Computer scientist's holy grail?

For a long time we know that Resistor, Capacitor and Inductor form the basic elements. We also know to use a combination of these elements to create complex circuits.

Now make it four, add the newly created, but the 30 year old, "memristor"

Discovered as early as in the 70's, but got into the limelight after scientists from HP really made one. It is taking us to the nano age, really. It seems that the potential applications include "brain emulation".

Read more about it at spectrum and also wikipedia

Now, if you do not have time to read through the entire article, I want to quote the following paragraph from spectrum,

"... However, even a mouse brain simulation in real time involves solving an astronomical number of coupled partial differential equations. A digital computer capable of coping with this staggering workload would need to be the size of a small city, and powering it would require several dedicated nuclear power plants."

Tamron Vs Nikon (Expensive 1 to 5)

One of my class mates (Dennis) from Engineering college days is getting married. Thinking of taking some snaps for the wedding, I thought of buying a lens with a large aperture for portraits. For a long time I had been eyeing the Nikon 15-55 F2.8, but it's highly expensive (JPY 150K) that I was postponing the purchase. Especially with JPY clocking its peak.

But then recently when I was checking the Tamron's website, I came across the Tamron 15-50 F2.8 AF. Man, it costs around JPY 33K. Which is roughly 4 times cheaper or a 5th of the price of its Nikonese counterpart. I can't believe my eyes. Now its time to start reading the reviews ...

What's in store ...

Once upon a time, reading "IEEE spectrum" was enjoyable for me. It was an eye opener into many things that I did not know of. Those days I understood the future technologies and thought that it will definitely help improve human race.

These days, I am slightly disturbed with the following technologies

- Artificial Intelligence, After some years, all you will do is teach a computer and make it work for you. Or buy an already intelligent off-the-shelf computer and ... then "What will you do?"

- Neural or Brain mapping, Computers can read your brain, remove or add information. Like the one shown in the film Matrix. I do not know the technical term though. Direct Brain Access (DBA) or something ... It will be good, if this is used in a good way. But hmm.... kowai

Imagine a situation,
We have developed a machine that can add or remove contents to or from human brain. And there is a simple machine mal-function or worst, this is in the hands of some "really bad guy". I do not want to think more ... on this. It is really really scary.

- Gesture identification
A good technology, machine's will be able to understand our gestures. And if those machines are intelligent and in some way do not like our actions, then ... ;-)

- Nano technologies etc etc ...
Super computer microprocessors the size of ball pen tips, electronics printed on clothes, invisible or transparent electronics. They have 100's of good applications and 1000's of not so good ones...

Now, I may be sounding a bit negative. That is exactly how I feel about these future technologies. May be I should stop reading "IEEE Spectrum" ... ;-) or what?

387 scored in the fourth innings ....

This is great news for the "shell shocked Indians", especially after the Bombay carnage.

Tendulkar (is from Bombay) and he once again did it for India. From now his critics will have to find a new reason. What an Innings from our "little master"?

I attribute this test to the entire Indian team.

Abbeee abbeee ... (probably it means gran-ma gran-ma)

Mom, this is for you.

Anto (that is how every one in my family calls Solomon) recently started talking using some language which is foreign to perhaps everybody.

We made a video of that, and I am attaching that for my mom ... enjoy !!!

忘年会ーBou-nen-kai [Forget year party]

Yesterday I along with Shanthi (my wife) and Solomon (our kid) attended the year's first bou-nen-kai 「忘年会」. This is a party to forget any (every) bad thing(s) that happened during the year. Yesterday's party was for the tennis circle called "the november" that I am part.

For Shanthi and Solomon, this is their first time attending a bounenkai. They had a good time enjoying all the food that was served. Solomon was in his good spirits and he did not cry. He was wearing a sherwani. I had a chance to discuss with my mate Mr. Masa. I have never seen someone who can talk more about cars that this man. He can exactly tell each and every Japanese car's dimension.

After discussing with him I decided 2 things.
1. Buy a toyota car (possibly harrier)
2. Apply for my driving license ;-)

BTW, Toyota will stop making Harrier from next year.

Photo courtesy, Jeffrey (my friend who writes this amazing blog)

Definition of a dream

Yesterday late in the night I was watching a program called "人体～セックスと人体機能～" in the discovery channel. The english reading is "Human body ~ Sex and human body function ~". I happened to see yesterday's part from the series. Yesterday's was all about brain's functionality. In that program they defined the meaning of "dream".

It was mentioned
"Dream is nothing but, uncontrolled thinking", and they added great scientists always dreamt solutions to their problems, and this was possible only due to "uncontrolled thinking". It was a very interesting definition, because from time to time, I have dreamt about solution to some complex algorithm related questions that I have come across ...

Can we term a scientist "a day dreamer", why not?

How little we know about the world.
We start at the atomic level, and stop at the milky way galaxy.

We need better microscopes and telescopes eh ...