MIR books on internet

 Parking here the link where mir publisher books are curated: https://mirtitles.org/

Czochralski beyond semiconductor.

 I remember learning about the Czochralski technique during lectures on Electronic Materials taught by OP. Came across this article in spectrum magazine on his life. Following things stood out:

• Serendipity in dipping his pen nib in molten tin pot instead of ink pot
• Invention found no practical usage for long time
• Even without the invention which bears his name, Czochralski was a productive scientist

This reinforces my belief that for 'lucky' people to be 'successful', they should be independently productive. Number of opportunities you get is proportional to activities you do. 

Jolly LLB 3

I watched Jolly LLB 3 in the week after it was released. I have the memory of enjoying the part one where Arshad Warsi played the lead role. I have the memory of not disliking the second one where Akshay Kumar played the lead role so I was open to watching it if circumstances arise. It so happened that my by afternoon, my evening engagements were rescheduled and when I searched for local listing of movies, this was the one which came out as winner (showing close to my home, timing matching, no major violence, not part of series where stories are coupled etc). So I went to watch the Jolly LLB 3 with my family.

Slow Horses

 I recently read the Slow Horses by Mick Herron. I first heard about it when an apple tv series based on the name became popular. Last I heard it was renewed for another season. I am rationing my screen time by optimally allocating it in 'certain' sense -- it is either one of the comfort watch of re runs or completing my to watch list -- that I decide to first read the book and I was lucky. Book is very engaging, characters are very well developed, and plot was believable. It had a shadow of John Le Carre in that there is the British bureaucracy and spies -- or rather ex spies -- with human touch. Couple of things are not yet clear regarding the motivation of few characters and I hope it will be made more clear in subsequent books in the series. I can very much imagine it being written for the tv. An office settings, cast of front line workers and management, not too many outdoor scenes, a caustic boss, and a group of misfits. I am looking forward to watching it on tv as well sometime soon.  

Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century

I finished reading Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century by Simon Kuper who is also a columnist in FT, host of a podcast Heroes and Humans of Football, and author of other books few of which are already in my reading list.

It is an engaging book. I have not been to Paris - except during transit - but it is a city I would like to visit. Thanks to Netflix tv series such as Call My Agent and Lupin, and having read Simon Kuper's earlier articles, this book was long on my reading list. 

This book establishes why Paris is the centre of France and how that centre is expanding - both geographically as well as metaphorically. Simon moved to France sometime in his adulthood having lived in different countries and therefore brings an outsider's and comparative perspective. Book is divided into different chapters each dealing with one topic and all the topic taken together presents a picture of Paris which is rooted in its century old customs but also trying to grow. As a columnist for FT, he - I assume - has access to the people and places and he takes us to different types of people from other migrants to homeless to politicians and places within the Paris as well as at the periphery or suburbs. I recommend this book to any one having interest in the city and exploration of the city beyond usual tourist things.

A name i recognize

 IEEE Spectrum is one of the sources I really admire for sound and general purpose technical news. In a recent post excerpting a book on evolution of universities as innovation engine, I came across the name of Romesh Wadhwani whom I, and many other IITB students, know from WEL lab (second 'lab' is RAS syndrom) or Wadhwani Electronics Lab where we had our undergraduate electronics lab and where many students used to go for quick prototyping of circuits. 

26June25 links and followup

• Rooting for: Four minute barrier for women
• Good try
• EU considers mars chocolates and Pringles 'must have' for customers: Challenge to their merger bid
• CBSE board exams twice a year. Good move. I was surprised to find that many IIMs giving weightage to 10th marks. Then I was even more surprised to find many IT companies may use 10th marks as filtering criterion in campus placements.
• Not surprising that chatbots exaggerates scientific claims. Many papers do and almost all the abstracts. In that sense, these chatbots are acting more like an amateur journalists than a cautious scientist. But I am very hopeful that exaggeration is an issue which can be easily overcome with focused training.  

Doing what you love - doing nothing edition

 Shoji Morimoto taking the adage to whole new level, and succeeding at it:

 "....“I was often told that I wasn’t doing enough, or that I wasn’t doing anything, so this became a complex for me. I decided to take advantage of this and make it into a business,” he said...."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/19/japan-loneliness-rent/

After having read some of the use cases, I think I would have subscribed to his services at more than one occasion in my life if they were available. 

UBI announcement by INC

Today INC announced plan for their version of UBI. Regardless of my personal opinion on such things, I was pleasantly surprised to read this interview in Caravan which gives some background to the announcement. It is an interview with Abhijeet Banerjee and suggests that there was some discussion with people who have been involved with such thing earlier. Now that such an announcement has been made, it will be interesting to see how things shape and if this proposal sees light of the day. 

Long time back, I used to wish there was some scheme/entrance test where you will get some pre defined small amount which is not sufficient to make you rich but let you not worry much about day to day life so that you can focus on doing things you enjoy. My thinking has evolved changed - not sure for better or worse - and no longer wish for such option but when I think about it, I think I was thinking about something similar to UBI. Interesting times ahead.  

