'alpabiram', meaning comma

Director Narayan Puri is releasing yet another promising film called ALPABIRAM. Starring Rama Thapaliya (the lady we see in many of Santosh Panta's Hijo Aaja ka Kura), Bijaya Lama, Ramchandra Adhikari and my all time favourite Sunil Pokharel. I remember Sunil's first acting in television and although I was of too small age to critisize acting styles, I had liked his performance from the very beginning. It was in a tele-serial shown in Nepal Television (2049/2050 B.S.), where he went by the name Ojha, a new unwanted immigrant to the village - well... with radical opinions! Radical in a sense that the serial was based on a village somewhere in the hilly region, the main script being derived from a novel related to social issues. Anyway.

Alpabiram is bringing, for the first time in celluloid, the subject of maoist revolution and its direct impact on society. It shows the encounter of a wounded shelter-seeking maoist and a raiding-policeman together inside the same house unbeknownst of each other's existence. The host, an old lady, keeps one of them upstairs and the other downstairs. Meanwhile a group of expats (minstrel) returning back home, happen to arrive at the lady's house looking for shelter. The lady obligingly provides consent. At night the expats share their stories with the lady where they mention that once this village used to be their home and because of the intervention of maoist, they were forced to flee as expats seeking normal life, after being frustrated from everday fight of police against rebels in their village.
I should should stop here before I give away the whole story. It is better to wait for the release date. But I cannot watch it in the hall because I am in Cairo while it is going to release in Kathmandu soon. Hopefully I'll catch it in video CD.

a day in the pyramids

Cyclist Pushkar Shah is on World Tour. For his 100th country, he came from London to Cairo. He has an excellent bike! Yesterday we went to the Pyramids and took some photos. He always carries the flag of Nepal wherever he goes, so yesterday we took some photos with our national flag with the Pyramids as background. I guess that this is the first photo with Nepali flag and the Pyramids together - the common features being their triangular shape and both unique in the world!

something about ants

I think that ants should be directly awarded the most systematized specis on this planet, who are truly cosmopolitan in nature. Of course there is the human being, but that would be an entirely different story - with so many anatomical advantages.

As a child most of us have followed a line of ants on the garden or the attic - red, black, big, small, brown, flying, - you name and it is there! We have wondered where they must be going and how their home would be like! But its all child stuff and most of us don't care about them as we grow up. Well, apparently not all of us do forget about them, however. Doctor Mathias Wittlinger did a certain research about the journey of ants belonging to the genus Cataglyphis, as published in The Economist of early July 2006. It says,

...Saharan desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis have to travel long distances to discover food in their impoverished, sandy environment. How they find their way home once they have done so is a mystery. Ants in more temperate climates often lay down chemical trails, but Cataglyphis, apparently, does not. Like honeybees and ancient mariners, they can navigate by the sun, so they know the general direction in which to travel. But, also like ancient mariners (who knew their latitude, but no their longitude), such solar reckoning cannot tell them when to stop.

The summary is that Dr. Wittlinger has, in a way, testified through research an old hypothesis that desert ants have internal pedometers - in other words, they count their steps out, and they count them back. When one total matches the other, they are home!

For such a tiny being to count, remember, re-count and match them - truly incredible!

dust in the wind

I'm referring to Sarah Brightman's vocal which goes so well along this lyrics, although there are other artists singing the same below:

I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment's gone.
All my dreams pass before my eyes in curiosity.
Dust in the wind.
All they are is dust in the wind.
Same old song.
Just a drop of water in an endless sea.
All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see.
Dust in the wind.
All we are is dust in the wind.

Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.
It slips away and all your money won't another minute buy.
Dust in the wind.
All we are is dust in the wind.
Dust in the wind.
Everything is dust in the wind.

fallen, mclachlan

Heaven bent to take my hand
And lead me through the fire
Be the long awaited answer
To a long and painful fight

Truth be told I've tried my best
But somewhere along the way
I got caught up in all there was to offer
And the cost was so much more than I could bear

Though I've tried, I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I have messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here
And tell me I told you so...

We all begin with good intent
Love was raw and young
We believed that we could change ourselves
The past could be undone
But we carry on our backs the burden
Time always reveals
The lonely light of morning
The wound that would not heal
It's the bitter taste of losing everything
That I have held so dear.

I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I have messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here
And tell me I told you so...

Heaven bent to take my hand
Nowhere left to turn
I'm lost to those I thought were friends
To everyone I know
Oh they turned their heads embarassed
Pretend that they don't see
But it's one missed step
You'll slip before you know it
And there doesn't seem a way to be redeemed

Though I've tried, I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I have messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here
And tell me I told you so...

neo vs smith

Here's a conversation between Smith and Neo from Matrix III. I wonder what type of intelligence should a machine have in order to understand the meaning of this, let alone a human! I'm in awe. Are you?

