Awkwardly Homophonic

Homophones are usually defined as words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of how they are spelled. While the presence of homophonic words in any language must have decreased the size of a language phonetically, but to a user it might some time create awkward situations. A few days ago, I fell to the pray of such a word... "come". The homophone of this word is never expected to be uttered in any casual conversations. But, in one way or the other, my pronunciation or expression had put me in a very very gawky situation and I struggled hard to justify myself that I never meant the other word. And, I curse the linguists who must have put such a pathetic homophones to such a common word in English language. Later, the situation reminded me of the effective communication courses taught during the training programs of my previous employer. The lady instructor while teaching us about correct way expressing and pronunciating, had explicitly put forwarded the example of homophone of "come" and told us to be very careful while interacting with clients. I never found the usefulness of those lessons until recently.
             While discussing about this with my friends, we thought that it will be nice to devise an algorithm in Natural Language Processing, which can detect such anomalies. I somehow think that, one heuristic way of detecting whether a person meant the common word or its homophone will be to make use of past history of the person about usage of words in his daily life w.r.t to the context. And, as the usage gets detected, count for each such words gets incremented. Now, if a tolerance limit of say 10 is set, then when usage of the homophone exceeds the tolerance limit, the system will detect that indeed the person meant the homophone, instead of the common word. For example, as I see myself, I never use such homophones in social gatherings, so my count was initially zero. So, when my count reaches 10, the natural language processor will detect that I indeed meant the homophone of "come". Again, the algorithm can make usage of weightage for each such homophones. So, in gist, making usage of historical data we can put some anticipation about what the person actually meant.

Assorted Lines

posting after a really long time. Infact, not a single post in February and its almost March end. Life is okay.. good .. so so type. Nothing special, like always. In between, I attended a friend's wedding. It was nice. Work life is going just like that. I still wonder that I am doing the same damn work for the last six years and still haven't lost the urge of continue doing it. In all these years, two things have remained constant. Me and the nature of the work. Other wise everything has changed. People working with me, culture .. everything. Had two nice bashes in last some days. It was fun. Also, quarter end team lunches. I filled up my stomach till the brim and had no space for dinner. Watching a few of the cricket matches these days. It was good to see team India winning against Australia. The temperature is soaring and I hate it. I broke my vow of not going to office on weekends for the sake of some so called urgent work and got adequately punished by the invisible forces of nature for it. 900 bucks went missing from my wallet.. that too in the workplace. Sounds shitty.. but true. I realized that over the last 2-3 years I have gone almost invisible My friends asks me what's the matter; I say I have gone antisocial in all these years. Finding bliss in solitude. One such friend called me up a few days back. We were talking after almost 1.5 years. It was funny to hear him saying that he thought that either I must have relocated abroad or must have become a "gay". Hmmm... anyways, nothing more to write as such. 

Hachiko

This evening I watched a movie named Hachiko: A Dog's Story on HBO, starring Richard Gere. The plot of the movie is based on the true story of a professor's dog in Japan, who waited for 9 years in a railway station till death, for the reappearance of its deceased master. The movie was so touching, that it made me cry.A must watch for any dog lovers. As a honor to the loyalty of the dog and its invincible bond with its owner, a bronze statue can be seen in the same railway station, Tokyo's Shibuya Station. I sometimes curse my lifestyle for not being able to keep a pet

More Info:

The Movie
The Dog

Spot The Flaw

A friend of mine, who is a very keen observer of day to day things, pointed out a flaw in the recent Coca Cola Ad featuring Imran Khan and Marcela Rodrigues. As shown in the advertisement, Marcela is reacting to the actions of the shadow without even looking at the shadow. A Great Flaw indeed. Have a look:

