Tagged: Humor

The Power of Procrastrination


I just got back from the [[http://www.phdcomics.com/speaking.htm|Power of Procrastrination]] talk by [[http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/~jgcham/|Jorge Cham]] of [[http://www.phdcomics.com/|PHD Comics]]. The talk was superb! Jorge managed to keep a packed audience entertained for a full hour with jokes on almost every slide and some “real” messages thrown in for good measure.

Apart from all the obviously //should-not-be-taken-seriously// material, Jorge’s main point was that if you’re feeling stressed out, anxious, depressed, lonely at some point in your graduate career, don’t take it to heart. Its not unusual, and you’re one of thousands of graduate students who go through the same thing. So **just relax**, and when the time is right, you will graduate :-)

I haven’t been reading PhD comics for a while now — I figured I’ll just buy the third book when it comes out (I already have the first two). If you’re a graduate student and you haven’t heard of PhD comics yet, its time to take some action! Go [[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics|read it now]]! You’ll love it, its just fabulous. Though to really appreciate the strip fully you need to have experience grad school yourself, it might still be enjoyable for a wider audience, so give it a shot.

Oh, and his slides were //superb// — god job Jorge!

14 pages of fame


Everyone has dreams of being famous, even if its the 15 minutes of fame.

Well, guess what. I happen to be one of the central characters in a [[http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=6713&p=1|historic post]] over at TxD [[http://forum.textdrive.com/|forums]]. If you have some time on your hands, just go through that thread. Its already **14 pages** and still counting.

Its another matter that the thread is about all things Jason and TxD. I’m just glad to be part of the post that started it all :)

Whats amazing is that Jason is still on top of that thread. He’s answering //each// question. And people have //so many// questions. Its just amazing.

Money transfer in movies


Two days back suddenly it hit me — all the movie scenes where they show some kind of electronic money transfer taking place are //so// wrong! Think about it, picture the scene: the bad guys are trying to transfer a gazillion dollars to their secret account in Switzerland, holding some hostage at gunpoint; they show the progress bar, the numbers ticking away, the account draining out… and right when the progress bar hits 99.99% our hero/heroine blasts in and somehow interrupts the transfer and saves the world.

It happened in MI, most of the Bond movies, tons of hindi movies, Swordfish and is still going on.

Why is it wrong? Well because money is not data! If I transfer a file thats 10 times larger than another file, its going to take 10 times longer. But money transfers are a **single** operation, irrespective of the amount involved (in the general case. There might be cases where some transactions take place in steps, but even then the number of steps might not always be proportional to the amount).

So for one, there should be //no// progress bar! Electronic money transfers are atomic. One might get “it happened” or “it couldn’t happen”, but its totally wrong to depict that somehow “it didn’t happen because we were interrupted at 99.9%”!!

I know its not a big realization, but somehow I found it very very funny. :-) And interesting. That how when I first saw those movies, it seemed so natural. That but //of course// it can be interrupted at 99.9% and nothing would go wrong.

Conscientious Bollywood


Really, what are these guys thinking? The Indian Express [[http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=79016|reports]]:

> NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 27: In an unexpected move, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has proposed adult certification for films with smoking scenes, a move that might not find favour with the Health Ministry, which is keen on banning scenes that show actors smoking.

This is just stupid