importing old blog posts

_posts/2008-12-31-back-to-Dihing.md

+---
+layout: post
+title: Back to Dihing!
+---
+
+So, finally I'm, back in Dihing, my second home... It does feel great to be
+back. I wonder what New year celebrations would be like with so few students
+here. Aside from the return to home2 part, most of it has been quite annoying. I
+landed in Guwahati at 1:30 in the morning on the 30th (that's 12 hours late,
+half a day wasted!), waited five and a half hours for the bus, lugged my luggage
+to the hostel, where I find the mess and canteen closed, the tubelight in my
+room not working, and no balance in my phone, and the validity period over too.
+Then I went to Barak to breakfast, and lo!, its aloo paratha, and I hate
+parathas.
+
+Now I'm running around, filling the no dues form, finding out grades for
+friends, and that reminds me of the part that sucks most, my grade. Being a
+seven pointer is OK, but still it is disheartening.
+
+If there's a silver lining, its got to be my laptop, which is a quite tarnished
+silver lining. I hate Windows Update, which takes an hour just to figure out the
+size of the updates. But, finally, I'm able to play Hitman: Blood Money on my
+laptop.
+
+Meeting friends once again is my greatest pleasure, I walk around on the campus,
+see familiar faces, meet an occasional buddy... this does give me a sense of
+well-being. I hope my friends will return soon. Its a long wait. Till then,
+Hitman and the Saw series will keep me from boredom. BYE!
+

_posts/2009-01-13-crichton.md

+---
+layout: post
+title: Michael Crichton -  A Great Author
+---
+
+*Jurassic Park* and *The Lost World* are movies that almost everyone I know have
+seen. These movies prompted me to read the novels, and, out of curiosity and
+knowing that novels always contain more detail than movies, I did read them,
+laying my hands on a second hand copy of *Jurassic Park*, and later on *The Lost
+World*. Thus did I start reading books by Crichton, on of my favourite authors.
+It did shock (and dishearten) me to learn that he died on November 4, 2008, due
+to cancer (I learned it only a week after, when I checked the Wiki article on
+him).
+
+[John Michael Crichton, M. D.][crichton] (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008)
+was a prolific American author, producer, director, and physician. His first
+book, *Odds On*, was released under the nom-de-plume John Lange. He followed it up
+with brilliant novels like *The Andromeda Strain*, *Sphere*, *State of Fear*, and
+*Timeline*. *The Andromeda Strain* was the first novel published under his own name.
+His last novel till date (there's one waiting to be published) was *Next*, which
+was about dangers of genetic engineering.
+
+Most of his novels followed a
+cautionary pattern and are techno-thrillers, like *Jurassic Park*, which dealt
+with cloning and control of living beings, or *State of Fear*, about problems
+created by violent pro-environment groups. *State of Fear* had an especially
+strong effect on me, so that I nearly stopped trusting mass media. Indeed, a
+friend was recently commending Al Gore's *An Inconvenient Truth*, when I responded
+that I'd watched it already, but it failed to convert me because of my
+suspicions.
+
+
+> "I want to state emphatically that nothing in my remarks should be taken to
+> imply that we can ignore our environment, or that we should not take climate
+> change seriously. On the contrary, we must dramatically improve our record on
+> environmental management. That is why a focused effort on climate science, aimed
+> at securing sound, independently verified answers to policy questions, is so
+> important now."
+>
+>  - *Testimony before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (28
+   September 2005)*
+
+> **"Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable
+> science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to
+> be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that
+> people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth —
+> that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in
+> pandering rhetoric."**
+>
+>  - *in Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)*
+
+For me, his best novel is *Sphere*, in which a group of scientists encounter an
+alien object within an American spaceship from the future. It grants the power
+to make what they think happen to those who enter the sphere. Indeed, the
+thoughts need not be conscious, but can also be subconscious. This made an
+interesting and gripping tale, which left me wondering about the consequences if
+I had entered the Sphere. I certainly recommend this book to my readers.
+
+Now that another great science fiction author has passed on, I think that
+Fantasy's time has come. Through the 1950's to the 1980's, science fiction was
+highly popular, and enjoyed a number of brilliant authors like Isaac Asimov,
+Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and so on. Books in the Fantasy genre have
+become hugely popular now, what with *Harry Potter* and the *Inheritance* series,
+and the *Wheels of Time*. Its getting really difficult to get books by Asimov or
+Clarke, while I can't remember when I last saw one by Heinlein. Now with
+Crichton gone, will his books vanish from the book stores of India? I hope not.
+
+> I want to mention in passing that punditry has undergone a subtle change over
+> the years. In the old days, commentators such as Eric Sevareid spent most of
+> their time putting events in a context, giving a point of view about what had
+> already happened. Telling what they thought was important or irrelevant in the
+> events that had already taken place. This is of course a legitimate function of
+> expertise in every area of human knowledge.
+> 
+> But over the years the punditic thrust has shifted away from discussing what has
+> happened, to discussing what may happen. And here the pundits have no benefit of
+> expertise at all. Worse, they may, like the Sunday politicians, attempt to
+> advance one or another agenda by predicting its imminent arrival or demise. This
+> is politicking, not predicting.
+> 
+> - "Why Speculate?" - speech at the International Leadership Forum, La Jolla,
+>   California (26 April 2002).
+
+> "We are all assumed, these days, to reside at one extreme of the opinion
+> spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders
+> or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro-big government. We are
+> feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world, few of us holds these extreme
+> views. There is instead a spectrum of opinion."