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more than just your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why?! Why do you persist!?

Neo: Because I choose to.

browser war

This is about yet other two web browsers that I newly tried - Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7Beta. There is a strikingly parallel similarity between the two! For example, IE7 has introduced some features like tabbed browsing, integraged search, capacity to update live feeds and also the all time favourite pop-up blocker.

torrents of BitTorrent

Yes, the next software I tried was BitTorrent, the king of p2p file sharing applications. It is a rumour that users of BitTorrent are responsible for ~35% of all traffic on the Internet. That's pretty lot going on!

My frist encounter with BitTorrent was when Longhorn was first reported to be leaked from Microsoft - yes the news was not just fake - but it was true because at that time its torrent link was floating all over the net, in fact Sen had even given me to try one. Well, I tried but unfortunately, I could never complete the download because some seeders and leechers had evaporated.

BitTorrent is full of catchy jargons like seeder, leecher, etc. and I was confused at first but a quick look at its faq section was really helpful. In fact I was starting to like the program after using for only around 15 minutes - again thanks to the internet connection at ICT. The first search I made was "Garden State", which was suggested by Nira. Plenty of torrents came up for the movie and I left to download one fast type, after which I returned back home. Hm... this is a strong sign that I'm going to need a larger hard disk. No, really!

openoffice.org rocks

Today I tried a number of software for the first time. I was wanting to test these for a long time now, and today was the day - thanks to the internet connection at ICT.

First of all, I was astounded by the efficiency of openoffice.org [oo.o] - as an avid explorer software and tools, I landed at the site of openoffice.org, from where I got the software itself. If you're new to it, it's a free office suite modified from the original code of StarOffice, which was introduced a few years back. Openoffice.org is distributed for free under GNU LPGL licensing. This suite is written by different communities around the world, and is managed by Sun Microsystems.

Openoffice.org contains a package of efficient utilities such as Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Math and Draw, designed to replace or compete Microsoft Office. All of these applications have easy to use GUI with a lot of features that are only dreamt of in MS Office. For example, openoffice.org Writer, the word processor, exports to PDF format without having to install Acrobat; and oo.oDraw exports your content to swf format. Impressive, eh? Next up, it's oo.o Impress, the next challenger for Microsoft's Powerpoint. Likewise there's [oo.o]Base for MSACCESS, oo.oCalc for MSEXCEL and oo.oMath for MSEQUATION + MSVISIO. Finally there's something called oo.oDraw, for desktop publishing, an area where Microsoft hasn't opened for the public yet.

By the way, Google is polishing and finalizing its much anticipated product called Writely, the word processor, for release shortly. Huge expectations are lined up for Writely, the so called most powerful word processor in the planet. Now lets see how the battle grows! Meanwhile, for oo.o, a reviewer says in the oo.o website, "Not only is it completely free, it's very useful - an entire suite of programs a la Microsoft Office. Cynics might argue that there's no such thing as a free lunch, but in this case OpenOffice.org 2.0 bucks the trend and emerges as a viable alternative to Bill Gates' product." This is so true for Openoffice.org - I'm impressed!

war and peace

...Spartans were taught to be aggressive, Athenians less so. Among Amerindians, Iroquois were aggressive, while Algonquins were less so. Thus, the problem of making more peace and less war amounts to societal restructuring of an environment that promotes peaceful behavior patterns....

So says Sarup, writing for LA chronicles. Read this article here. How I wish Nepali leaders right now read this article. Here I totally agree with her. Says she, "...peace is an essential aspect of human civilization. It allows societies to use existing resources and infrastructure to improve the quality of life instead of destroying them in communal violence."

This article is full of strong views, but what she misses is the point that peace begins from the self. I say, "Once you are willingly ready to accept another individual's freedom to acceptable limits then this will define peace. And for sustained peace, even if the limits are crossed sometimes and violence is on the verge, violence should never be chosen or allowed to interfere in whatever way possible, in order for you to revert back within the limits of the acceptable freedom."

spies - coldplay

Another song that's coming out of my speakers recently. I love Coldplay.

I awake to find no peace of mind
I said, how do you live as a fugitive?
Down here where I cannot see so clear.
I said, what do I know?
Show me the right way to go

And the spies came out of the water
But you're feeling so bad cos you know
But the spies hide out in every corner
But you can't touch them though
Cos they're all spies, they're all spies.

I awake to see that no one is free
We're all fugitives
Look at the way with it.
Down here, I cannot sleep from fear no.
I said, which way do I turn?
I forget everything I learn

But the spies came out of the water
But you're feeling so bad cos you know
But the spies hide out in every corner
But you can't touch them though
Cos they're all spies, they're all spies.

And if we don't buy here
They're going to find us
If we don't buy now
They're going to catch us where we see
And if we don't hide here
They're going to find us.

clocks - coldplay

I've been listening to Clocks by Coldplay, Hm... something very familiar.

Lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
You've put me down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg and plead (singing)
Come out of things unsaid, shoot an apple off my head (and a)
Trouble that can't be named, tigers waiting to be tamed (singing)
You are, you are

Confusion never stops, closing walls and ticking clocks (gonna)
Come back and take you home, I could not stop, that you now know (singing)
Come out upon my seas, curse missed opportunities (am I)
A part of the cure, or am I part of the disease (singing)

on hand phones

gsm cellphone
polite cellphone
wi-fi cellphone
3g cellphone
breathalyzer cellphone

I feel sleepy right now, so expand this later.

nepali budget - fy 2006/07

New words. Same old crap?

bravo, Italia!

Really enjoyed the match.

random shuffle

I use Winamp. My entire collection is stored in six folders, which I import together in the playlist and then randomize the tracks. I have already turned the shuffle on but whenever I wish to listen to a particular song, I use the J-feature, which is the only reason why I love winamp more than any other media player. The currently playing track being Coldplay's Clocks, here are the shuffled ones in series.

[moby] into the blue
[sarah mclachlan] drifting
[elton john] you can make history
[the cranberries] zombie
[dido] here with me, acoustic live
[the verve] bitter sweet symphony
[sting] until
[era] the mass
[ratm] sleep now in the fire
[hanson] mmm bop

What's your random shuffle?

what asian are you

I came across this quiz: WHATTYPEOFASIANAREYOU?

It says that I am 17% Asian in Denial, 16% Banana/Coconut and 67% Politically Correct Asian. Here's an explanation of the terms. Nevertheless, I wish I knew the ethnicity of guys who created this quiz.

knots and neurons

I have already written about the wires that are littering my room for ages. Now, something to related with that post, perhaps, but today afternoon a cousin who's currently living outside the country came online in messenger in a long time. After some typing, we decided to have voice conversation. He was already in a hurry but I told him to wait a bit, while I fetched the mic. Upon opening the door of my room, on the floor there, one could see a variety of wires - blue, white, and black especially - and I wondered where on earth could I have kept the microphone? I don't have a single-mic alone, but something like mic attached with headphones - that most common one as sold everywhere. Amid all the wires coiled like a snake's nest, I could not, honestly, determine where to look for the chunk of headphone. Surely my cousin would be waiting forever now! I was thinking whether to leave the search or just begin it and if so, where I should begin it - when suddenly I saw that pink jack of the mic peeping silently from under a heap of wires - bingo!

I started to pull out the jack and in doing so, jerked the whole heap, which caused a knot there. Okay, it was only one knot in the beginning. But I struggled further in a hurry, only to worsen the subject. Now in my hand there was a bundle of intertwined wires, which reminded me the picture of glomerulus from science book in school. To straighten this out in order to separate the mic, it was going to need some time - a lot of time. Therefore I came back and explained my cousin what had happened. Upon hearing what I said, he could not hold his laugh over the mic he was wearing. I heard that cheerful nostalgic laugh through speakers on my side. In the meantime, he signed off while I sat down to solve the knots. I did the task carefully and steadily - undid all the knots on all the wires. I even pegged the lengthy ones and at the end of three hours or more, my room was looking nice and tidy. In the process of untying the knots, however, some thoughts came to my mind.

Knots made in different styles have always served people for many things - it has a huge history and a long range of usage. That's all right, but what could have been the first tasks that human beings accomplished from such knots? In primordial times, human beings certainly made the most basic type of knots and luckily, we can make a fair guess of the list of things that a human being can do using a primitive type of knot. For example, making a blockade by randomly tying a long rope across a number of close tree trunks in a jungle; especially useful while running away from chasing beasts. The hunter could sneak away from under the ropes, while the beast would be slowed down by hurdles of ropes. Sounds crazy? Try this at home:

Take a child (boy or girl) of eight to ten years and give him a piece of rope around two meters in length. Tell him to make knots in any way that he likes. After he makes the first knot, take a picture - repeat this for the second knot, the third knot and so on - until the child runs out of ideas. How many different types of knots can he create? Now repeat this same experiment with an adult and compare the results. To be more sure, choose different sets of individuals for repeated experiment. In the end you will see that 99 % of the time, the adult will create more complex knots than the child. Meaning, a simple and overlooked thing like a knot could have played some roles in the evolution of human intelligence through the ages - the observation being that more complex minds can create more complex figures.

Now, while we are developing different types of robots and are competing day by day to make them more intelligent - could we take advantage of knots here, in order to devise relevant mathematical tests for the evolving intelligence of robots? Remember, that every time we are untying a knot, we are randomly changing direction, which is easy for a human being, but is a great problem for robots in terms of spatial complexity. This idea appeared brilliant at the time it came to my head, until I knew that such a thing as Knot Theory already exists, and is one of the subjects of Topology, which in turn appears to be a specialized subject of mathematics!

