Author: derick

Technology is Making Me Stupid

I went online the other day to read my blog (somebody has to) and began reading the posting below this one, “Muffled Chinese Blogs”. And while reading it, I replaced the word “disparaging” with “criticizing”–it just seemed to sound better. So I began typing the change directly into the edit form, a form without a spell checker mind you:

c-r-i-t-i-z-i-n-g …

c-r-i-t-z-i-e-i-n-g …

No.. that doesn’t look write either. Alrighty, let’s sound this out:

‘CRIT’ -er- SIZE

C-r-i-t-e-r-s-i-z-e

(Hmm, still looks wrong)

Eventually I ended up double clicking on the MS Word Icon on my desktop and had Clipy correctly spell it for me.

Then it hit me.

Ever since I started to use spell checking within word processors, my own spelling skills have turned into nothing short of a complete embarrassment. If, and god forbid, spell checking was completely taken away from me, URI would probably knock on my door and ask me for their degree back.

The same goes with math.

In college, I had to take Calculus I, II, III, worked with all that derivative nonsense, and integral that, the masocistic “let’s neatly align a dozen numbers into a square and try to do complicated meaningless things to it”. Yeah, I’ve done it all, and passed. Not because I know how to do any of it. Because I don’t! I passed because of a little invention called the TI-89, the graphing calculator to end all graphing calculators.

Because of the TI-89, I can’t do math by hand.

Oh, and lest I forget, “French”. I took 5 years of French in high School. Yes that’s correct, 5! However, I can barely compose a complete sentence. There was this one time, my friend Rai and I were given an assignment in French class. We had to write a story ( a short story) completely in French. Rai and I were on an equal footing with our French skills, and so for our French story we decided to split the work up. Rai was to write the story, and I was to translate it. This was right around the time I discovered babelfish, the handy little online translator.

So Rai wrote this elaborate story in english, with all types of strange and superfluous words. I remember quite specifically that he used the word “plumes” when describing snow. Plumes! And when I got the story, I read about a quarter of it, and then copied and pasted the entire thing into babelfish to make the automatic translation. Of course these online translators are never 100% in their translation, but I don’t think I cared at the time. Anyway, to make a long story short, Rai and I, two students who often evoke a chuckle or two in class by are “Frenglish” pronunciation (where we go out of our way to make French sound like English) and are obvious indifference with doing well in this class, the two of us got a bright and shiny ‘A’ on the project!

Later on the teacher discovered our chicanery after noticing that some of the tenses we used in our story weren’t taught yet in class, and she later gave us a little admonishment for our little prank, but let us keep the ‘A’ since she never explicitly said we couldn’t use a translation program. You’ve got to love technicalities!

I wonder how many people out there are like me. Who’d rather spend 3 hours finding a shortcut to something, than spending 3 hours actually doing it. On a seesaw, as one end goes up, the other comes crashing down. Maybe as computers get smarter and technology gets better, maybe we’re getting dumber?

Muffled Chinese Blogs

The thought of a world where you can be arrested and sentenced to prison for criticizing public officials or for simply voicing an opinon is quite scary. So scary in fact, I often feel they are just confined to Orwell’s fictional and pejorative views of the distant future, the ominous mid-80’s ..ooooooo. And then there’s Rand, with Anthem, her take on the future–just as dismal. But then, when the book is closed, it’s all over; the world within the pages, is not the world you live in. Everything’s fine.

…then there’s China.

This week, bloggers in China are being required by law to register their websites with the government in another attempt to duct tape the mouths of their citizens.

So for those “seditious” bloggers that are being strong-armed by their government to stop writing on their blogs, I welcome you to host on my server. Contact me via e-mail.

Motel in Kissimmee Florida

My Uncle Tom is one of the few–if not the only–entrepreneur in our family. And, I guess it’s only fitting that this same uncle is not even “technically” related, but when it comes to Sri Lankans, it’s a blurred line that separates the friends from the family.

So, my Uncle Tom a year ago, packed his family (and his things) and headed over to Kissimmee Florida to run his own motel business, and from what I hear, it’s going well.

He came to visit the other weekend and asked me if I could give him a hand setting up a website for him to reel in more visitors. I was delighted.

--- Begin Shameless Plug ---

I’d like to introduce: http://www.sunrisemotelfl.com

Of course the links on the left don’t quite work yet ( it’s me doing it remember).

So for your next trip to Disney world (which is like 15 minutes from there) stay at my Uncle’s Motel. It’s in Kissimmee Florida, and the prices are really good and he runs a very nice facility. Mention his website and get a little discount.

Post-College Rut

Sustaining a blog can be so difficult sometimes, and even more so when your life is as dull as mine– even my meals haven’t differentiated much. Every morning (since I wake up with little to no time to spare) I toss some Raisin Bran in a bowl, splash a little 1% on top of it, and head out to my car. I’ve perfected cereal eating while driving, bowl, spoon, and everything, it’s really quite an art. By the time I reach work every morning, I’ve finished my serving of cereal, and then off to work I go. Oh, I forgot to mention, during my morning hustle I toss a few bags of tea in my pocket on the way out, Earl Grey, from Twinings.

