early rays...

Not a single post in the last fifteen days, :(. I wonder if I would get anything to write in the future!

Every time I read a newspaper or a book I wonder how those authors manage to write thousands of words. It seems impossible to me. Whenever I try to pen down a post, it does not exceed hundred words, how much ever I try. But this time, I decided my post would be at least a thousand words. So I started off thinking about all the happenings in the country, so many hot issues, people supporting agitations and some opposing them and as usual authors writing volumes about the happenings and their precious "opinions". But no, they are not my kind and so I decided not to write about them.

Then, I got this brilliant idea. So here's my post of a thousand words.


A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say.
A display of my photographic skills, titled "SoBrightTheProOfSun" [searching for anagrams?? I don't think there is one. :)] Location : Kanyakumari, India. Time : Sunrise.

of flutters and after effects...

The Butterfly effect. This one would go straight to the top of my favorite movie list. Ten minutes into the movie and I thought I had a new post in hand. This movie not only added fuel to my imagination but also connected some of the missing links in it.

Being a programmer myself, I could see the whole story as a series of if-else statements each condition leading to results miles apart. I guess everyone who have watched this one, would take a few minutes to reminisce the various paths they have trodden over their lifetime, take time to think "What if it was the other way ...?" and like the great Robert Frost would say to themselves "And that has made all the difference". Seems reasonable.

The only difference between reality and the movie, seen by my programmer's mind, would be the missing 'while(!satisfied)' loop, wrapping all the if-elses, which is absent in the real world. If only that was there, I am not sure we would love our lives as much as we do now, if at all we do. After all, even the hero was content with the original state of events.

Coming to programming and an other favorite movie of mine, the Matrix, I imagine Programming the Matrix would be lot easy with this idea of the butterfly effect. If all such effects are carefully taken care of and every path thus emerging made to end in one final situation, which is the desired state of the Matrix, the Architect would not have needed to make six versions of the same thing. Guess that's what makes programming difficult. Every other day you find a case you have not dealt in your code and that one becomes "The One" resulting in the fall of the existing version and a need to write a new one arises.

One more concept which made the movie more interesting was that of Probability. The force which drives and connects the events together. A lot of events might have happened. Instead, just one of them happened, the destined one. And what made that event a destined one? Yes. Probability. This again reminds me of one of the good books I have read "God's Debris" which states that God is part probability. Now if God was the creator, He is the one who controls events on this earth, then with all probability, He must be Probability or the one who defines and manages it. Perfect.

Incomplete, convoluted and uncertain ...

Be stupid. Be safe(r).

Not often does someone instigate me to write technical stuff on my blog. I like to keep my blog away from the complexities of compilers, intricacies of the interpreters, profundity of programs and the difficulties associated with databases. I like to keep this piece of the web simple and naive.
But posts like these prompt me to describe my small observations in this [in]secure world of user names and passwords.

How good would it be if no one could crack your password. Because your password is not in the dictionary. It is not one of your pet's, relative's or for that matter your name. And the best part is, it is not tough to remember either. It is not one of the complex capital and small letter combinations.
It does not include vague numbers in between. It neither has weird special characters in it.

Sounds like a perfect fit for all of our innumerable mail accounts, currently abandoned because the passwords were forgotten! Doesn't it?
And what would that password be? Well, it is just a mis-spelt word in the dictionary.

I know, it would take just a small amount of extra time for the crackers to check for all the permutations of the words in the dictionary. And bang, the password is cracked. But what if the cracker is not doing so. What if he is a bit stupid? And what if we are stupid enough not to know the correct spellings. That would make our password safe, without our knowledge.

That means "stupid people who generally misspell words and continue this habit even in choosing passwords are comparatively safe than people who spell words correctly". Sounds like I am re-inventing the wheel. May it be so.

Ignorance is bliss..proved again !