random thoughts

Probably the 1st post of the New Year. I have indeed lost my habit of blogging. May be, re-tweeting has come in the way of writing long blog posts. Anyways, nothing new about this year as already 3 weeks have passed. Life is going fine. Little busy at work, and ofcourse life has been expensive over the time. One of my friend tweeted a few days back, for the 1st time in India need, comfort and luxury are being sold at the same time, at the same price. Onion, Petrol and Beer... all at INR65. Recently, recruiter from a leading software company contacted me for some open and challenging positions with them. I replied saying that I am not currently prepared enough to appear for technical interviews with them. I was aware about the difficulty level of interviews with them and knew that, it can well result in a disheartening experience. I was quite amazed to hear her reply. She wanted me to appear for it as my resume was lying idle in their database for a long time :-). Quite funny. I and one of my friends have a theory that people usually get a big belly after getting married. We were correct in our theory once again. One of our colleagues was married recently and he has put on a big belly in less than 2 months. May be we should file a patent for our theory. I like this part of the year, not because the weather is cool, but because most of my favorite brands give upto 50% discount in reduction sales. But a trouser costing INR 2799 and having a 30% discount don't make sense. I have resolution this year. I won't go to office on weekends and free food at office shouldn't entice me either. I have a pact with a friend of mine. He will kick my butt the following Monday, if I come to office on the weekend. Lemme see, till when I can save my derrière.

Movies Watched in 2010

I watched around 120 movies of different languages in the Year - 2010.
Here in the List.

Happy New Year - 2011

Wishing A Very Happy, Prosperous & Joyous New Year 2011

the week that was

A diary of events for my 2010 Year End Break.

18th December - 2010, Saturday

I woke up at 9:30AM today. Had bread-cheese in B'fast and finished reading almost the whole newspaper. Cooked delicious chicken curry and rice for lunch, had bath and it was almost 2:00PM, by the time I finished lunch and cleaning the utensils. Watched TV and lied down in bed for almost an hour. Checked my mails, twitter and wrote a blog post. Made a cup of tea. By 4:30PM, I went to the mall. I had to buy some clothes and other stuffs. Bought dinner from McDonalds and reached back home by around 8:30PM. Ate my dinner and started to watch a movie. The movie was too boring and finally slept at 11:00PM.

19th December - 2010, Sunday

I woke up at 8:30AM today. Had bread-jam in B'fast and read the newspaper. At around 10AM, I went to the Sunday market to buy vegetables and fish. Reached back home by around 11:30AM. Started preparing my lunch. Cooked mixed vegetables, fish fry along with rice. Had bath and it was almost 2:00PM by the time I finished my lunch and cleaned utensils. Read through the user guide of NetLogo and then tried designing the CuttingEdge poster. Prepared evening tea in between. Skipped my dinner, and watched Danny the Dog in Star Movies. Then started to watch The Langoliers, but fell asleep in midway, I guess at around 10:30PM or so.

20th December - 2010, Monday

I woke up at 8:30AM today. Had bread-butter in B'fast. I skipped reading today's newspaper. Checked my mails and did some random hitch-hiking in the web. At around 10:30AM, I started to clean my house and finished by 12:00PM. Washed clothes,had bath and heated up my lunch. I had leftover chicken curry from Saturday and heated up one frozen Paratha. By 2:00PM I finished my lunch and cleaning up the utensils. I started watching The Langoliers from the point I left last night. The movie finished at around 4:00PM. Got a cup of tea for myself. Started with the design of Cutting Edge poster and finally finished one by 8:00PM. I realized that it was not at all an eye catching one, a mediocre type. Anyways, if it gets qualified for display, I will feel that my Year End Break was a little fruitful. I Watched two movies back2back, Crank2 and The Echo and finally went to sleep at 1:30AM.

21st December - 2010, Tuesday

I woke up at 8:30AM today. Had biscuits in B'fast. I read the newspaper. Checked my mails and cleaned my vsnl.net email account. I cooked Bilahi Masor Tenga (Fish curry with Tomatoes), Aloo Palak for lunch. Finished lunch by around 1:30. Was feeling terribly sleepy and slept for an hour. Woke up at around 2:30, had bath. Sat with my laptop, did some random hitch hiking and updated some personal documents. In between made my evening tea. Ooops, it was already 6:00PM by then. I planned to cook Chole Masala and so readied all the raw materials. I had put Channa to soak in water the previous night itself. Solved some puzzles, had dinner with Chole and Paratha, followed by milk shakes and finally went to sleep at 11:00PM