After arriving into the office, I have a mug of tea, no sugar, with the tea bag steeped for 3 minutes exactly. Then the rest of my day is spent programming, and doing a load of work related minutia, which since I am a programmer, involves a lot of QT with my computer–we have quite a relationship. This computer I use is itself quite a mystery. It’s a 433 Mhz processor (archaic I know), with less that 400MB of ram and about 8GB of Harddrive space, yet however, It somehow performs better than any PC I have ever had, that includes my 2.5 Ghz laptop at home. I guess it’s one of those cases where it’s NOT what is inside that counts, but instead what kind of strange supernatural spiritual being has possessed your computer, because really, this is not natural.

Lunch time is Subways– always Subways. They know us there.

The afternoon commute from Warwick to Rumford is the only divergent item in my routine. Sometimes it will take an hour home, sometimes 15 minutes, it’s as unpredictable as the weather.

At home, I have a new treadmill, that my parent’s bought me for graduation. And now, I am an absolute fiend at running. My average distance now is 6 miles, which– mind you– is after an enormous sedentary, and inactive lifestyle prior. I absolutely love that feeling after a long run. It’s quite a high. In fact I read somewhere that it technically is a “high”: your neurons release betaendorphins into the brain, which act as a natural pain suppressant, and creates a mild euphoric sensation in your brain. They say this can be addicting–and who said addiction was a vice?

So after the run, comes the reading. Right now I’m in the middle of Anna Karenina, which I thought at first was going to be another eponymous “chick-book” like Jane Eyre, but I have been surprisingly wrong. It’s not what I expected, and really quite engaging. Tolstoy is the man.

And then the cycle repeats.

The post-college-quarter-life crisis. The time when school is over, as well as those clearly defined goals, and you carry on a routine until you find a real full time job. Then it all changes, but only for a little while.

Ariyam.com 2.0.1

I was starting to get a little bored with my website so I’ve made some slight modifications. I’ve further stratified my blog categories into labels more specific than just “general” and “politics”.

I also ripped-off Monet for my new banner image–ah, he’s dead, he won’t mind. Now the only thing left to upgrade is the content! Don’t you worry, that’s next!

Forster’s Two Cents

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself,, or , “I am horrified,” we are insincere.

E.M. Forster from
A Passage to India

Frankenstein

I finally got to read Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein the other day. I say the word “finally” because I bought this book years ago, during one of my high school book-buying binges. And even though it’s a relatively short book, I never gave it a shot, mainly because I felt I knew everything there is to know about Frankenstein:

Let’s see …

Tall, inherently evil, athletically-built SGM seeks SGW, having a penchant for slow walks with arms fixed straight ahead, who enjoys bellowing out incoherent grunts and monosyllabic words. [let your own preconceptions fill in the rest]

Well, after reading the book, I see now that I had a few things completely wrong. First of all, I always just assumed “Frankenstein” to be the name of the monster, I didn’t realize that the monster doesn’t really have a name, other than his possessive association with his creator: Dr Frankenstein’s monster.

Then another one of my preconceptions went sour, and in fact, became the exact opposite of what I expected. I imagined the monster to be very inarticulate, and if he had any written dialogue, I figured it would be as unreadable as Jim from Huckleberry Finn. But I was quite mistaken. He was extremely intelligible and even eloquent. Not to mention well-read, there is a mention of him reading Paradise Lost, and Plutarch’s Tales (the former being a book I struggled a bit with in my British Lit. class). The monster is plaintive and rational, with tender emotions that are quite hurt by the repeated responses he gets by humans, who do nothing but snap-judge him by his hideous looks and reach for arms. During one instance, the monster risks his life to save a little girl drowning in a nearby river, and is rewarded only by a shot gun shell to the chest. A gift of firewood to a starving indigent family is met by fear and hate, with yet another attempt at the monster’s life. And there were many more similar episodes. Largess rewarded by scorn, appeals to reason, retorted by violence; It felt like the label of monster was placed on the wrong group of people.

There also seems to be a splash of The Merchant of Venice influence. During one long sorrowful speech by the monster, I was almost expecting him to break down on his knees with: “Hath not a monster eyes? … if you prick us do we not bleed.”

Overall, the book is very well written and really an excellent story, I’d recommend it to anyone. It has such relevant themes, particularly on the grossness of ignorance, prejudice and preconceptions, and how in this regard the ostensibly intelligent, like the learned Dr. Frankenstein, can be ruefully stupid. I initially avoided reading this book due to my own assumption of what I would find–which inturn made the book’s message, that much more effective.

Graduated Finally

I can’t believe I’ve finally graduated. In fact, the thought never really hits me until someone else mentions it, and that is usually followed by a lifted glass towards my direction–and plenty of smiles.

The last five years have been quite an experience, to say the least. But I suppose five years of anything can be considered “quite an experience.”

