#3 The logo

Created a logo for Zuperb!

Pssshh: Adobe firefly generated it 😉
I love these kind of tools - amazing!

I actually wanted some meaningful logo like the YinYang, etc. 

But this one is good as a version 1 logo - looks pretty pretty in my opinion.
Do you like it? 👆

 

Tomorrow if I get time, I will move these posts to new blog at zuperb.in

That's it for today, wishing you a great day!

#2 Finding a Zuperb name

Summary: Finding a name, getting website for this project.

Intro

This endeavor/project/website needs a name.

People say naming is difficult. Very true, I felt, for this project. Read Part 1 to get an idea why. 

Life has infinitely many facets. A project that's about life should also have a name like 'life'. 

Fun exercise: try creating a word like 'life'.

The immediate reason why a name is required

I want to put these posts/logs in some place, a website. Showing it to you is one reason. Another is: these posts where I document all this is also part of my life. The system should have a place for that too. 

These are not just blogposts - these are records about the genesis of the system. It is like the history or story of the system.

Soon the system itself will know those stories. These posts will move into that system. For now we want a place to put these posts, get them when needed and share that with the you, the world. Websites are great for that.

We'll create a website. I want to have a name for that website.

Where do we start?

I have a few domains now:

• jisuka.net
• expressing.online
• 83percent.in. 

Nothing much happening in them.

The last two are related to ideas that will manifest some time in some form in this project. 

First one was supposed to be my own personal website. It has some dummy content now. jisuka is my nickname: first 2 letters from my name, father's name, family name. The system we are building will soon have a home for the person Jithu also. So all of the above 3 can soon retire, maybe.

Thoughts about the name

For this project, I want a name that does not reflect the person 'Jithu'. Because, this will be a system that persons/people would want to use. This is not (just) about me. 

As a side-note: I invite you, the reader, to keep following this project/space. This project will have life as its top priority. This is a project of life, by life, for life. Damn, it's starting to sound hollow. 

Let the actions speak.

Qualities of a good name

There are many qualities a great name should have. 

• catchy: google, swiggy
  
• reflect the meaning/personality/theme of the thing it is pointing at: zomato 
  
• it should be easy to remember, distinct, short, etc.: airbnb, uber, ola

Due to the nature of this project, it should also be able to go well with anything related to life - food, programming, nature, quotes, recipes, projects, journaling, etc.

History

I spent so many hours (spanning over many past months) trying to find the best, most suitable name. And I failed.

Hmm, a part of me is so eager to establish that I know 'failed' that is just one way of looking at it. Anyway, I did learn one lesson very well - imperfection is inevitable. One must learn to live with it. 

Let's not get sucked into unnecessary details and history.

Today

Today I thought, let's settle with some name that is decent, okay. And rename later if we find a perfect name, we'll keep a tab open for that.

Some names I found today:

• superness.in
• topflow.in
• zuperb.in

.com were taken/expensive. 

.in is fine for now.

Zuperb!

Zuperb is a superb name, you have to agree ;)

• sounds positive
• appears energetic
• feels inspiring
  
• people can connect regardless of their age, language, culture
  
• is short
  
• etc.

I'm going ahead with that name.

My wife commented that the use of 'z' is like in 'freakzz', etc. :P
But she liked it.

zuperb.in

Bought zuperb.in!

From Godaddy. Spent a couple of thousand rupees for a couple of years.

Try visiting Zuperb!

I've setup a redirection to this blog for now. 

 

It's getting late for bed, Sunday night. Signing off for now.

Thanks for visiting! 😇

#1 A new beginning

Summary: "Post on a new beginning in my life. Building something in public that is aimed at making life better."

Intro (hype)

This marks the beginning of a new phase in my life.

I'm going to build something in public. This is something that is coming out through me I feel, more than I creating it. This is an idea whose time has come, it looks like.

Let me search and get that proverb that says the same...

"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

I love quotations, which are words pointing to some idea. I love ideas - ideas that inspire. The thing that I'm building will have a designated area for quotes.

Alright, that is enough hype about what is it about.

What is it about?

It is about life.
All of the following are true about "this thing":

 

It is a:

• system
• website
• app
  
• platform
• way of life.

This is a way of life, imagined and created by life, for life. 

