RC Cola and Schweppes

Oct 28, 2005 will go done in History as the day when I brought my first RC 24 pack. RC always intrigued me. I used to think it as some local brand like SAM'S Choice or zillion other in market like Save a lot, Aldi etc. The first time I tried RC when I went to Pioneer Cabin on the way to Marion. I liked it but somehow never thought about it again. This time when I went to the Soft Drink aisle I noticed RC and really wanted to give it a try and after drinking the can you are seeing in the photo, I must say that many more 24 packs of RC are going to be purchased by me. A little bit more curiosity on RC got me to this website and I now know that RC is a Cadbury's Brand and it brought the old memories of drinking Schweppes. Schweppes is the best lemonade on earth and I now realized I have been missing it a lot. Time to head to nearest grocery store !!

Halloween 2005

Holloween 2005: Dave, Kelly, Mary, Ken and Sumant

Fall Colors

Fall has began to set in here. I hope to take more pictures of the beautiful fall colors. Its sunny out these days and the night temperature has beginning to circle around the zero degree centigrade !
Yesterday I installed "Gap" for my abstract algebra class. Its very much similar to Maple. I installed it on Linux workstation and it installed without a hitch. So I am looking forward to a full throttle study of my Abstract Algebra, since now I have all the requisite tool, time and enthusiasm for the subject. There is lot of new material has been covered in Analysis and I confess I haven't been really studying it hard. Meanwhile tonight I will be attending Diwali Celebration here in Civic Hall and then will head for a Halloween party which means I will be very much squeezed out of time for the remainning weekend.

"Sarkar" and "Naina " Review

Done watching two more Hindi Movies. Sarkar I watched few days back is a movie of a Godfather and Amitabh Bachhan is Godfather. So that should tell you the rest of the story. Eventhough there were no music videos to skip to and the length of the movie was under 2 hrs I still had a hard time watching the whole movie. Naina is another movie in the new generation of songless movie. Is doesn't have those 10 ft tall, rubber mask wearing, reclusive losers trying to eye the lissome lass. It has shades of movie Karz. But then again, horror movies are not my cup of tea. Funny thing is in spite of movie being shot in England there are hardly British characters, most of them Indians except for the nurse. Our characters in the movie still speak with the heavy accent when they are supposed to be born and brought up there. I know you will say I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. I don't know why I am even writing that. I guess its just because that movie was an ordeal to go through. After writing these two reviews I am wondering how much discerning I have become, LOL ! There was a time (around 4th grade), I used to wonder why people even get bored of watching any type of movie. Except for those Doordarshan's award winning movies. Shot in village, people crying and being bullied by some pot bellied goon and ending abruplty making you wonder what was the message of the movie. Well no more ! Happy Halloween to all of you !!

Another Calc III problem

Here is one more problem I mailed to a guy which I couldn't solve there in Neckers. It was easy. I had to convert a double integral from cartesian to Polar coordinates and I kept doing the same mistake. Its only when I came back home and revised the relevant material and worked out more problems then I realized my mistake. Now I am glad that he will be able to use it before his class at 11 am today. I typed it in Maple 10, which now has a much better documentation feature, almost like Mathematica, perhaps better.

Easy Problem

I love tutoring at Neckers every evening Monday to Thursday between 18:30 and 21:00 hrs not because its always a challenge to solve those problem ad-lib. The other reason is more selfish it helps me revise the stuff which otherwise I won't be doing. Most of the times its easy stuff to work with. Here was this problem I worked out for Katy. It seemed so pretty easy at first and then it took me a while to figure it out. Infact I couldn't solve it there, because most of the other tutor had given up on this problem when they gave it to me, so somewhere in my mind I had this doubt that its tricky when other couldn't solve it and hence my approach to solve it was more complicated. When I came home and attacked it again. It just foiled out so easily. So here is the jpeg file I mailed to her. Moral of the story is don't get bogged down if other couldn't solve it.

No Entry and Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya

Today (I should be saying yesterday, since its already now 3:35 am), I watched two Hindi Movies. No Entry and Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya. Both are comedy and revolves around infidelity in love. While Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya is a story of a guy trying to woo his girl with lies after lies. The No entry explores the concept from three different points of being a married faithful, the other a bachelor and the third a married bachelor. Well when I say bachelor I mean bachelor attitude. Both are situational comedies and you have to stop thinking if you want to have a good laugh. Recommended if you like David Dhawan stuff !

Wow !! Lets go for a long drive !

While surfing I came across this photo at the web page of one professor at Lincoln Nebraska ! What image does it evoke in your mind ?? Look CLOSELY at the road !

