hot cakes on e-bay. I'll hold on to it and wait for Antiques Roadshow to come to town.

Antardhwani

2005-03-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

This friday, the band really came together. We started practice around 8 PM and went on till almost 1:30 AM. I think everyone was feeling it. The magic. The potential. At times like these I have a tendency to get too excited and ahead of myself. . . start dreaming too much of future greatness, and not enough about the concrete road to getting there.

After much deliberation, we decided to name our band Antardhwani. The Sound Within.

On Saturday, Anyesha, Mainak, Sowmya and I went to two music stores in the area. . .the House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park and Chuck Levines Washington Music store in Wheaton. We bought a Pandeiro, which is a Brazilian Tambourine, to increase our rhythm making capabilities. And I went a little crazy at Chuck Levines, where for a brief moment I started seriously considering buying a new keyboard. Visiting music stores was a lot of fun. . .especially after the high we were on.

In general, the former music store is a more friendly place. The store owners are very knowledgeable about music, and can demonstrate how to play almost any instrument out there. The only drawback is that they carry mostly "acoustic" instruments. Washington music has all the keyboards, electric guitars, and electric/electronic stuff. . .but it's a more impersonal huge store where I tend to get lost a little. Partly because for most of the customers there, it seems to be more about attitude and money. . .and less about the music. My kind of music at any rate. It feels like we are too staidly dressed for the place. . . (and with too little purchasing power). . . with not enough cool points to really have the store reps take us seriously.

I stayed up till 5:00 AM doing a collage for our band. And setting up our soundclick account. Check it out at http://www.soundclick.com/antardhwani

So yes. I have been spending way too much time obsessing about this band. And dreaming where it may go. In my mind we have already become famous all over the east coast, and are getting calls from New York to Georgia to go and perform at their respective shows. In reality. . . nobody knows who we are. :(

Anyway. We have to do some proper recordings and get our music out there on the web. Do good performances so that word of mouth recognition begins to develop at least with the University of Maryland student group. The path to recognition has to be walked steadily and patiently. . . while at the same time improving our coordination, sound, and repertoire of songs. And gelling together as a group.

But yeah. The excitement. . .the potential of what this can become. . .is very seductive.

It's like Nascar. But with Computers.

2005-03-11T13:36:00.000-05:00

Check out the following link.

Must be fun driving your computer until it almost fries. . . immersed in super cooled mineral oil. Or liquid nitrogen.

Maybe when my computer is really old, and I don't care about its life any more I'll overclock the chip. Right now I'd rather it gave me hassle free performance for the next 5 years. In any case, most of the time with cool n' quiet my machine doesn't even hit 10% of its CPU performance on most day to day things. The highest I have seen it go up is about 90% when playing Half Life 2. So I guess my Athlon64 3000+ chip has a long life ahead of it.

Everyone's Blogging.

2005-03-11T11:46:00.000-05:00

Suddenly, everyone has been bitten by the bug. Ayush and Anyesha now belong to the "Have's" . . . Meanwhile Abhishek (who I tried desperately to get him to create a web presence) remains a "Have Not", or rather "Won't". Check out Ayush and Anyesha's blogs from the links on the right.

In the meantime, I have been trying to finish up the studies on Heat-Shock Relish in the lab so that I can present that data at the Fly Conference. At home I have been playing around with the wonderfulness of zero latency. . . yesterday I spent a while playing an awesome Forte Piano on my computer through MIDI. Figured that the difference between a good piano and an average one is that when you play chords. . .sometimes with a good instrument the harmonics are so much in sync that it is harder to distinguish the sounds of the different notes. Personally, I am not much for analogue synthesis or "electronic" sounds. Give me a classical authentic sounding sweet instrument. . .all the nuances of the natural woody/brassy/harpsy sound of something unplugged. . . and I tend to feel more at home. I was thinking of making a CD for some of the stuff that I am playing around with. For one thing, it'll give me a goal to work towards, as I tweak around with stuff. I also want to record all the good vocalists and instrumentalists around the area. . . Ayan, Sowmya, Sankalita, Mainak. . .to gain experience recording, mixing, and finishing. It could be a mixed CD with pure instrumentals, some electronica, some songs by me, and some songs by my friends. . .meant to highlight and show off everyones strengths.