 

What's the purpose of this system/website/way? What is it about?

Of life, by life, and For Life.

 

More about it

It will simplify, enhance, ..[add more words of this kind] life. More on this in the upcoming episodes. You can think of this as the first post of a 'building in public' project.

I'm not making fun of you. Agree, this may sound a bit dramatic, wishy-washy, etc., at-least to some of you. This is just the beginning, my wife is calling me to have lunch. I'll wrap up the beginning with this.

Catch you later

I'd love to see all kind of reactions and responses to this. 

 

It may be about a certain grammatical mistake I made. It may be your positive/negative thoughts on this, encouragement, discouragement, etc. Whatever it is, feel free to comment. 

 

 

Thanks for visiting! 😇

Proud to be a Vegetarian?

tl;dr: Relativity + Vegetarianism

Prelude

... > Breatharian > Waterian > Fruitarian > Vegan/Vegetarian(by choice) >= Vegan/Vegetarian(by birth) > Eggetarian/Lactarian > Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian > Pescetarian > Pollotarian > Non-vegetarian but no beef > Non-vegetarian > Cannibal > ...

The case 
I am a Non-vegetarian.[1]

I have many Vegetarian friends and most of them do not wear the opinion that they are right and Non-vegetarians are wrong. That said, cases aren't rare where some occasionally radiate from their subconscious the aforementioned assertion that Non-vegetarians are wrong.

The argument: A more righteous Cannibal and a less righteous Breatharian
"I cannot believe it. You people kill animals!" - It would not be totally unjustified if a Vegetarian exclaims this out of a sudden realization. Imagine a Vegetarian who maintains: 'Vegetarians are right and Non-Vegetarians are wrong'. 
Is he right about being right?

Now make the following replacements in the above chunk of text:
"animals" to "plants"
"Vegetarian" to "Fruitarian""
and 
"Non-Vegetarian" to "Vegetarian"
Is he right about being right?

Do plants feel pain? It can be argued that they do - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose#Plant_research

I agree that the pain an animal suffers when it is (tortured and) killed is vastly more when compared to what, as far as we could perceive now, the plants would suffer when ripped apart. 

My point is, it is senseless to label somebody right or wrong when it comes to morality/kindness/righteousness. Simply because there there is no absolute right and absolute wrong. Still in a sense, Vegetarians can be argued to be more righteous compared to Non-vegetarians in the same way that Fruitarians can be argued to be more righteous compared to Vegetarians.

Fig: Cannibalism. From Wikipedia

Even while being a cannibal, you can be more righteous than somebody else. Yeah!
If your eating policy as a cannibal is that you will not eat 'those who dwell near you' or 'those who are your friends' or even 'those who worship cows', then in a sense you are more righteous compared to someone who eats all humans no matter who.

Fig: Sun gazing, from Wikipedia

A Breatharian[2] is somebody who does not consume food. They sustain on sunlight. Even while being a hypothetical Breatharian, you can be less righteous if we interpret our definition of things that we care about to include photons also. This because you are, in a sense, killing the photon. Just that you would have to broaden the meaning of 'killing' to include the transformation that a 'lively' photon goes through when you eat(hit) it.


Concluding remarks
Of course this post probably means nothing in practical reality that we encounter everyday. This is a part of an attempt to pause and look around at everything through relativity. When one does that, he might realize that if you ignore the scale, 'Vegetarianism is right' is logically similar to 'Cannibalism is right' in their own respective logical universes.

I respect many Vegetarians, mainly those, who are so by choice. They can sure be proud of their position. Just my two cents: Be proud but do not forget relativity.

Remember this? 'Stealing is stealing - doesn't matter whether it is 5 bucks or 500 Billion bucks'

As a Vegetarian, you are, in a sense, entitled to that pride of being more righteous than a Non-vegetarian. Just the same way a 5 rupee thief is entitled to the pride of being more righteous than a 500 billion rupees thief.

I genuinely hope this write-up doesn't cause more torture and killings. If somebody is sensitized to the relative nature of righteousness, I consider the purpose of this post served.

[1] Sometime back I tried vegetarianism for almost an year. Then I succumbed to the realization of the idea articulated in this post and came/went back to Non-vegetarianism. The other reasons were social pressure, convenience and only lastly, taste. Chances aren't so thin that in future I become a Vegetarian/Fruitarian forever.