_posts/2009-06-28-friends.md

+---
+layout: post
+title: Friends...
+---
+
+What constitutes a friend? My mum thinks that every single person I know is my
+friend. I certainly don't think so. I mean, none of them are my enemies, but not
+all of them are friends. Some are just acquaintances. People you meet, get
+acquainted with, who no longer visit my mind after they are gone from my life.
+People to whom I give a polite smile, a 'Good Day!', or a wave. These are like
+shooting stars, sometimes they lighten up the sky, sometimes they aren't even
+seen. To me, a friend is something else. A friend is like the stars, or, better
+still, like the planets. They are always there, even if you don't see them.
+Someone you can trust to be there when the time comes. A friend is someone I
+trust, I respect, I admire. Someone you can open your soul to, someone you can
+let in to the deepest parts of your mind.
+
+Like some of my friends from school, Vinay or Mehmood. Or Trivs. They're like
+planets. I see them or think of them regularly. Then there's people like Annie,
+the girl I had my first crush on. They light up the sky like brilliant shooting
+stars. But they don't remain long. And then there's the one you fall in love
+with. They light it up like the sun. I haven't met my sun yet. Hope I do,
+someday, sometime.
+
+When I watch FRIENDS, the tv show, I wonder, ten years down the line, will I
+still be in touch with my friends from my school years Roshan, or Shripad, or
+Jyoti, or friends from the predegree time, Triveni or Ashish or Pallavi, or from
+college, Santosh, Nashedi or Arjun. I wish I will, I know I will not lose them.
+I can't lose them. They're part of my mind, part of who I am. They are my
+friends. To my friends, I hope I will always have you all!

