This song is by Diorama and this remainds me of song "Sinner in me" by Martin L. Gore, and both these songs are about the Sinner inside us. We cannot define this sin using generic rules of our society, and the sin that I am referring to is rather personal and might not be sin at all, according to society. This Sinner does not have shape so we can neither kill nor expose him/her to be prosecuted by outsiders. We continue to carry them and live, hoping that they would die one day, before us.
Coming back to the song, lyrics is compelling and also impersonal compared to some of his other songs. I have marked my favourite lines with <->
Diorama - Dear Brother
I am your doubt
Your constant sin
The swollen shape <->
Of your regrets <->
You make your way
To where I am
As you remain
Inside the cold white room
Brother shoot me down
Kill me from within
I am the void
Carved in your face
All eyes and ears
Are bouncing off
Don't let a sound
Seep through the wax
You left a friend
Inside the cold white room
Brother shoot me down
Kill me from within
Brother shoot me down
Kill me once again
I'm the hurricane <->
In your water glass <->
Stir me <->
Stir me <->
I am your first step
Into no man's land
Walk me
Walk me
Brother shoot me down <->
Kill me from within <->
Brother shoot me down
Kill me once again
As I write this I am listening to this song, wish I could post the mp3 file. If you get to listen to the song I am sure you would get bitten by scream "Brother shoot me down... Kill me from within.."
Diorama - Dear brother
painting "due to reckless virility"
This is painting is about impact of over population on Nature. A twig is being chased by phallic pistol which symbolises over population. Twig is jumping over the fence to escape from man. Blue block on the right edge is a human body(see the shape of obdomen and navel) and is approching the twig, totting his pistol/penis. As he moves, he is lifting the land underneath(see the furling ground) . Man's foot is coming down from the top, crushing tree trunks.
In broader terms is overpopulation is an unquestionable hollistic weapon that humans or nations or groups use for various purpose( say to conquer the land).
Final painting
Practicing 1
Practicing 2
Cheap black-mail
Why these people want to someone's rights...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5275866.stm
By using holocaust for such trivial cause one just cheapens the history.
Spineless Indian Govt. descends to Chinese Govt. side
This is news is shocking...
"...Beijing said Mr Narayanan had reiterated that the government in Delhi viewed Tibet as part of China...."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7321899.stm
Giving work to Chinese Govt's inet blocking s/w
Tibet dfdhsadhsdavfhv tibet bnzcxvgzdxvchgsdfhdsvfhdfavb
tibet dsjkdvfjksdbvbadjcb
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080317-great-firewall-of-china-expands-as-tibetan-riots-continue.html
:-)
Audio-dictionary project
This is about my Audio-dictionary project who's goal is to convert English dictionary in to a mp3 file. English dictionary contains far too many words and frankly I am not interested in all of them, in fact I need just tiny part of it so this audio dictionary holds selected few words.
Simplistic view
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(M-W Dictionary) ----> (Text-To-Speech Engine) ---> (WAV file)
Detailed steps
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
0) Installed AT&T Text-To-Speech or "TTS Engine" on my PC
1) Choose the words from TEXT version of Merriam Webster Dictionary,
to make files like a.xml, b xml.. etc
2) Wrote a program to
a. read words from XML file and feed in to "TTS Engine"
b. programmed "TTS Engine" save the words as WAV file.
3) Convert the WAV file to MP3 file.
Current status
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have prepared the WAV containing the words starting with letter A and yet to repeat this proven mechanism on the words starting from other letters.
Why.....?
In my profession of software engineering I use few words for everything and feel lacking when I try to write paragraphs, especially the compound sentences are open pits. So to do something for this I am trying to improve my grammar and also vocabulary and this audio dictionary is part of that town.
Collecting Word...
Two years ago, I started thinking about making an audio-dictionary and began underlining the words on paper edition of pocket sized Oxford English dictionary. Next was to transfer the words from paper to PC by manually typing(note that I had chosen only few words under each alphabet). I had two concerns about this methods namely: I was using abridged version of dictionary with subset of words and pocket dictionary did not have examples; I believe that best way to keep a word in memory is to listen or read it being used.
e-Dictionary instead of paper version..