22nd December - 2010, Wednesday

I woke up at 9:00AM Today. Had bread-butter in b'fast. Read the newspaper. Checked my mails.I was feeling like writing some PHP stuffs. It had been ages looking at PHP and so I thought to just have a revision and so started doing it. The whole day, I spent writing a few random scripts, and had just maggie for my lunch. Finally, I wind it up at around 5:00PM, and then had a cup of tea. I read some stuffs like algorithms and data structures. Had lunch with fish curry from Tuesday and finally slept at 11:00PM. The whole day today, I did not watch TV, didn't take a bath nor slept.

23rd December - 2010, Thursday

I woke up at 8:30AM Today. Had biscuits with tea in b'fast. Read the newspaper. Checked my mails. I started reading stuffs left from last night and felt like taking some programming tests online. I took two C programming tests and my God I felt so illiterate in C programming. It was Thursday today and as always a day for load shedding. I was up with my laptop till it died of battery. It was 12:30PM and I was feeling so hungry. I went to the nearby veggie restaurant and ate Hakka noodles. I went out of home after 4 long days of staying inside. The car was lying idle and so took it out for a drive to the petrol pump. The petrol cost was INR60.45 per liter. Life has indeed become so dearer. Returned home by around 2:00PM and was feeling terribly sleepy. Slept for an hour or so. Had dinner with Tuesday's Chole. Watched a movie named Crash and slept at 12:00AM.

24th December - 2010, Friday

I woke up at 8:30 AM Today. Had Bread-Cheese in B'fast. Read almost the whole newspaper and it was 10:30 by then. Checked my mails and tried reading some stuffs. By 11:30, I started cooking my lunch. I cooked fish curry with cauliflower-potato and finished my lunch by around 1:30PM. I just lied down in bed listening to music, made a cup of tea in between and spent the entire afternoon. I went out to buy stuffs, bought mutton for X'Mas eve dinner all with myself. Had yummy roasted mutton with Paratha and finally went to sleep by 11:00PM.

25th December - 2010, Saturday

I woke up at 8:30 AM Today. Had Biscuits and Tea in B'fast. Read newspaper. Checked my mails and random surf of the net, and oops its already 11:30AM. I don't plan to eat lunch today so relieved from cooking for the time. Booked a ticket for The Tourist at 6:45PM Today. Read through stuffs and had Maggie in between. Slept for an hour so and woke up at 3:30PM. Watched random programmes in TV, had my evening Tea in between. It was 5:30PM and I had to get ready for the movie. Watched The Tourist in ESquare, okay sort of movie and returned home by 9:00PM. I cooked rice, and had it with fish curry from yesterday and finally slept by around 11:00PM.

26th December - 2010, Sunday

Today is the last day of my Year End Break.

I woke up at 8:30AM Today. Had Biscuits & Tea in B'fast. Read almost the whole Sunday Times and took a English Vocabulary test. It was 11:00 AM by then and I had to clean my house. It was almost 12:30PM by the time I cleaned the house and had bath. I had to cook my lunch. Cooked chicken curry and finished lunch by around 2:30PM. I was already so tired and so took a nap for an hour or so. I read through some stuffs and had my evening Tea in between. Was reading and watching TV. I was not planning to eat any heavy stuffs for dinner, ate just bread-butter. Slept by around 11:00PM.

           So, it was a quiet and solo vacation of 9 days ... all with myself. I don't know if I made it large, but it was a nice time spent with myself.

P.S: This post has a lot of grammatical mistakes mainly tense related.

Season's Greetings

Yet Another Year End Break

So, finally its almost the end of 2010 and my Year End Break starts this morning. I plan to spend my holidays in my own ways, all with myself and all alone. Its good spend sometime far away from Outlook mails, far from the daily routine. Sleep, cook, watch TV, surf net, music ... that's what I am going to do anyways. Today is the 1st day of the holidays, but I am already sad that these holidays will also finish soon without even realizing it.

Say No To Fire Crackers

Don't You Advocate for Car Pooling ?

Don't You Say Against Usage of Tissue Papers ?