Yeah. I might appreciate Moby, Fat Boy Slim, Prodigy, and the Chemical Brothers. But I can't get electronica to come out of me. Perhaps I don't feel agitated and angry enough. . .I don't feel strong beats in music that I might compose. . .instead of land up doing little piano flourishes. Ideally I suppose something more along the lines of A.R Rahman. Emphasis on sweet melodies, clarity, and good effects. . . not club trance rhythm stuff. Hmmm. I would compose stuff on my own if I weren't so critical of my creations: criticizing them too much before they mature into a full fledged song. Some day, I'll get there.

I also played Civilization last night. Reached about 1500 AD, and after getting the whole of North America, I have begun colonizing South Africa and Australia. Australia particularly is completely "undiscovered" and resource rich, so suddenly I am building settlers again to fill in that continent. In terms of points, I am behind the Hittites and the Babylonians. . .but the Babylonians are the only ones with any degree of science, culture, or military. The Hittites are just a barbaric race that has all these points because they control 30% of the worlds land area. I am thinking of rushing through into a space race victory if all goes well. Diplomacy may work because so far I have been peaceful and well liked. If I manage to colonize Australia, I might have a shot at going for the 66% world area. . . but then I'll probably have to switch to communism and start attacking the the Mongols to my South. But that's a last resort.

That's that. I am going to post some screen shots of my civ game later.

Gaming and Wedding

2005-03-09T13:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday night Anyesha spoke to her parents. Our
parents have met in Calcutta, and decided that the
wedding ceremony will be held around March of next
year. That gives me one year to wrap up my work and
graduate. . . or at least get to the stage when I can
graduate any time I want, while looking for a job.

I work on fruit fly immune systems. So far the
highlight of my work has been to create spotted
microarrays with all genes believed to be important
for the immune response. I have knocked out three Rel
proteins, Dif, Dorsal, and Relish and studied what
that does to gene regulation in vivo. And I have
induced the same proteins to high levels artificially
using a heat-shock construct to see what that does to
gene induction. The composite picture from these two
big experiments reveals details about how the Rel
proteins are involved in the regulation of immune
response genes.

The talk of the wedding. . .I don't think it has sunk
in yet. . . but it feels like its something big. And
it is happening oh so normally. Anyesha started
thinking our life isn't exciting enough and how we are
becoming boring as we age. It does put life in a
different perspective. . . a perspective of birth,
marriage, and death. Completing graduate school and
finding a job seem to lose their eminent role in
comparison to these bigger cycles.

I thought about this for a while.

And then played civilization. I am playing at the
Regent level on a large world map, and was extremely
lucky to start off somewhere North America. Very
quickly I managed to heavily defend the slim Mexican
peninsula area, so I had the whole of North America to
myself. To grow and prosper. I played from 800 AD to
1200 AD last night, and I am technologically advanced,
extremely commercial, and saving about 300 Gold per
turn, while researching techs in 4 turns. I am hoping
for a quick space race victory, if nothing goes wrong
by then. Surprisingly no one has harbors and ports. .
.so there is no international trade going on in the
world.

I am micromanaging a good deal more than I used to.
But I also think I have had it very good because I
haven't had to fight a single war in my history.
Let's see how this game turns out. I was playing Half
Life before this but I am giving it a break. I am
currently on Highway 17 where all the antlions are
attacking and it feels chaotic and I am driving up
walls of rock. My next game will be Knights of the
Old Republic II. . .I am waiting for that to iron out
all its bugs before I start playing.

The death of a cell phone.

2005-03-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Anyesha and I switched over to Verizon
wireless.  We took up a family plan to save money on
calls to each other.  It seems like a sensible step
considering we hardly use the cell phone for long
conversations with anyone.

I used to have a Motorola Timeport phone for the past
4 years.  In July of 2001, I had gotten this phone
with Christopher from the Sprint Store in Silver
Spring.  In anticipation of Anyesha arriving to
Massachusetts, and all the long distance bills that
would entail.

Over the years, that hardy sturdy phone has been with
me through thick and thin.  And I feel like writing an
obituary for it.  It is funny how we grow attached to
the technology we live with.  The Timeport is now no
longer available on the market. It belongs to a
different era-- when phones used to be built tough,
and durable, without color screens, cameras, and built
in downloadable games.  While I explore the bells and
whistles of the Samsung sch-a650. . .one of the most
basic phones available on the market. . . a part of me
feels sad for the death of my old cellular phone.


Like the transmigration of the soul. . . your number
has passed on to a different body.