Cedric Villani in French Parliament

From MR, I went to this page where some of the newly elected French parliamentarians are listed. I was able to recognize Cedric Villani, whose book (also mentioned in the article) I read some years back. Book was engaging and provided a view into the way mathematicians work and collaborate. Here is wishing a successful legislative career to Cedric. 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Started Reading

I decided to continue my reading this month with spy fiction and zeroed on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I have seen the movie but luckily I forgot who was the mole. I remember the actor who played the mole but I don't remember name of his character. So it is still a mystery novel to me. But more than plain spy fiction, I have so far really enjoyed the novel for its detailing of back office process. While the reading is still progressing, I came across this review in my rss feeds of LitHub. As if universe was conspiring for me to read this (and if it was, couldn't it find a worthier aim to conspire for !!).

Goodluck Longreads

Story or information is not everything. its presentation matters a lot. A well written piece can make an otherwise mundane news read worthy whereas a badly written piece can convert an interesting news into trash. I first noticed in Readers Digest many years back the style of giving all the background information, projecting the personality of main characters, and other such quirks which would bring alive  the story being depicted in front of reader. I have had the god fortune of reading many more such stories in past few years and they are a joy to read. lately, one source of such stories has been weekly newsletter I receive from Longreads and therefore I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they are also into funding original pieces. More can be read here. I really liked the idea that readers contribute but they do not decide what gets funded. I fully support this. Not just because, as the article reports, that it is not yet known how the report will turn out to be. Rather, I have come to see division of labor as a very important and useful idea and therefore in today's world of information overload, we should let professional editors take decisions about what gets funded and what gets curated. 

Very impressive

This is sweet.

Week two of 2017: In Cold Blood

My reading in second week of 2017 was of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It is reporting of a crime incident which took place in Kansas in late 1950s. I am currently incompetent to comment on writing and content. I liked the book and enjoyed reading the description of scenes and events.

Book Review: Beyond the lines by Kuldeep Nayyar

Kuldeep Nayyar (KN henceforth) was an information officer with Government of India and a journalist/columnist who had a front row seats to many important events in independent India. He wrote many books and columns in his life time. I am currently reading his autobiographical memoir titled: 'Beyond the lines: An Autobiography'. 

Book starts with brief description of his days in Sialkot in Pakistan where his father was a physician and describe the changes in environment as partition day approaches. After the partition, KN had a chance to meet and work closely with many people who were responsible to take many decisions concerning partition and he very skilfully explains the situation as he observed and then justification which people gave at some later day behind their decision which led to those situations. This reflects badly on my lack of knowledge but I was not aware that there were many variables and possibilities considered before partition and although I don't have any deeper understanding of Kashmir issue, at least now I know that I don't know much about Kashmir issue.
 

   

Google Translator and Deep learning

I was in Santiago, capital of Chile, in November 2016. It was the first time when I had difficulty in communicating with people because not many speak or understand English. Once I wanted to order pizza and for that I first typed things into my google translator and converted it into spanish and then the nice guy at reception ordered the pizza for me. I like to think of myself as quite technologically literate -- I can design neural nets and what not -- but this was the first time when I realized its power in helping people get through with their day to day work !!! 
NYT has an in depth article covering the introduction of deep learning to google translator with lots of background. It can be accessed here. While I knew almost all the technical information provided in the article, actual implementation in Google was new to me. I am looking forward to many more improvements in future. Good luck to all the people working out there in this field. 

P.S.: I found that comments on blogs on my website are not yet functional. I have therefore  decided to switch back to blogger for now.

Blog alt

It has been long time since I posted anything. Not that I have been not writing. But what I am writing is not relevant to blog. Not that what I have posted yet is relevant to anyone. Yet it feels good to post something. I don't know why. Anyway, I happened to chance upon a tweet which linked to an article and article was interesting and part of it discussed origin of blogger and I felt like sudden urge to come here and type these words and post it. So here I am. Link to the article is this. I am immensely grateful to countless people who posted one thing or other on the net through their blogs. Of course I have come across many useless sited too. But for me experience has been net positive. Apparently people are moving to other mediums of expression. Sited dedicated exclusively to photo sharing, sites where you can pin things etc. I have a personal domain and I also toyed with the idea of moving all my posts their but somehow could not do it. May be it was laziness. Most probably it was laziness. So here I am still posting the post from my blogger account.   

Intelligent Octopus

Article in nature. No wonder. They did invent deodorant.

FORTRAN founding team

Someone posted the 2007 obituary of John W. Backus on reddit recently. I was introduced to Fortran in 2009 spring semester, almost two years after. One bit I found interesting was the team which created FORTRAN. As per the article, it consisted of:

...included a crystallographer, a cryptographer, a chess wizard, an employee on loan from United Aircraft, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a young woman who joined the project straight out of Vassar College...

PK highly overrated

 PK is highly overrated. A very nice subjected dealt tritely. Does not deserve all the praise. Almost everything, be it acting or direction or locations or story, appears to be thought of in one sitting. It is as if people sat and implemented first thought which came to them. Will add.