I started searching again for different source of words, a dictionary, and this new slightly ambitious agenda required me to transfer plenty more words from paper to PC and that looked impractical, and that is when I focused on e-Dictionary so there would not be need for me to type words in to PC.
Web-based dictionary or Text-based dictionary....
I started with www.m-w.org, a Web-based dictionary and thought of programmatically querying the web server for word's meaning, and this strategy did not go anywhere, moreover www.m-w.org lacked examples so gave up the idea of using www.m-w.org. No other online dictionaries,like www.dictionary.com, were worth pursuing because they lacked history of publishing any paperback editions.
Cleaning up Gutenberg's project dictionary....
Then reluctantly, I browsed Gutenberg project site and found text-based version of 1903 edition of Merriam Webster dictionary. There were 26 files, one for every word, and these files were big, with elaborate information on every word, including examples, and also found that these files had syntax similar to XML. I decided to use Gutenberg's files as source of words and started deleting the unnecessary details about words, using my C# scripts. In addition to this I also deleted hundreds of words completely.
Regular Expression
Cleaning dictionary was all about searching for patterns and replacing, and Regular Expression is made for such kind of work. I used Visual Studio 2005 editor to search & replace based on patterns.
At present I have done this for file containing the words starting with "A" and need to repeat for other files. So I have A.xml and A.wma
Right Text-To-Speech(TTS) voice....
WindowsXP comes with a synthetic voice, sounds too robotic to comprehend. Then I came across sweet sounding AT&T natural voices, at first I thought they are expensive but costed just 40$, and I think cheap for so much natural sounding voices named: Mike16 and Crystal16.
Program using TAPI ....
Now I had both TTS voice, A.xml ready and just needed a program to take the lines from A.xml and feed them to TTS engine. I reading TAPI, a COM based Microsoft's voice library and wrote an application in C++. TAPI is scalable in sense one can set different volume to words contained in same sentence, and TAPI also has XML syntax to spell the words, and my program is able use these features of TAPI. Last surprising thing was TAPI is able to save the voice in to a WAV file and had not expected this from TAPI. Now I can add TAPI to my resume.
Is this all useful?
I have listened to WAV file several time and surprisingly I find the XML file more use full than the WAV file. XSLT made a.xml very much readable, here is snapshot of it.
View of a.xml
Grip to go back
It seems that distinct times of our past are like texture on rock, they provide us the grip to go back.
Make UN a non-political body
I have heard a lot about UN resolutions in past 8 years and based on that I have arrived at the following: UN is not practical as political body and there are plenty of evidences to prove that, resolutions against Israel get vetoed out by US and UN is unable to arrive at any consensus on Dar fur because China is blocking everything as permanent member of Security council.
Even if a resolution goes through, UN will not be able to impose the resolution because it does not have strong army.
But UN is good at generating ripple about the general issues like Poverty, Global warming, etc. When UN talks, such issues get the credibility required to motivate the people to take on their respective Govt, and that could lead the individual country to take some action.
So please make UN apolitical body.
And aside from this why does China want to be permanent member of security council if it does not want to intervene in other country's internal matter? this is really puzzling me...
Glad EU is taming Microsoft.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7266629.stm
EU is trying to do what US govt failed to do, that is to make Microsoft play fairly. Both Microsoft and other companies write applications to work against Microsoft's own products like: Exchange Server, SQL server and both theoritically use same public API but in some cases Microsoft applications seems to overcome the limitations of published API and thus outsmart the applications written by others. And this shows that Microsoft is taking advantage of their parental knowledge of their product to outsmart the third party application writers and this I think is illegal.
That said I am not a pathological MS hater and have programmed for their products since 1997; and their MSDN is an excellent source of information; and the quality of products is much better when compared to IBMs, Adobes, and other Fortune-500s...
Microsoft just use 'virtual' keyword for VTABLE
Looks like in C#, Microsoft wanted to either re-invent or confuse us with plathora keywords: sealed, interface, abstract, virtual, override, new, base, etc... to just to replace 'virtual' of C++.
