Sunday, November 9, 2008

Final Frontier...Catrified Again...

Today was the final Mock CAT. What a relief !!!! Well, I didn't do any better than the other mocks, but, finally, the preparation days are over, and we will be facing the real one very soon, head-on. Best of luck to everyone.

Do you remember this picture? I just read a post that I had posted this time around, last year. The last lines were:

On a serious note:
CAT is not everything in my life, morever, this was my first attempt, a real live MOCK CAT for me. And I have already started preparing for the next year's CAT. It just takes a MAN to crack the CAT.

Hahaha....That preparation I was talking about had not lasted for more than a week. Last year I scored a percentile of 84.6 . I will be very very disappointed if I score less than that. But, I am still hoping for some miracle to happen. I have been very unlucky during all those Mocks, but I am still hopeful that I will give my career best performance on the D-day.

For me, all those pencil and paper preparations are over. This remaining one week, I will be getting up early in the morning, as early as 6:30, just to make sure that I am not late for the exams.

My next post will be coming up on 16th November. Hope so.
Till then, enjoy the winters.....

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Obama's WON !!!!


So, finally, its official. I had always had this feeling that Obama was going to win. All the newspapers always had some news or the other about the recent US presidential campaign. Not only the newspapers, the news channels were giving much more coverage that I would have liked. But this picture today on TOI was a real shock to me.

Was Manmohan Singh offered a cake when he won the elections? Did anybody even knew who was Prativa Patil till she became the President? Or that lady in the picture is some distant cousin of Obama? What the hell!!! A girl from Delhi or Bangalore or any other metro, for that matter, is quite understandable, but from a city like Bikaner !! That surprised me. Of-course, winning the elections, perhaps is the greatest achievement for Obama, but why is this girl so happy???

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Sleepless Nights

I don't even remember when was the last time I had such uneasy feeling. Not even before the Semester exams, not even before my first job interview and definitely not when I proposed that girl from school. November is here, and in a few days, the Sunday mornings will not be the same any more.

I don't know what's in store for me, and I would not know before the starting of next year, but what I know is, I will have to get up early on every Sunday morning, take bath ( winters are already here, but thank god, I have a hot water system, not exactly a geyser, but the damn thing works ), get dressed and eagerly wait for my angel, the Bangalorean autowalas who would drop me at the venue of the exams on time. Best of luck to all those who can understand my condition.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Love Rectangles

Love triangles are the most popular themes in entertainment. And it is also the most researched topic in the field of human psychology. There are complete scientific models for a Love Triangle which can accurately predict the outcome, given all the necessary data is available. Many Bollywood directors have churned out loads of dollars just by changing some variables, and eventually the final outcome. People also find the theory of "Love Triangle" simple enough to understand. Some of the theories suggest that, in a Love Triangle, the arrangement is unsuitable for one or more people involved. That number, as anyone might guess, will range from 1 to 3. The fact is, Love Triangles are meant to be broken. It cannot remain as a triangle forever. It has to end either in a straight line and a point, or three points. So, we can safely conclude that a "Love Triangle", is by nautre, a very unstable arrangement. It is not a happy ending for everyone, though some Bollywood movies manage to bring in a fourth point into the frame when the triangle is just about to break into pieces.

Let us now study a more stable, but complicated arrangement that has not been experimented with by our Bollywood directors much. The "Love Rectangle". Well, not many of our Hindi movies are based on this theme, the only one that comes to my mind right now is "KANK". Though the theme of the story is "Extra-marital relationship", principally, it is a "Love Rectangle".

Definition : 2 boys of equal height and 2 girls of equal breadth.

William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is also based on a Love Rectangle. Unlike the Triangles, this arrangement may sometimes be unfavorable for everyone, but statistically speaking, in the end, the rectangle breaks up into two straight lines(almost 99%). In such cases, the possibility of four points is very rare. Since points, by nature are unstable. They always tend to form polygons, or lines. I tried reading all the mathematical models available on Love Polygons in human psychology, but they all seem to be so complicated. There were at-least 50 different variables to be considered to accurately predict the final state of the polygon. I tried reducing the polygon to a mere triangle(since this is the maximum reduction that I could have done), but then all the theories available today, say that predictions for a polygon with even sides are 100 times more accurate than those with odd sides. So, afraid of arriving at erroneous results, I had to reduce the polygon to a Rectangle.

Rectangles, are very rare to find as well. What the psychologists have in their theories is how to predict the future states of the rectangle. None of them have tried proposing a solution that could be applied to a generalized Love Rectangle. So, here I propose my solution for solving a Rectangle.