Later on in the day, we watched the movie "Cellular".
It was a reasonably entertaining, unmemorable, movie
that seemed to be built around all the possible things
you could do with a cellular phone.  I liked it
because the movie didn't take itself too seriously.

My Mejo Mama

2005-03-08T10:10:00.000-05:00

On the morning of the 5th of March, I got to know that
one of my uncles has passed away.  My "Mejo Mama" was
my mothers elder brother.  My life has been mostly
lived away from Calcutta and Malda. . . and I haven't
spent much time with my extended family.  When I was
growing up, I would fight with my cousin Ritankar. . .
Mejo Mama's son.  We had subtle ego-issue fights.  I
was 9 months older than him, and when we were young it
was a sore point as to whether he should call me
"dada" (older brother) or not.  Since we were almost
the same age.  Auntie (Mamima) would almost always
make "Potol Bhaja" because that is what I liked to
eat.  And Mejo Mama would tell me to study hard. .
.and sometimes play chess with me. That was all a long
time ago.  My uncle is gone, these memories remain.

On the path to zero latency

2005-03-04T12:05:00.000-05:00

So one of the things I am interested in is getting my
home studio in gear. I highly recommend the tweaks
guide at http://www.tweakheadz.com. Very inspiring.

It all started when I was 10 years old, and my parents
bought me a mini 49 key casio keyboard. And a couple
of books by Kenneth Baker to learn how to play it. I
managed to play my first song. . .Merrily We Roll
Along, with chords. A proud day for me.

At school in Bonn, Germany, I was involved with the a
bunch of after school activities including choir and
orchestra. . .where I used to play the recorder. This
taught me how to sight-read music. At that age I was
very self concious about my musical tastes and
preferred listening to soft Richard Clayderman type
stuff. Using the books, I began to get better at
playing the keyboard until 2 years later, my parents
bought me a Casio CT-670. . . a 61 Key wonderful
sounding full size keyboard.

In Delhi, I managed to play at some school
performances. We formed a small band. . .along with
guitars and tablas, and performed at Durga Pujas.
Practicing with the group was valuable experience, and
I got better at picking up music by just hearing it.

Later on in Burma and Pilani, was a quiet period when
I practiced and played mostly in small gatherings for
friends. In Pilani, I did join the music club in my
first year, and that was fun for a while. But then
academic priorities took over and I had to quit. That
was after I had managed to perform with Music Club for
the first year Oasis. . .and that was a large crowd
indeed.

Now after coming to the US, I managed to make myself
an awesome computer. An AMD Athlon 64 3000 Chip, with
a Gig of RAM, an ATI Radeon video card, and an M-Audio
2496 Sound card. I also hooked up my keyboard using
MIDI to my computer. And for the audio components, I
got a mixer. Along with a bunch of really cool
software synthesizers, I have my own home studio.
This is a lot of fun, especially now that we have a
"garrage" band. . .we meet every friday and practice
stuff for upcoming performances.

So finally yesterday, I read up some stuff and started
using my ASIO sound drivers for my sound card, and
that brought down the latency of the sound
dramatically. This was exciting because in the past,
whenever we'd jam there'd be like a 35 millisecond
latency. . .and there'd be a lag between the time
people sang and the time they heard the reverb. Now
the latency is not noticeable. . .it's under 5
milliseconds.

Now that I have the history of my keyboarding out of
the way, I can get more down and dirty technical in
future. To celebrate my little victories.

So long.

2005-03-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

This is how I feel like today:

blogging by e-mail

2005-03-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

It would be really cool if I could publish my blogs using e-mail. It
would be so much easier to update this on the fly. . . let's hope this
e-mail gets published.

2005-03-03T14:30:00.000-05:00

Well here it is. My own blog. I am not completely sure what I want to write about yet. I guess I'll write mostly about myself, my views on the world. And what I am up to. They say the most "successful" blogs are those which focus on a specific issue and delve deep into it. I don't think mine will be like that. Instead, I'll use this to maintain something more like an online journal so that friends and family know what I have been up to. My original webpage was created with that intention, but updating it was more of a chore. I am hoping this will be easier to maintain.
Amlan just came up with his friendster blog yesterday. You can find it at http://neptuneblue.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/2005/03/the_real_world.html

Here is an IM excerpt:
subhamoy_pal: I am trying to establisha blog for myself
amlan_mukherjee2000: oh cool
amlan_mukherjee2000: now we can fight on our blogs
subhamoy_pal: yes

And so we will.