I hate to spend time on learning these 'transient' technologies, all said and done it is just a VTABLE with a bunch of function pointers, you do not need jombory of keywords. I rather paint something instead of learning these shitty microsoft tech-vapour....
Over-domesticated Indian society
It is an ordeal to be part of Indian culture if only you are a open-minded individual. I am not exaggerating and nor am I mad:-) it is real, you do not have to set foot on the motherland to feel the prick, traits are there even in non-tropical colonies.
I think due over domestication, animal in them has lost its teeth. No wonder many Indians boast that their society is oldest. People's life do not err, fluctuate, they are steady like railway track, nothing could change the peace except for an earthquake or hurricane. Over domestication has turned individuals in to puppets and an abstract thing called "archaic-society" hold the strings. In fact India hosts a largest assembly of puppet population :-)
Over-domestication has breed family-pride instead of national-pride. If you do not believe look at the stagnant living standard. Living standard would stay the same as long as one stays domesticated. If there are enough people pushing the envelope then the infrastructure will improve, but how much of the population thinks beyond their blood-family.
The society that can not tolerate Pamela Anderson will probably fail to breed an Einstein. Society can not have it all one way.
What is the help being frustrated, you can not change status-quo because fuc*ing population is huge. In such case there are there few things you can do
-Leave the decaying place
-Shut the door to society and live
-If you are not fortunate to execute the above, just know that there are people who understand your misery.
This blog will continue, sadly for generations...
Passage to other side
I used the word passage to create a feeling of exploration so made the passage rough. All along the history, making across a channel has been associated with pride, love and glory and I see the same scene here...
There is an another way to look at this painting and that is as trade between 2-dimensional love and 3-dimensional lust.
This is a scavenged painting....
Three years back, a model posed for students in my painting class, and she sat there for couple of hours, and I could not complete the painting in that window of 2hrs, and I did not even pretend to do so...:-). When the lady left that afternoon, I had barely made any progress and had just captured hers essentials
Two months back, while I was looking for a spare canvas for practicing, came across this painting lying in the same state as I had left 3 years ago, with just the essentials. As I said I did not reproach but wanted to cover the whole canvas with BLUE paint so that I could re-use it for practice work. With this in mind, I started to act and I had covered 90% percent of the canvas with blue expect for the prime part of the body. Then, I stopped for few moments for no reason, and at that time whole canvas had been covered with BLUE expect for the lady with orange body, and it did not require much attention to see some value in that composition. On the second attempt I saw two distinct land/sides: one covered in cold-blue and the other smeared with warm-color, then feeling lucky I stopped painting in order to take bath and there arrived at the current title.
In the coming days, I worked to make it appear like Passage to other side and got the face of rock one side and lady on other side, and note that there was no cave-man standing.
Then the idea of solitary flower came, but thought that having it alone would make it too obvious, so introduced a beholder for stem, in the form of a drawing, looking like cave-man's art work. Using drawing to make the gesture of love made sense because of it's association even gesture looked archaic and less real. Also observe the signs of flame around the beholder and animal face is apparent so sometimes it looks like me a trading of love for lust :-)
Well, irrespective of motives I am happy with this painting, oh hell, they are too. -lol
Other end of human's genteel 'Need'
Influence....
We stretch our purse to us dress ourself as sophisticated individuals in society and also bestow things on our family, to show how sensitive and caring we are. This well-trodden way to become genteel human might not be so humane in the end because I believe some where a tree is going to get knocked down while we are burnishing our image in society. If we fallow the life-line of human-need, we might see a socially honorable human being at one end and a dead tree on the other end. Unfortunately, this is fact of life, we have to pollute to live comfortably, and strictly speaking every individual in civilized society puts strain on Nature in one way or other, and I do that all the time and so you also, in spite of knowing that our land is a train with no breaks.
coming back to painting...