Don't You Ask for Banning Plastic Bags ?

Don't You Discuss "Going Green !!!" ?

!!! STOP BEING A HYPOCRITE !!!

... IT'S TIME TO SAY YOU REALLY CARE ...

-- THIS DIWALI --

-- SAY NO TO FIRECRACKERS --

LEAVE THE TYPICAL CHALTA HAIN INDIAN MENTALITY

DIWALI COME ONCE IN A YEAR

but,

SO2 FUCK THE ATMOSPHERE FOREVER

The Joy of Buying

I enjoy shopping a lot; let it be buying clothes, technical books. But a few days back, I enjoyed buying something different. I bought a Twitter app called Gravity for my Symbian phone. Its an amazing piece of software, with a great UI in just $10. Actually, this is the first software I have bought. Most of the softwares for my personal computing needs are accomplished with free softwares. Firefox, YM, Gtalk, Skype, VLC, FileZilla, WinSCP, NotePad++, DevC++. The operating system is from OEM and office suite is under my employer's volume license. And since I work in a security company, the antivirus is from free for employee offer. On the Linux side, everything is just free. I rely on Save As PDF in MS Office for making PDF files or sometimes even do a online conversion where the content of my doc is not confidential. So, never actually felt the need of buying software. So, buying Gravity was a great feel good experience. It supports Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and a few others, but I bought it mainly for Twitter. I would highly recommend Gravity who is a Twitter user and want to use it in his mobile phone.

Good Night ... Sweet Dreams

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. 

 

Rabindranath Tagore

To crib or not to crib ?

"Crib" - I could never find a meaning of this word in the context of my usage. I crib a lot i.e I complain a lot without doing anything about to tackle my complaints by myself. I was wondering if there is an English word to describe such a behavior. Indeed, I crib a lot. I crib about the potholes ridden roads, shitty traffic, unethical way of driving in the road. I even crib about my work, salary, designation and even about people around me. While some of the cribs, I think are not in my control but a majority of the others are either utter nonsenses or it needs a lot of actions on my part. I think sometimes that I should not crib, but I get confused when I hear people saying that you don't get anything if you don't crib, specially in the corporate world. In the other world, ruled by corrupt bureaucrats and government officials, the art of cribbing has no place. In corporates, whether you need a raise in your perks or need a trip abroad or anything you desire to have, you have to crib. And, over the time, I feel, I am slowly entering in the labyrinth of cribbing. Sometimes I crib, ya I do a lot. I have seen the effectiveness of cribbing on other peoples. When I see a crib getting answered in the way one wanted, I get confused whether its a positive side of cribbing or is it a mediocrity of those who answer the cribs. One thing I feel, you crib most when you keep comparing yourself with others and it probably happens due to lack of self recognition or self confidence. But, then you crib that you did not get the right opportunity to recognize your true potential.One crib brings another crib. This way, the process of cribbing continues in a recursive manner, until the mind overflows (Stack Overflow!).

I still try to find the answer of to crib or not to crib ?

P.S : I don't know if "Crib" is the right spelling for the word I was trying to write about. I could not find it in any of the dictionary.

a lot like avatar

I was late in watching James Cameron's Avatar. While most people watched it last December, I watched it just a few days back when the special edition is re-released. Great movie... amazing effects but could have been a bit shorter as my eyes got strained wearing the 3D glasses for 3 long hrs. I don't know about other people but I took away not the special effects of the movie but a feeling about the happenings around me, which is a lot like Avatar. The Maoist problem in India. I know bloodshed can never be justified, but there is a limit to which exploitation remain tolerated. I would myself had not tolerated if someone take away my home, my land in the name of refineries, mining or any other shits. I am not at all trying to justify the killings of the innocent people and security personnels, but our lawmakers should try to solve the problem rather than trying to suppress it. Similar was the case in North East, and the problem still remains. And there are people like Anil Agarwal of Vedanta, who in his blind aspiration of becoming the richest Indian is playing the role of Parker in India's Avatar...

A Missing Feeling...