[2] They may have water but they sustain mainly on 'the vital life force'(whatever that means). This is most probably BS - Just google, 'Hira Ratan Manek caught eating'!

Conway's Game of Life - life.py

    Read about Conway's Game of life if you still haven't. I came to know about this from Saurabh Santhosh, a senior of mine. And, IT IS AWESOME..!

    Here is a basic 'game of life' program. As it is a zero-player game, my program reads the size of universe, the number of cells and their (x, y) position.

Program

Output

    The given configuration ends up in an oscillator. I had to manually exit. But program stops when all we're left with is still life. And also, an infinite universe(unbounded environment) is not simulated in this code.

Here's the Github repo of my Life :P - https://github.com/jithusunny/Life

Planet of the Sparrows

        As time passed by, the Sparrows started thinking. Putting aside their routine flying, pecking and feeding they sat thinking awkwardly for hours. Thousands of years later, they evolved into Sparrow Sapiens & dominated the planet.

        Some curious fellows thought such hard that they started thinking - 'What am I living for?' & 'What is the meaning of life?' A religion slowly took shape that gave ready-made answers for many questions. The majority of Sparrow Sapiens believed that they are the center of the universe and the creator is the Almighty Sparrow-God. A relatively small percentage thought that the Sparrow God is bull-shit and they did not believe. 

        The believers had volumes of unquestionable Holy scriptures, all-knowing Spiritual gurus, magnificent & huge Cathedrals atop trees, famous Pilgrim centers and that kept on accumulating. They did not have any reason not to believe in the Almighty Sparrow God. As taught by the Spiritual gurus, they lived a God-fearing life worshipping the Sparrow God 24X7. They stared at non-believers with disgust and sympathy.

        At present, depending upon the geography, the Sparrow Sapiens have a number of creators - Sparrow God I, Sparrow God II, Sparrow God III, etc. And because of this clash of ideas clash of beliefs, there exists conflicts between various religious groups. Many Sparrow-Sapiens even sacrifice their lives fighting for their faith.

Mobme Codejam

      This post is about a programming competition I participated in recently. Mobme Codejam...!
   
    Mobme Codejam is the name of an online programming competition that was conducted by Kerala-based IT-firm Mobme Wireless in June 2011. It was a 14 day long event in which the questions for each day were put at a website specially designed for the event. Every day a new question is out at 11pm. Contestants have 1 day for solving the questions. The contestants can program in any of five programming languages - C, Php, Python, Ruby, Clojure. A cash prize of Rs.1000 was awarded to the daily winners & a whooping 1 Lakh for the final lucky guy...!! The Grand finale winner is Karthik R from NIT-C.

        The questions were more dynamic/real-world type than traditional algorithmic problems. The question set is here. The philosophy is also different from other coding competitions. They look for idiomatic & elegant code. They support this view - the program is not only for the 'computers to execute' but also for the 'humans to read'. That's good..!

        I just thought of giving a try when I heard of this event. And to my surprise(!!) I was selected as the daily-winner on two days(codenames: 'mirror' & 'ternary'). I used Python, my favorite programming language, for solving both. The experience was fresh to me and I loved it very much - designing & solving(googling, ofcourse..!) and submitting it in time was absolutely thrilling. You can see the daily-prize winners here.

        The Grand finale was held at the Mobme Wireless Office at Kochi. A few words about Mobme. It is the result of a small group of young entrepreneurs from Kerala. Ruby is the major language used by them. They have bagged innovation awards from the NASSCOM twice. 
        The question for finale was to write a 'generic USSD application server'. I couldnt even write a working program for that. And I took it as an alert for me to learn at least the basics of web technologies. Now I'm working on it.. ;-) The winners program didnt work either. The prize was for his design. It should have been really ingenious..! I won't say 'I was not at all disappointed'. Yes, I was. But I had many other things - My first experience inside a real software company, Interaction with the 'very friendly' CEO, CTO and other persons at Mobme(they took us to 'Hotel Presidency' in their cars for lunch), the thrill of the climax of a different coding competition & most importantly I got a chance to meet and interact with other finalists, the best programmers in Kerala..!
        The next version of Mobme Codejam, probably a bigger event, would be conducted next year. 

