PatternExon

Shashi Tharoor talks at TED

// December 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // TED Talk, video

This is amazing. I am generally skeptical of the ‘India – The Superpower’ bandwagon. But this is very good. I am going to dissect it soon. But for now, enjoy!!
The Soft Power of India

After a few days to driving all traffic towards them, TED is now ok with embedding this video elsewhere, hence:

I now own aksh.at !!

// November 25th, 2009 // No Comments » // website

I own http://aksh.at , thanks to JP. He couldn’t believe that I wouldn’t waste 15 bucks on buying this domain.
And initially he saw his future as a very special cyber squatter but later he (out of pity, i suspect) gifted me aksh.at for a year. Initially I’ll just have it redirect to patternexon but I’ll be building something soon.
Finally, after about a year since I realised that the last 2 letters of my name are same as the TLD for Austria. And I know that hosting an Austrian domain out of a server in US is probably a bad idea. But I think its cute.

The summary of my current existence

// November 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // webcomics

Oh ! this is truth, beauty and misery. Its captured all of it, theres nothing left for me to elaborate. Just pay homage and go to work tomorrow.

Polynoid – Awesome projects

// November 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // video

I remember seeing 458nm about 2 years, it was awesome then and its awesome now too. These are very good.

Sieve of Eratosthenes

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // programming, ruby

To find all primes up to a limit or to check if a number is prime or not, the sieve of eratosthenes is famously used. There are many known optimisations to the basic algorithm, also should check for simple things like if number is even or not. Maybe not just if the number is divisible by 2 but also 3, 5, 7, 11, etc. I remember there is a graph that points this out. Namely, that when there are multiple algorithms each with different time complexities, the algorithm that has average best performance may not have best performance especially for smaller datasets. I cant find that graph right now, but I am looking.

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w
# Tue Nov 17 00:06:30 EST 2009
# patternexon AT gmail
# Under GPL v3.0
class Integer
/*
Sift the Twos and sift the Threes,
The Sieve of Eratosthenes.
When the multiples sublime,
The numbers that remain are Prime.
*/
def primes_upto(limit)
  primes = Array.new
  putative = Array(2..limit)
  putative.each_index do |i|
    primes.push(putative[i])
    (i+1).upto(putative.size-1) do |j|
      putative[j] = nil if putative[j] % putative[i] == 0
    end
   putative.compact!
 end
return primes
end
def prime?
  if self == self.primes_upto(self).last
    return true
  else
    return false
  end
end
end
 
1.upto(100){ |i| puts "#{i} is #{i.prime?}" }

A Short Love Story in stop motion – Carlos Lascano

// November 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // video

This looks and sounds like an inspiration to an sequence in Up, also check out his gallery of illustrations

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

See how colorblinds would perceive your webpage

// November 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // website

Using visicheck, one can view how any person suffering from Deuteranope (a form of red/green color deficit), Protanope (another form of red/green color deficit) or Tritanope (a blue/yellow deficit- very rare) would perceive your blog. I think there must be a wp plugin for providing alternative color scheme for optimized the colorblind. If I don’t find one then I think I’ll write one. It will give me a good opportunity to play around with some interesting ideas.

Cool JDK 7 features

// November 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // video

I have to try out the new project coin features, and should definitely read up on the garbage first, the new garbage collector.

Oxygen – A short by Christopher Hendryx

// November 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // video

I found this interesting video at vimeo. Its a great way to introduce chemistry, elements and their behavior. I hope Christopher gets the time to make shorts for every element.

Oxygen from Christopher Hendryx on Vimeo.

Fallen Art

// November 11th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // video

I saw this short a while back in St.Louis and since then its stuck in my head. I never remember the name and always have to look it up. This is a powerful piece no doubt, but I have always expected that someday I’ll come across some essay some write-up that describes the breath of emotion that this short captures. But haven’t found one yet.

My Writings. My Thoughts.