No wonder my teachers were right - I was never good at maths!

the genographic project

A heap of old magazines were tied up in a pile and ready to be disposed. While passing through the room, I took out this one at the very top, because the cover looked interesting. It was a picture showing the evolution of man. Later back home, I read the whole of this article - it contained some specific words from biology which I had to consult the dictionary, but the overall article was quite interesting - which said how humanity might have evolved in the past and how, starting from Africa, they migrated around the world. It also gave the ancient migratgion routes.

I remember that they had shown a documentary covering a topic like this, some years back but I had missed the show because of elctricity failure.

Here is a small clip, I have typed in from the article:

...... In 1987, Rebecca Cann, one of Wilson's students, applied his insight to a series of specimens taken from peole whose ancestors came from different parts of the world. By analyzing the mutational differences that had accumulated since their mitochondria shared a common ancestor, she was able to construct a matriline (or, perhaps more accurately, a matritree) connecting them. The result was a revelation. Whichever way you drew the tree (statistics not being an exact science, there was more than one solution), its root was unveiled as an African species. But Dr Cann went further. Using estimates of how often mutations appear in mitochondrial DNA (the so called molecular clock), she and Wilson did some matridendrochronology. The result suggests that ll the lines converge on the ovaries of a single woman who lived some 150,000 yeras ago. There was much excited reporting at the time about the discovery and dating of this African "Eve". ......

This is indeed an intellectual story of mankind - and kudos to people who have done such a wonderful job - in finding the possible common mother of people, who even do not know about one another's existence today. I found it more and more interesting to continue the article and later at one point, came across another remarkable statement:

...... And there were few males more alpha in their behaviour than Genghis Khan, a man reported to have had about 500 wives and concubines, not to mention the sexual opportunities that come with conquest. It is probably no coincidence, therfore, that one man in every 12 of those who live within the frontiers of what was once the Mongol empire (and, indeed, one in 200 of all men alive today) have a stretch of DNA on their Y-chromosomes that dates back to the time and birthplace of the great Khan. ...

Hugh? This seems to be such a strange type of science, where such obscure terms like "speculation" is sometimes the basis of calculation. It is such a vague topic even to discuss here, but I could not resist without sharing these two facts published in The Economist of 2005 December end-week.

pan-himalayan railroad

Chinese press is flooding with the news of China’s newest engineering feat – the completion of a railroad linking Lhasa (Tibet) with Eastern China. The country is celebrating this key achievement while the western press is once again applauding in awe and giving out mixed speculations. For example, this photo story contains some lines:

“There are fears the railway will speed up the immigration of ethnic Chinese into Tibet, threatening its distinct cultural and religious identity.”
“Tibetan groups and foreign critics say the railway’s real aim is political, as a symbol of China’s administrative and military control over a contested border region.”
“...............................................”
“..............................”

All I can say about such statements is that leading people from China will undoubtedly laugh down these types of comments made by western media companies. This task in itself is a great combination of hard work, intellect and brotherhood, which in itself is a sort of cultural unity; this railroad has a track length of 1142km, plus it is the world’s only track that is built at some point, up to an altitude of 5071m or higher, from the sea level.

The operation of this track could mean a lot for the neighbouring country of Nepal in economic terms. The distance between the Tibetan border and Kathmandu is a mere 100 kilometers at the nearest pass; and Tibet can be accessed from Nepal through a total of fourteen possible passes scattered along their mutual border. The point is, if Nepal somehow built and operated another high-quality railroad track up to the border of Tibet through any of these passes, then it is almost certain that China will build the continuing link up to the city of Lhasa.

For Nepal, this would provide a high level of freedom from its dependencies with India at times good and bad; not mentioning that this track could be a perpetual income source from the hundreds of Chinese tourists who are growing richer each day at home. Then there are visitors to Lhasa, who would willingly take some hours’ trip in order to discover Kathmandu…or those Nepalese who travel to China, they would find a cheaper solution…such examples are endless.

I know that this idea of a railroad from Kathmandu to Lhasa sounds like a magnificent dream for the Nepalese, but all in all it is a remote truth; once upon a time a Chinese guy had said, “If you want to grow rich, then build roads.”

leaving msnmsgr

I've not exactly decided to abandon using msn messenger, but if it keeps happening to me again and again, I'll leave msn messenger and start using something else. Why? There are a number of reasons:

the june post

I am extremely tired because of the lack of sleep. Yesterday night I was out with Haythem and some of his friends and arrived late night, then tried to sleep...well...tried and tried but only around nine in the morning I could sleep well, otherwise mostyly I was roaming around the room, kitchen, here and there. Today got up at around two and from that time till now I'm having a strange headache that comes from little-sleep-disturbed. I've had that kind of experience many times previously, specially in summer time.