I hate this feeling. The feeling that from tomorrow we wont be working together, we wont be eating together, we wont be sharing jokes. As I was bidding farewell to my friend, I had all these thoughts running through my mind and I felt sad, very sad. While I feel happy as my friend is moving on in life, but I know from tomorrow life at the workplace will be altogether a different one. A vacant feeling will engulf it. But, the memories will be cherished forever. With a promise to remain in touch always...

The Ultimate Gift

The Gift of Work : You know, you do any work like you just did… you can do anything.

The Gift of Money: The charge card company declined the charge. That's impossible. I don't have a credit limit. Just run it through again. It's always our practice to run it through again, but they declined.

The Gift of Friends: I need a friend.You expect this friendship to continue? I plan on knowing Jason for the rest of my life.

The Gift of Learning: Do you truly know how to learn? Villagers wait for books. You bring them new books. They are waiting for you to pick up old books. Exchange. Library.

The Gift of Problems: Well, you don't begin to live until you've lost everything. Heck, I've lost everything three or four times. It's the perfect place to start.

The Gift of Family: And Emily, she's the best decision I ever made. What's gonna happen to my mom? I really don't hate her, you know.

The Gift of Laughter: –Salud. –Salud –Salud 

The Gift of Dreams: You need to be free, free to dream. You need to come up with a dream, then act on it. And honestly, I don't know if I have my own dream. But I do know I can help others fulfill theirs.

The Gift of Giving: She owes $1,600 in back rent. So, apparently… someone came by and covered my back rent.

The Gift of a Day: What would your dream be? My dream? My dream was a perfect day. And I'm just finishing it.

The Gift of Love: I love you, Son. – I love you too.

Courtesy: The Ultimate Gift

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Finally, the day of the demo came. I along with another colleague were developing a prototype for almost a month and we had to demonstrate it to some fellows very high in the hierarchy. Since the demo was meant to be shown to people across geographical sites, we decided to go for a backup video, in case the network play foul. There was no GUI involved, just a few SSH sessions were to be recorded as we execute the programs. Just a 10 min demo video may be. We had the right video making software, the right infrastructure, but still it took us almost 5 hours to record the final video. Every time something or the other goes wrong and hence we had to repeat it. Towards the end of it we almost had gone nuts, but could produce a nice video. And, the demo and everything went fine. Later, when I thought over it, I realized how much hard work actually went for such a small video and people make movies of hours with actual human beings. Just think about the effort and work involved, may be even for those movies which we tag as B -Grade. And, it takes such a small time to judge if a movie is a hit or a flop. The movie critics who actually earn a lot of money just by saying that all those efforts are piece of shits, and is not worth the bucks. Probably, hard work is not everything. If it is, a donkey would have been the most acclaimed and appreciated animal.

6 Yrs. and counting

Yesterday, I completed six years of my professional life. I still remember the day when I started my career. New place, new people, indeed everything was new. Excited, and nervous. I told to myself, everything will be just fine. Six years have passed since and here I am. During all these years, I learned a lot of things, technical, non-technical, political and what not. I have grown from a college guy to a man, more matured, responsible. I have learned to control my emotions at work place, but on this sphere I still have a long way to go. Earned some moolah, paid back some share to the society. Next year, or may be year after that or some more years after that, when I sit and want to write about that year's anniversary of my professional life, I want to write something different from what I am writing today. Something more than just about earning my bread. I hope I'll !!!

Waka Waka & Rainy Days

Posting after a long time. Was not finding anything to write on. Although I blog mostly just for the sake of blogging, but last few weeks did not find the sake also. Blame it on Waka Waka Soccer time or just at the cozy rainy days. Although not watching every matches, but watching some of them. I am planning to watch Katrina in Raajneeti for almost two weeks now, but still have not gone for it. Apathy or Multiplex Prices... I don't know. I am loving my professional life these days. Ah no, not that I am working on some bleeding edge stuffs, but just because lots of corporate lunches happening these days. And I love corporate lunches. Its free and I end up eating so much that I don't have to worry for the dinner on that day. I am full and I just skip it. Who says there is nothing like free lunch? Another blog post, just for the sake of blogging :-)