The Historic Moment Is Finally Here.

iOS 7 is truly artistic! | #ios7beta #ios7 #iphone

To say there are no regrets in life, is just to fool yourself. How boring it'd be without regrets

SpaceX's Grasshopper Rocket

SpaceX's Grasshopper Rocket beautifully perfectly Hovers!

In this recent test, the Grasshopper vertically took-off, ascended to about 12 stories, hovered for few seconds and then deliberately landed back down.

And of course, it's indeed meant to go much, much higher (to space) but progress is progress.

Mangalyaan ("Mars-craft") | Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)

Destination: Mars

India is now well on its way to having an interplanetary presence. The country has successfully launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, a reconnaissance satellite that will orbit the Martian atmosphere for elusive chemicals.

The integration of the five scientific instruments was completed at ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, and the finished spacecraft was successfully launched from Sriharikotta on 5 November 2013.

India's space agency would be just the fourth to reach the planet -- a symbolic win over countries like China, whose interplanetary missions have fallen short.

"We met in Vienna. On a train. In the snow." | #losangeles #angelsflight (at Los Angeles, California)

That moment when snow flakes are slowly dancing in the street lights of the alley…

Sound I like (also known as music)

Before you start to read this post, listen to this music as you read through.

My taste in music is “eclectic”*. I like all of the music I listen to, so obviously I have really good taste in music.

There is nothing quite so magical or moving as an powerful orchestral piece played by a full symphony orchestra. I have nothing against poppy music, nor do I have anything against wild bashing and screaming music (except that I mostly hate it), but if I were stuck in Antarctic for the rest of my life, I would die quickly of Hypothermia listen to epic soundtracks like:

“Imagine the Fire”, Hans Zimmer, The Dark Knight Rises

“The Promise”, Michael Nyman

“Extraction Point” , Hans Zimmer, Modern Warfare 2 (a video game with epic score?)

“Escape”, Craig Armstrong

 London Philharmonic’s finest.

 Or simply instrumental.

If you’re still listening to the music, I hope so, right? Imagine you’re sitting in that room, as a group of 50 people playing a song – using violins, bass drums, cellos, and a touch of piano – it precisely melds together into a beautiful, powerful, multifaceted sound…  and it’s just magical as the conductor keeps the whole thing together..  

As you might have seen in movies (like Harry Potter), a wand is portrayed as an instrument for magical occurrence. If you realize, a conductor’s baton (wand) also produces magical waves. I mean, with the flick of a wrist, a conductor can shape music like a painter with his paint brush. He can create striking thunders from the bass drums to the electrifying sharp pitch of the violins.

*I really do have a weird (wide spectrum) taste in music.

By the time I finished writing this, I realized that music is an expression, as it can only be played or heard (its really hard to ‘talk’ about music).

hbd

i miss you so much all of a sudden.

transition from pencils to pens

^ my physics notes

This semester, I switched from pencils to pens. I have been using pencils for the past two semesters. At that time, I could never understand people (fellow classmates) who use pens. You can’t erase with pens – it’s like using a bad old typewriter, if you make a mistake it stays forever.

However, now I understand the profoundness of using a pen!. Pens are almost frictionless. They glide effortlessly over the pages like a zero-volume mass sliding down a frictionless decline. Using a pen feels like you’re saving nano-joules of energy due to fewer friction. The experience of using a pen is unparalleled to that provided by any pencil I’ve ever used. Pencils are TI-10s. Pens are TI-89s. So, wonder why I stopped using pens two semesters ago?

A little history, I sometimes try to be perfectionist. I always try to perfect my MATLAB codes; it gives a pleasure while I attempt to make it concise as possible. However, over the course of my education, I’ve gotten a lot better of turning off my perfectionist tendencies — like when the professor alters the notes after I copy it down. Before, I would have erased it — with the eraser-end of my pencil, of course. Now, I don’t have to. I feel like it’s less efficient; it takes around 5 seconds to erase few words, while it only takes a second to draw a line across the same few words.  So what if I wrote “Kircoff’s rule” instead of “Kirchhoff’s rule”? Well, when I go back to my notes, I would still understand it, and if I don’t know to how to spell it, Google’s “Did you mean….” will save me.

Just the other day, I submitted my Physics (Electricity and Magnetism) problem set. I had few scratchings across some calculations, but I became more conscience later on. You might wonder this would have created a bad impression. Guess what happened after I got it back? Absolutely nothing. I’m pretty sure my professor didn’t care at all and has completely forgotten it, unless he reads this post.  

This shows that I’m really putting my education to great efficiency and doing some Calculus constraining (and also some probability). After putting time fixing my slight errors, I’ve already reached the point of diminishing returns. The slightly decreased probability of something going wrong just isn’t worth the additional time I’d spend to attain it.

I am not on a discriminative drive towards perfectionism (although it wasted too much time), but I think perfectionism shouldn’t be applied to less important things. I think pencils are great (wait, don’t think I’m contradicting) but only for sketching! Pencils, used wrongly, will more likely to obfuscate people than enlighten them. Finally, to me it is a rapture to be a pen person now.