I presume that all most all components are obvious expect for the orange object on left, and that I see as a burning electric bulb but some of my friends saw that as person's back, and I think both the impressions make sense because man pays and the electric bulb, a proxy, hunts.
This is how I got this idea; I had exhausted myself by brooding over this subject for months and suddenly this idea of leaf and electric cable entangled, as if in a duo came to my mind, and I felt relieved and was extremely happy to see the noose because it symbolized how ruthless humans could get in order to attain day-to-day comforts.
This is how the things evolved; before I started the actual work, I just had three core components in mind, and they were cable, tree-branch and noose. I knew how to glue them together but did not know how to fill rest of the canvas, and this was expected because I was not painting based on any photograph. Then moving to the backdrop of the scene, I thought of filling the left side of canvas with an orange glow as if coming from of a distant street light, and wanted this light to gradually get darker, reaching violet at the center of the canvas, and go further to become dark blue near the right edge. So I wanted the background to grow as follows (start-with-Orange)->(dark-red->violet-in-middle)->(dark-blue-on-right-edge).
With these impressions in mind, I started working on creating the effect of distant street light, and while I was struggling to do this, I saw the orange colored shape resembling a hut develop and was in two minds whether to go with hut or continue to the effort to get street-light effect but I did not favor the idea of hut because it did not go well with the overall story of the painting. I tried again to get the street-light effect but the orange glow started looking like an electric bulb, and this is something which I had never imagined but electric-bulb fitted well with over all theme of painting so I happily embraced the light-bulb instead of street light:-). This is an example for spontaneous evolution. I was worried that noose could get lost in dark background but electric-bulb took care of the that, and it's light was strong enough to illuminate the grass/land surrounding noose, thus I was able to make noose stand out.
Color of noose...
I selected bright blue for electric cable because of two reasons: one is that color blue, stands for industrialization(energy needs and atomization of life) and the another is that blue colored loop stood well against warm orange background.
Apprehensions....
-I was tense and too cautious while working on leaf so they look somewhat
artificial....
- This painting is for just personal fancy, without any great intension because we
all know well that day-to-day needs are unsurmountable...
Riddled with money
Influence...
I have listened to the kins of economy talk about it's growth and they really believe that growth as the ultimate truth but many outsiders, who are not enemies, do not see that way. Apart from this, I strongly believe that nature usually pays for every dollar that we earn and I brooded about this for months and some how this idea of leaf bearing a hole, looking like $, came to my mind. The idea in raw form was to draw a leaf with perforation resembling dollar sign.
Now coming back to painting....
I wanted just the leaf nothing else on canvas and so thought of using a small canvas to hold just a leaf. Around that time, I had abandoned a painting, done on a small canvas and it had streaks of colors drawn using random acrylic colors; and these colors were dark enough to stage a leaf starkly, so I decided to re-use that abandoned 8' x 10' canvas.
Around the same time my friend introduced me to his friend in Goth club and he being an experienced painter suggested me to practice several times before moving on to eventual canvas. I too had thought of this earlier but had not acted on it and some how practicing was not my style and lack of time was my excuse but his words made my guilt float so determined, I started practicing timidly, by drawing a leaf with $ imprinted on it and the canvas that I used had white background but my eventual canvas had dark background. Well it was not a perfect practice session but reduced my guilt, see I am not a true painter :-)
Then I started working on real canvas and painted a leaf and $. It took several days to get the leaf & dolor right and you know I am not well versed in painting :-). The dolor sign that I had drew had one line but my friend said that there should be two lines and I too had suspected this but the google search had mislead me. Then I re-worked to get another line on $. So if look closely you will see two lines on S :-)
I still do not think that I have done good job here because few could not visualize it as $ and and emphasis this point, I prepared following collage by placing same painting in two different orientations.
What about the face?
In the middle of the canvas, there is a face with two eyes and that was an accident; and yes that face looks like the face in Munch's painting Scream.
day after Valentaine's day
heaven weaved Marriage
in two dimensions
but untied the land to
consummate in 3 dimensions
Is 'save-planet' agenda no more virgin?