There was my brief episode of being an English major, fomented mostly by the physics and math classes that I was never too good at. It’s a fact; I can’t do simple math; I can’t do complicated math either. It’s really quite embarrassing.

But I ended up switching my major again, back to computers. And then some how or another I muscled through it. So here I am. Another green computer scientist, fatted up with 5 years of schooling like a prized hog, and now ready for the workforce.

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d !

Star Wars iii Review

I got to see Star Wars III the other day with my good friend Laboss and my cousin Lalith. We were able to see the film a little early through my mother, whose company handed out sneak preview tickets to each employee; I guess received as a reflected incentive for Hasbro’s commercial partnership with Lucas Studios in creating all sorts of neat little figurines like the uber-cute Mr. Potato head Darth Vader, and plush, verdant, Yoda dolls that also cute they are. Anyway, I’m going to seize this opportunity to throw my two cents at this movie.

Let me start be mentioning the obvious. The original Star Wars IV, V, and VI, were absolutely brilliant. And although they didn’t have the hi-tech CGI luster that the new I, II, and III have, the script was so solid and engaging, that were it performed in the globe theater with little more than pine floors and a dozen oddly placed load-bearing columns, the story itself would have stood ground.

But, I’m afraid, I can’t say the same about these recent 3 Star Wars films. The effects were dazzling, and I dare say, “too” dazzling, but it was completely lacking in story. If you were to consolidate the fight scenes in this last move, part III, which looked so rehearsed and were so onerous to watch, it would easily take up a little less than half the run-time of the entire movie. As for the story, it was predictable. Most of the fighting involved either Obi Wan Kenobi or Anakin Skywalker. And every fight scene with Obi Wan, I knew would leave Obi Wan the victor, seeing how he has to make an appearance in Star Wars IV. Every Fight scene with Anakin Skywalker, I knew, would leave Anakin the victor, again for the same reason. The love scenes with Anakin and Padme made me want to vomit. Hayden Christiansen for the most part had a frightful performance. And, the movie’s dialogue was just plain bad.

Futhermore, all the screens were too brilliantly rendered with computer graphics that it made every scene seem more like concept drawings, rather than a palpable reality. Also, is there really a need to preface every Star Wars film with the most complicated of short narratives? Maybe it’s just me, but I find the introductory scrolling yellow text to be a little too complicated a story to be planting in the beginning of a film— especially when you have only a few seconds to read it. Okay: so the separatist movement of the republic has lost momentum in the unanimous confirmation of the senators to deter Chancellor Palatine’s movement to commend the release… boy it’s tedious to read.

I know what I like in Science Fiction, and these last 3 Star War’s films were not it. I found all the little quips extremely corny and irritating. The fighting was a complete bore. The story was completely predictable and lacking. In Short, this film gets my two thumbs down disapproval.

Review of Chrous Concert

I have been set with the task of writing a review on the University Chorus and Concert Choir’s performance on April 30, 2005 of Gabriel Faure’s Requiem. Let me first start off candidly and admit that my concert-viewing experience is quite limited–especially with chorus concerts. The only recent memories I have of seeing someone physically singing are sorrowfully limited to the dreadful impromptu talent in Fox’s American Idol, the obligatory ballgame anthems, and of course, the garish perennial SuperBowl halftime shows. So although I may not have the requisite expertise and experience to make what would be considered a thorough and informed review of Saturday’s URI chorus concert, I will give it an honest effort and commit this task to the best of my ability.

Let me first start of by making note of the key figures of Saturday’s concert. I have already mentioned the two chorus groups: the Univerity Chorus and the Concert Choir. The directing of the night’s performance was shared by Carolina Flores and Mark Conley, and the man-on-the-piano (for lack of a better term), was Eric Mazonson. All of whom, performed quite aptly—at least I think so. Let me put it this way, if there were any mistakes, they were expertly inconspicuous.

The chorus also performed quite well and I was very much impressed at the talent. I would like to share a small comment on the piece sung by the Univerity Chorus called “Now from the World (The light of God is Gone)”. This piece had a musical accompaniment with Michelle Gorgone playing the clarinet. Although Michelle did an excellent job with her part, I felt the piece as a whole sounded a little awkward with the clarinet. The unsteady dynamics of the clarinet (which I assume were unintentional) made the steady vocals drift in-and-out of hearing.

The mood set by the concert was—to say the least—melancholy. I understood very little of the lyrics when they were being sung by the chorus, but the melodies from each of the songs were mellifluous and pleasant to the ear. The final piece, Requiem Op.48 was also quite enjoyable to listen to. And you’ll have to excuse my more summary-like analysis of this concert. The different pieces seemed to mix together so fluidly, and the tones all sounded so similar, that it is a little hard to focus on individual pieces so much as the concert as a whole.

So on that note, let me just say that in summary, I quite enjoyed my experience in attendance at the URI Chorus Concert of Faure’s Requiem. I found the whole thing to be quite a successful display of vocal talent, and from my observations of the other spectators watching the concert—they seemed to enjoy it as well. Well done!