Being a IT guy, my theories will follow object-oriented approach and will draw some inspiration from the well known fundamentals of Linked Lists in computer programming. More specifically, Circular Linked Lists. Let us define some variables.

1. Each person is called a Node.
2. Each link is called a relation ( A Relation can be omni-directional, both forward and backward)
3. We can make or break any relation/link to attain any possible configuration of the nodes.
4. Yellow dots represent Male.
5. Pink dots represent Female.

Assumption: Sexual Orientation of each node - "STRAIGHT" . So, links between similar nodes are not possible.

Here is the initial configuration of a rectangle.


I won't go into details of this diagram. It seems to be self-explanatory. So, moving ahead with the solution, if we could slightly decouple all the links/relations between each of the nodes, the rectangle might become very unstable. But, since this is not the final step and I would be making new links to arrive at a more stable configuration, let us assume that, for a moment, the configuration are allowed to be skewed a bit, i.e. on the verge of breaking all the links.


During this momentary unstable conditions, where all the nodes are ready to accept new connections, it is easier to create new links which would result in a more stable configuration for all. So, we try to make new links and break some existing ones. But, finally, we will always of the same number of links that we started with, as per the Law of conservation of Links.

In the figure below, the links in blue, are the new links, and the links colored in green, are the old links which finally, will be deleted.


And, finally, the configuration would somewhat look like this. Everyone's happy, lets party.



Unlike in a triangle, where one or more person has to go back home with a frowning face, in a rectangle, there are more chances for each node to be in a WIN-WIN situation. So, as we can see, initially, we had a circular singly-linked list, though the process of modifying the linked list brought about an overall increase in the number of linked lists, the current form of both the linked lists are more stable, provided any external factors are not allowed to interfere.

That's my solution. It is still in research stage. I want some volunteers on which I could test my theories. Once this theory is established for its correctness backed by experimental results, I will apply for a patent. Volunteers can reach me at my e-mail id.

Bibliography:
1. Wikipedia - Love Triangles, Love Rectangles, Love Polygons
2. Let Us C - Yeshwant Kanetkar
3. Linked Lists in Computer Programming - O' Rielly
4. Mathematical Models for Love Problems - Albert Eintein

Important Warning : If you feel that you are in a love rectangle/triangle/ploygon, before making the final move, please pick up your geometry box, measure your angles accurately, and then finally draw your lines. Once the lines are drawn, its not very easy to re-draw them.
WE DON'T HAVE ERASERS IN REAL LIFE.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Finally, Here comes the Smoking Ban

Wow, it took almost 3 years for our Government to bring out the "Smoking Ban" Act. This will be in effect from the 2nd of October this year, on Gandhi Jayanthi. Here are some points to be pondered over:

1. As per the revised Rules, smoking is banned in shopping malls, cinema halls, public/private work place, hotels, banquet halls, discotheques, canteen, coffee house, pubs, bars, airport lounge, railway stations.

2. People can smoke on roads or in their homes but not in any other place.

Well, the first question that comes into my mind is, "Is it justified?"

Many non-smokers would answer in affirmative, but a lot of my friends will be grinning, at the thought that here is another law that can be broken at will. As for me, I only smoke when no one is looking. Since, for the world, I have quit smoking.

Ok, what about pubs and bars?? Is it justified?? I don't have an answer. When I was not a smoker, I really hated people who enjoyed blowing smoke over someone else's face, but then I started doing the same to people who asked me to quit. Sometimes, I was beaten up, and then I realized that I just can't do it to everyone, of course not to the girls at the pubs, especially when they are with their boy friends. But What the Hell......Why Pubs and Bars.....

I agree to everything else, not a ban on smoking in public places.....ok...Pubs and Bars are public places.....But, people go there to drink, smoke, dance, enjoy.....These are the necessary ingredients of the atmosphere. Any one of them goes missing, and the fun vanishes.

What about smoking zones then?? Aren't those public places as well, should smoking be banned there also? Please comment.

Ok, now the Act allows people to smoke in their homes...WOW...thanks Health Minister. Isn't that a public place? I mean, if you are having a party at your house, will the law be applicable there? Even if there is no party, why should the government decide if I should smoke in my home or not.

What about my car, though I don't have one yet, but what about people having those small mobile private homes? Is it punishable??

This law needs serious amendments, before it comes into force. What say people??

If you don't act now, someday, the Government will come up with a law that migth ban "Females in Pubs, Bars, Malls, Cinema halls" but only allow them in your homes and the street.