_posts/2009-09-26-notes.md

+---
+layout: post
+title: Notes on Programming
+---
+
+I've always had a love of writing programs, maybe because I like to create
+things. Different languages have different methods of punctuation; there are
+different styles of indentation; there are different grammar styles, and so on.
+Since at present I’m studying C/C++, I’ll be sticking to it in this monologue.
+
+I have often observed that students often use incorrect practices while writing
+programs. Maybe ‘incorrect’ is too strong a word; I suppose ‘improper’ would be
+proper. I believe that students fall into such practices due to some
+misconceptions or maybe when one particular instance needed it, and they have
+stuck to it ever since. And if these practices work later on, or rather, fail to
+hinder work, they never abandon it.
+
+The most common example I can think of, is the use of this declaration:
+
+{% highlight c %}
+void main (void)
+{% endhighlight %}
+
+Now, I don’t know what they gain from using this form. I mean, how difficult can
+it be include a
+
+{% highlight c %}
+return 0;
+return EXIT_SUCCESS;
+{% endhighlight %}
+
+or whichever form they have been taught to use at the end of the definition.
+After all, the line is, what, 9 characters long? How difficult could it be?
+Agreed, the program will compile (in C), it will execute, and probably you have
+set your compiler to ignore this malpractice, or disabled warnings altogether.
+
+There is a reason why what we’re taught is called ANSI C/C++ or ISO C/C++. It’s
+because the languages have been standardised, initially by ANSI (the American
+National Standards Institute), and later on by the ISO (the International
+Organization for Standardization). You may ask, so what? Some bunch of geeks
+went and said, okay, you have to do this in this particular way and that in that
+particular way; and nobody bothered to say no, so we’ve to follow them? That is
+not so. We’ve been following rules made by others all our lives, and it’s not as
+if all these rules are made for making life better. When conventions and
+standards are set, it’s to make life easier. It may be not while doing the
+actual work, but maybe while communicating our works or our results to others.
+SI units make our life easier, by cutting across borders and languages when it
+comes to units. In mathematics, when different people use different symbols, all
+it does is create confusion. So too, in programming.
+
+If you’ll bother to read the ISO standards on C++, you’ll see that the
+convention for main() function lists:
+
+{% highlight c %}
+int main (void)
+int main (int, char* [])
+{% endhighlight %}
+
+as the two possible types of `main()` declarations. An empty parameter list is
+assumed to be have a `void` parameter. Admittedly, the ISO C standard does allow
+other forms of declaration, including a return type of `void.`
+
+There is no reason why a return value may not be provided. Indeed, providing a
+`return` statement would indicate that the program has terminated. This would
+prevent programs from falling of the end, when the end brace is reached without
+a `return` statement. This could happen, accidentally, like when an incomplete
+program is being tested, or when a `goto` statement wreaks havoc. So too, this
+could help in finding unreachable portions of code, created possibly by
+incorrect control statements. The last case has actually happened to me, when an
+`if` statement had an always-true condition.
+
+To a student of Computer Science and software engineering, to avoid returning
+values is positively a crime. These values would be invaluable when testing
+software, and you could call upon the system or other programs to execute,
+depending upon the returned value. This could be useful in clean-up, or in
+storing system details at the time of exit (which most OSes do in case of
+abnormal termination of an application).  And this data would help in improving
+your understanding of what actually happens in your program, as opposed to what
+you think is happening. That last statement is quite important: it is often the
+case that what you think is happening is quite different from what is actually
+happening, especially in a language like C++, where most of the book-keeping and
+memory management is done by you.
+
+You may think (and quite rightly, too) that I’m harping on this point.  But the
+reason I harp is that writing illegible code is a serious problem in today’s
+open-source era. .You'll probably say that you're no hot-shot programmer, and
+that you don't intend to publish any of your programs. However, you must
+remember that even if you are only a beginner, your code could help someone else
+in understanding the language. This especially applies to teachers and
+textbooks. To use non-standard forms is to create confusion. And while
+
+{% highlight c %}
+void main (void)
+{% endhighlight %}
+
+may not be illegible, it could lead to confusion when the terminating statements
+are reached. And further, it is by breaking such minor rules of conventions that
+bigger breaks are made, and the very purpose of conventions and standards
+defeated.
+
+There are other such malpractices which I've observed, and upon these I'll
+comment in later posts. For now, goodbye!
+