Govt's bio-fuel policies are influenced by lobbyist and also politically driven, and are not solely intended to save planet. You think I am cynical and may be you are true to some extent :-) Example: Brazil uses Sugarcane for Bio-fuel but US does not; and the reason is Sugar cane is expensive in US and why is it expensive? and Can we make it cheap ?. Based on a historic agreement between Sugarcane growers and US Govt, price of Sugar can not be adjusted and so it will always stay high. This shows how one can not be honest and also make a successful policy.
Cutting forest to grow Corn is a bad idea because along with forest goes the 1000 of years of ecosystem and bringing back this ecosystem is not as simple as planting an another tree somewhere else. What I think is that loosing forest to save few corbon does not look like a good deal to me and we should continue to use what ever we have till we come up with some healthy alternative. Look at Indonesia where farmers are turning the forest in to Palm oil (another Bio-fuel source) plantation.
I was wondering why no Govt is speaking openly against Bio-fuels and last month EU accepted that it made a mistake by endorsing Bio-fuels.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7186380.stm
Also a company working on Cellulosic Ethonal based Bio-fuel got acquired by GM and unfortunately that news did not get any coverage.
http://www.dailytech.com/...article10320.htm
In this current environment where EVERY decision is taken based on the economic growth, the business community has started making these superficially green products instead of producing durable products to curb rampant consumerism. Tech companies phase out their product in 6 months to show economic growth and then try to sell replacement as 'green-version'.
[waste generated by phased out product +
energy spend on making,transporting,marketing Green replacment]
does not get outweighted by
[greenness of Green replacment]
How pure is the conscience of politicians who talk about saving planet and in the next breath approve tax rebate so that consumer can buy more goods?
Have not we already polluted the pious cuase like "saving-planet"?
Online books stops & postal service miserable in India
How it all started...
I live in Newyork and wanted to send few books to my family in Bangalore. You think it is as easy as going online and placing an order... no that easy...
And after reading economic pages of newspaper, you would also think that there would be one because it is so called emerging economy at least on economic pages.
Miserable online book stores.
I started by searching for online retail bookstores located in India and was happy to find one and I even placed the order. But the retailer came back the next day saying that he could not find not even a single book among 11. We shoudl all thank the store for not adding to mysery by charging my credit card.
Barnes and Nobles...
Then I ordered same books in Barnes and Nobles(an online retal bookstore located in US) and opted to ship using non-courier service. Price of book was 62$ and shipping cost came to 67$
Dishonest Postal service
Non-courier services use Indian postal service and the books sent by Barnes and Nobles never reached Bangalore, even after waiting for two months. The book stores declared the shipment as lost and refunded my money. Then I had to shipped using FedEx and books reached the destination. Price of book was 62$ and shipping came to 89$
How does globalization help?
Guys, I juuu....st want to buy books online... nothing fancy here.....
Investors are driven by numbers, opinions hardly to by what helps the people; to give you an example if the cell phone market looks good everyone jumps in to it and beat it to death. I know once the online books market becomes popular, investors will lineup like sheeps of a hurd....
In the end
Does economic booms means improvent in ordinary folk's life style or just raise in wealth of call-center-investor?
Sharing Classic ASP and ASP.Net 'session' data
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20021207.asp
According to above article you can do it by submitting a "FORM" from classic ASP.
Go throught it...
Google's ads. has made web a vulgar place
Google's ad. are like leeches there are on every webpage. Like the above example, placement of ad. could be deceptive.
I do not know why at all a company pays for placing it's ad. because there would be 10 other ads. on a single page, competing for attension. Google is just making money by letting every tom & dick showcase his or her's greed.
Web user is a victim of this maelstrom of Google ads in few ways:
a) Many of these ad. links might take you to a spam site; and a novice user, could easily land himself in trouble.
b) These ads. does not have iota of creativity and are out right vulgar.
c) Web pages have lost their aesthetics and thus taken out the pleasure out of leisurely web browsing.
Is "disable Google ads." button the solution?
What about Microsoft adding a special button to IE called "disable Google ads." button? And can this land MS in an anti-trust pit?
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