New Traipse

Finally I had to Drop Math 421. I didn't want to as Dr. Fitzerald is really good teacher but had I continued with it I am sure I was going to regret by not giving enough time for Linear Algebra. I hope the next time I take I will be able to complete "Linear Algebra Done Right" by Sheldon Axler. My Analysis class is getting more interesting day by day. Thanks to Dr. Greg Budzban. He is an awesome teacher. He knows very well where to stress to make it easy for us to comprehend. Hats off to him. I am excited now that I can now devote more time to 452. The subject rocks. The other subject is Abstract algebra and if it wasn't of the last test, I wouldn't have been able to pay the required attention it demands. Now I am sure I will be able to experiment with the stuff Dr. Gallian has put on his website and that should prepare me to take second course in Abstract Algebra in Spring.

Google Earth and Privacy

Google Earth is here to stay. No doubt its one of the most impressive job done by google folks. I loved its plethora of features from flying over the Karakoram range to reviewing my route from carbondale to St. Louis all with the few clicks. It has better resolution for some of the places and hope will improve as more and more places could be added. For example while looking for Katmandu in Nepal, it didn't have much to show, but for New Delhi's Parliament or for Rome or Chicago it has much more features to talk about. Infact for Chicago one can also enable the feature which gives you the perception of height. The other features lets you map your traditional map to the satellite imagery and it indeed make you appreciate the work Cartographers did before the advent of satellite imagery. The program requires a broadband internet connection and a Gig of RAM. Its still not available for Linux platform but for windows it works pretty good. Some people have started questioning about the privacy of certain locations, previously inaccessible to ordinary folks. Indeed I was surprised that Indian President would raise such an issue. Because it conveys ignorance on his part. The folks who need to obtains sensitive data can easily get it from other source and anyway from whom we are hiding this. With zillions of satellite in orbit and the whole earth photographed it would be ridiculous if anyone thinks that its an invasion of privacy. Kudos to Google.

Movie Proof

Two days back I watched Proof. Loved this movie. Its about a famous Mathematician (played by Anthony Hopkins), who made name when he was young. Gwenyth Paltrow plays his daughter. The story keep you thinking about her relation with her father and about her own mathematical ability. You don't have to be a mathematician to appreciate it, but if you are then you definitely appreciate what it takes to discover a new proof. Awesome movie. I give 5 stars for all the performance and drama. Go watch it.

UBUNTU Linux

I have been using Fedora core 4 for now quite some time and its been a pretty good desktop. Especially if you are looking for a computer just for surfing web. It lets me watch BBC News at www.bbc.co.uk and Doordarshan News back in India with Xine Plugin. The other standard Plugin in Macromedia and Java runtime environment also work. Its easy to install and updates are available for free unlike for the enterprise version of Red Hat Linux.
Few days ago while reading about the top 100 innovative products that I came to know about Ubuntu distribution. The Ubuntu distribution has been named as the best distribution for Linux. So I am now curious to try it.

The slight dent on the left door is not caused by me, Lol ! That shouldn't much deprecate the value of this beautiful car. Now I know why people love old cars ! 

The interior is nice too, Well maintained by the previous owner 

I always thought of owning an American Car, So finally I have this Dodge 91, Dynasty and I love it. 

Movie Salaam Namaste

So I just finished watching Salaam Namaste. The picture starts out well. The last 20 minutes could have been cut. Except for poney bara bajey song all other are less than hummable. There is not much of story line. The good thing is it takes on the concept of Living together without getting married, but then it slips into the usual romantic comedy so its pretty predictable. Javed Jaffri's comedy is good, but still relying on poking fun at people's accent. May be its time for some new director to think of comedy in other terms, since all Hindi comedies rely on the same formula which has been abondoned a long time back in Hollywood movies. Therefore its just another average movie that begins well but fell way short of what it was being hyped.

Rose, Shristi, Manoj, Bijay all were there for Prabab's birthday ! 

Prabab's Birthday was recently celebrated. Here is Prabab getting up. We barged into his room at midnight to have a surprise party for him. 

Ayako is back for sometime and it was a wonderful cook out at Aza's place with Dephney and Roeberta joinning in. Ah delicious food and a nice photograph. 

In between the break ! Lot many people were there ! 

I attended that gospel singing concert in Christopher with Jennifer. 3 hrs of praise for Jesus ! Well quite a wonderful experience. 

One more photu with Uma ! I hope she is doing great back in Taiwan ! 

I was trying to convince my friend that the burst mode of camera indeed works. So here I am waving my hand frantically to make sure that the burst mode captures it. 

This was taken when Uma was leaving for Taiwan. Kim was quick to join in. June looks great as always ! 

I was trying to convince my friend that we the burst mode of camera indeed works. So here I am waving my hand frantically to make sure that the burst mode captures it.