_posts/2009-10-30-identity.md

+---
+layout: post
+title: A Lost Identity
+---
+
+In my days at IITG, I have often been asked where I hail from. Somehow, I never
+am sure how to answer it. Consider: I was born in Kerala, I stay in a town
+called Kalyan, in Maharashtra, and am studying here in Guwahati, Assam. Should I
+say, I am from Kalyan, where I stay, and which no one will recognise, or should
+I say I am from Bombay (or Mumbai), which people will recognise? Or should I say
+that I am from Kerala, where I was, in fact, born? Each answer means different
+things, and I would often be in a quandary as to which meaning I should choose. 
+
+The problem gets worse and worse. I am a Malayali, and my name is borrowed from
+Tamil (my grandma's remark when my mum came up with the name). My name confuses
+people when they hear that I'm from Bombay. Here at IITG, they instantly assume
+that I am an Andhra, lo! even more confusion. And I have to set about explaining
+things.
+
+And let's not forget religious tendencies. I was born a Hindu (strangely enough,
+I have also been mistaken for a Christian), became an atheist by choice and am
+an agnostic by practice. That last phrase would be confusing: An atheist and an
+agnostic are mutually exclusive terms. Let me make it clear: I have a problem
+accepting god(s) as gods usually are represented: omnipresent, omniscient and
+omnipotent. Now, I cannot accept any concept of a god with attributes that I
+myself may not have, I cannot accept a superior being. But god(s) as sort-of
+kick-starter(s) to the universe (as in Arthur C. Clarke's *Rama Revealed*) is(are)
+certainly ok, so long as said god(s) refrain from interfering with the universe.
+
+I know four languages: English (which I consider my first language, since I
+think in it), Malayalam (my mother tongue), Hindi and Marathi. Now, I rarely get
+to speak English, and it's more than a trifle rusty. My Malayalam vocabulary is
+limited, and dying from disuse. My Hindi grammar is barbarous (to say the
+least), and my Marathi is one-way. So which language should I speak in? English
+and Malayalam have rarely found use, and my Marathi only allows me to listen,
+but not to speak. And my Hindi would be offensive to the highest degree to any
+purist.
+
+Caught between identities is one thing, but caught between interests is another.
+I am studying Mechanical Engineering at IITG, but my heart is anywhere but in
+Mechanics. I love Mathematics, Physics, English, and Computer Science; I have a
+strong leaning towards History, Philosophy, and even Psychology, but I have no
+interest in the number crunching that Mechanics involve. And so, here I am,
+faring well in Math and Physics (till last semester) and programming, but
+verging towards the brink of failure in Solid and Fluid Mechanics as well as
+Thermodynamics.
+
+And then comes the primary passion in my life: reading books. People immediately
+deduce, incorrectly, I'm afraid, that I am studious. I'm merely a bookworm, and
+study only for the sake of the pleasure the knowledge brings me. Ergo, my dismal
+grades in every major exam that I have taken.
+
+Bombay, that is VT (Victoria Terminus, now named Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus)
+the main railway station, the heart of Bombay, is 50 km from my house. Though,
+of course, to anyone who lives within the reach of the local trains, the world
+is divided into two main regions: the one with Bombay's local trains, and the
+one without (got the pun?).  Within the local train system, differences occur;
+but without, whichever town or suburb you live in, you're from Bombay.
+
+I recently finished reading Suketu Mehta's *Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found*.
+He remarks that Bombay is a city of exiles, of restless people, of people in
+transit. That's how I see myself, as someone in transit, caught in a world to
+which I do not belong, neither here nor there. But with a difference: Mehta's
+people are in transit from one place to another, from one life to another, from
+one level of power to another. I'm in transit, but in time, and my destinations
+are æons apart. I long to be in those times of discovery and exploration, when
+frontiers of the world, the sciences and mathematics were expanded rapidly, with
+much to learn, and much more to discover, as it still is today in the abstract
+fields. But now, to even reach those levels they discovered and explored, one
+must spend a lifetime, either acquiring money for travel, or studying for
+discovery and invention. In this era of increasing specialization, what chance
+does someone like me have, who longs to be of the old breed, when scientists
+were polymaths?
+
+But what does my language, my name, my place of residence and my interests
+matter? All my life, I have watched and envied people who were part of a group,
+of a ‘crowd', a circle of friends. I have never been part of one, and I doubt I
+will ever be. I wander from one group to another, using my friends in each group
+as an entry point, but never lingering long enough to become a part. I have
+always felt an envelope of loneliness about me: separating me from all others,
+never letting me truly open my heart out and pour my thoughts and desires to
+anyone, not even to my closest friends, not even the one time I had a
+girlfriend, except the most superficial ones. To compensate, I populate my mind
+with versions of people I meet, people I become interested in. I try to get to
+know them as well as I can, and then carry on conversations, discussions and
+debates with the mental version. Not one hour goes by in which I have not had a
+talk with one of my mental creations. It gets so that I am absolutely lethargic
+when it comes to calling my family or my friends.
+
+You might think, how rightly I cannot say, that I am nuts. Please, understand
+me, it is not so. I try discussing things with people, but each only
+understands, or cares to understand only small fragments of my thoughts. To many
+should I confide? To how many should I explain my philosophy? No, it is better
+that my mind talk to itself, it is not a closed lake, but an ocean into which
+streams and rivers are constantly pouring in new experiences, new thoughts and
+new concepts. An analytic and imaginative brain like my own cannot afford
+idleness, and I must have my companions, real or imaginary.
+
+That is all I can say for today. It took me a lot of will power and
+determination to get this all out, all of which I have, at one time or the
+other, as one point or another, tried to discuss with my friends. If they
+remember those occasions, I hope they'll understand better.
+
+May be I am as Rhett Butler said to Scarlet O'Hara in Alexandra Ripley's
+*Scarlet: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind*.
+
+> "You belong with me, Scarlett, haven't you figured that out? And the world is
+> where we belong, all of it. We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the
+> adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we're only
+> half alive. We can go anywhere, and as long as we're together, it will belong to
+> us. But, my pet, we'll never belong to it. That's for other people, not for us."
+
+So I keep asking myself, and I may never know the answer, to whom do I belong?
+
+Well, so long, for now.

