Flying Spaghetti Monsterism - . I am still shaking my head after reading this. Read it and don't forget to read this and the comments in the discussion forum on the page.

I have been thinking about what courses to enroll for for the past few days. The fall '05 CS subjects that have been interesting me are

1. Independent Study with a professor I will be doing research with

2. Operating Systems

3. Principle of Programming Languages

4. Quantum Computing

5. Algorithms

Practically I can do only 3 of these in a semester and it was easy for me to decide that I wanted to do 1 and 2 for sure. I also decided that I could take algorithms next semester. Now between Programming Langauges and Quantum Computing, I didn't know which to drop. I wanted to take the compiler course (and parallel computing course) next semester, so Programming Langauges would have been a good thing to study this semester. However, I decided I would study quantum computing. Scheme scared me off and I decided to drop programming langauges.

Half an hour before my appointment with my graduate advisor, I bumped into Dan Friedman. I introduced myself, he seemed to remember that I had emailed him. I told him how intimidated I was by him and so how I hadn't met him earlier. I knew of him as this big man who wrote a lot of scheme books. I have never programmed in scheme and do not understand many of the functional programming concepts. I have not understood continuations for example. Roshan and Sidharth often discuss the stuff and I participate in it as long as it seems mathematical and the moment they write scheme on paper [its usually paper napkins in some cafe/restaurant], I shy away from the discussion.

I told Dr. Friedman about my interest and about my inexperience with scheme and he said I must take the course. A 5 min conversation with him and I decided to take the course !
Quantum Computing will have to wait I guess. I am excited about the classes (I can't remember the last time I waited with anxiety for a lecture), they begin on 29th August.

Do not read this blog entry if you are not a Harry Potter enthusiast or if you intend to read book 6 and haven't done so yet.

Like many Harry Potter enthusiasts I read Harry Potter Book 6 as soon as I could lay my hands on it.

Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince is like a prequel to the last book. Its quite obvious as you read the book that Rowling has thought out the entire story before she wrote this book. It kinda ends abruptly, but like most Harry Pottter books keeps you hooked on till the end. I see it as a good improvement over the previous book which was a let down for my high expectations. This one quite lived upto my expectations and wait time. When I finsihed reading the book at some insane time early morning [or late night for most of us], I was very depressed and shocked about Dumbledore's death. I woke my brother [Ankit], who is generally very irritable when asleep, and told him "Ankit, Snape killed Dumbledore..", he woke up instantly with a wide grin and said, "I knew it". The two of us sat and spoke and discussed the book for sometime after that. Our discussions and conclusions and thinkings are below.

Seeing Dumbledore's faith in Snape, I believe that Snape is not a *real* villain. Ankit thinks Snape is what he is projected to be in this book. I actually think of Snape to be this smart cool guy [I could fall in love with if I were at Hogwarts :)] after reading this book. Probably a secret setup between Dumbledore & Snape to get to the next trust level in Voldemort's eyes. The next guess is that RAB  is Regelus Black, the deatheater who I think died at Azkaban in the previous book. The final guess is that Harry Potter could be a horcrux and so Harry Potter may have to kill himself to destroy Voldemort completely after he destroys the remaining horcrux-es.

The next day I googled for Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince and found to my surprise that there were others who came up with the same theories. I hope Rowling is reading it all and manages to surprise the readers with the final book.

If you are a Harry Potter fan http://www.dumbledoreisnotdead.com/ is a place you may want to visit.

I reached US after what seemed like a never ending flight. I had to change 5 flights and visit 7 airports to get here! Boy, the airlines should have paid me for trying this route out! I am sure not too many would. Cochin - Colombo - Bangkok - Hong Kong - LA - Chicago - Indianapolis !

Well, look at the bright side, I saw the airports of quite a few different counties :)

Bloomington is a small town, a large bulk of its population coming from Indiana university. The Indian population here is quite small.

I am getting used to some of the american jargon [egg plant, okra, pickles ...] and realising that India has its own additions to the Indian english language.

Cell phones in the US work quite differently. Believe it or not, cell phones in India are quite a blessing and the service works much more reliably. And we crib about airtel and hutch not working in caves and mountains when we go for vacations! Here cell phones are based on minutes [time], it doesn't matter whether you receive or make calls, most plans its just the same. Your usage minutes go down. And this applies for toll free numbers too. Well, the good thing in US is you could sign up for a 1 yr or 2 yr plan and get a handset free [the way our reliance phones work] and that you could change your service provider and still retain your phone number. I guess we'll get there soon.

I have my international students orientation next week. I hope to spend free time in finding an apartment to stay in and buying essential furniture if its an unfurnished place.

I am in Cochin till Aug 9. Thought it was a good idea to spend time with family before leaving for pardes. So the general advice I am getting from family, relatives and their friends is to come back to India soon. All the talk is managable as long as I am being fed good home made food.

Last few days in office, I saw how much of a pain storage still is. About 6 months of photos and only photos and I have over 4 giga bytes of images - none I want to part with. What is the best way to carry this data around? And what is the best way to arrange them without spending too much time on it and assuming that they aren't well catalogued? I don't like the idea of resizing them and uploading them as an album in one of the photo-upload websites. I want to preserve the resolution and exif information of all the images. And we are talking about a few gigabytes here. Any clean solutions?