_posts/2015-08-28-vim-for-man.md

 ---
 layout: post
 title: Vim as $MANPAGER
+tags: [vim]
 ---
 
 Long, long ago, in a hostel room far, far away, I once read about using Vim as
@@ -145,7 +146,7 @@ setlocal nomodifiable
 function! PrepManPager()
 	setlocal modifiable
 	if !empty ($MAN_PN)
-		silent %! col -b
+		silent %! col -b -x
 	endif
 	setlocal nomodified
 	setlocal nomodifiable
@@ -173,8 +174,10 @@ What does this do?
 3. Set `nomodified` to tell Vim that the buffer hasn't been modified, and
    make it a read-only, non-modifiable, scratch buffer.
 4. Also, map `q` to `:qa`, so that I can quit all opened manpages, and
-   <kbd>Space</kbd> to <kbd>Page Down</kbd>, in keeping with the usual behaviour
+   <kbd>Space</kbd> to <kbd>Page&nbsp;Down</kbd>, in keeping with the usual behaviour
    of `less`.
+5. `col -b`'s use of tabs led to messed up alignment. I had to use `-x` (replace
+   tabs with spaces) so that, for example, `man ascii` showed up properly.
 
 Finally, `man man` opens up pretty much as I'd like it to.
 

contact.md

 ---
 title: Contact
+pagestyle: contact
 permalink: /contact/
 ---
 
@@ -11,9 +12,9 @@ Currently at:
 
 Email me at:
 
-- murukesh.mohanan [AT] gmail.com
-- murukesh [AT] cse.iitb.ac.in
-- m.mohanan [AT] alumni.iitg.ernet.in (defunct) 
+- murukesh.mohanan<span class="domain">gmail.com</span>
+- murukesh<span class="domain">cse.iitb.ac.in</span>
+- murukesh<span class="domain">iitb.ac.in</span>
 
 <!-- section -->
 

styles/contact.css

-#main li {
-	list-style-image: url("../images/not_sign.png");
-	padding: 0.1em;
-	list-style-position: inside;
+.domain::before {
+	content: "@";
 }

styles/posts.css

@@ -18,8 +18,9 @@ kbd {
 }
 
 blockquote {
-	padding: 0;
+	padding: 0.5em 2em;
 	margin: 0;
+	background-color: whitesmoke;
 }
 
 img {

styles/style.css

@@ -121,6 +121,7 @@ a:hover {
 
 ol li {
 	list-style: decimal;
+	padding: 0.3em;
 }
 
 nav ul li {