        I will later put my prize winning codes here...till then byeeeee...:-)

Update: Here is the post about the solutions - http://jithusunnyk.blogspot.com/2011/09/mobme-codejam-solutions.html

Update - Perizia 3.0 Techfest @ Vidya Engg College.

     Computer science department of Vidya Academy of Science & Technology(VAST) conducted the tech-fest, Perizia 3.0 on April Ist & 2nd. And this post is about my participation in the event.

     I'm so happy with my first proper tech fest participation. I got first prize in on-line C coding competition. The question was to build a railway reservation system. More features, efficiency & documentation decides the winner. You can browse my code in github here. I got a Mouse-pad+USB hub+Calculator thing. It has an led lighting also - its cool..:-)

Here's a picture..

     Our team(Me + Vishwajeet Nair) got second prize in Quiz competition. We were so close to the first place but we couldnt get through the tie-breaker successfully. And in reverse scripting competition our team(Me + Syam Krishnan) bagged third prize. My friends also secured many prizes & I'm almost sure that GECT has the overall championship...:-)

     Tech-fests are cool...I'm liking it..:-)

What's ON now..!

      Mini-Project - The main process running right now using up most of the resources. My team-mates are Akhil K, Rahul CP & Salim Ali UT. Ours is an embedded systems project. We intend to implement  a basic general purpose vehicle that can be controlled by remote computer. The program in computer will be written using Python programming language. As of now Sensor-module and Motor-module works perfectly. Now moving on to the RF-module part. After that we've to do the interfacing with computer through USB port and the python GUI interface. Then that vehicle can be made something specific like maze solver, unmanned campus taxi, etc. I'm getting good technical support from my senior, Appu Sajeev. Quite interesting. Everybody has finally started 'doing' something..!! And another interesting trend is the use of Python - Many projects rely on python.

      A simple python utility - Here's a simple python utility that I wrote. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21358124/result. This is a command-line utility that downloads the university exam result of any given roll number. I'm glad that it is found useful by somebody - Our Tutor was searching for a program that fetches the results of all students. A simple modification to this did the job..:)

      TECHIES '11 - A techfest at IES college. Participated in C debugging competition. Didn't get any prize. But it boosted my self-confidence, because I was first in preliminary round. Next round, was coding - finding saddle-point of a 3x3 matrix and implementation of mxn matrix multiplication using array of pointers. It took a li'l time for me to start working smoothly in TURBOC and I made a silly logical error also. And the winner is our junior Anand. I regret I didn't attend many techfests. Will try now onwards.

      Sister got placed - My sister got placed at Cognizant, Chennai. Waiting for her first salary..:-)

Happy New Year..:)

        Yet another exam season approaching. As usual an 'examination-oriented' study schedule has been prepared. But will see to 'learn' atleast some topics properly. After exams I hope to do some real tech stuff in 2011.

        I would say, the abundance of interesting and elegant technologies in UNIX platform has lured me to taste all. But since my consistency-module is still under development, I'm yet to master any...! Confessing a li'l more, I spent a huge chunk of my time thinking about life, god, afterdeath, religion, etc. When I need to know/do something badly, my mind too seems to implement 'mutual exclusion'. Then I sidelines everything else. But for now, I have buried all those thoughts deep inside my mind to reopen later.

        Also, I'm disclosing with you my top secret, new year resolution - "To become the best of myself"..:D.

        

       Happy New Year buddies...:)

God is Black and is Nothing.

Update: 

    Well, long after writing this, now I feel some clarification is required about this post. This write-up took birth at a transitional period in my life. Transition from 100% religious(When I was so active in church and related activities. I was in the church choir. I take this opportunity to thank those people for standing my terrible singing :P) to an Athiest (No problem in calling so. But to be more clear I'm being agnostic. Which depends on the context. For example somebody who says God is Jehovah or Allah can think I am an athiest & if somebody just asks me 'Do you believe in god?' I am an agnostic. Because until he defines what he means by God, I cant say whether I believe in it or not. So it is safe to be an agnostic in that context). So this article contains some religious bits which you can ignore easily.

    Nothing is absolute and 100% perfect. Is it? And if something is, it is what we call, the God. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, etc. In short God is something that is 100% perfect in all aspects. (Atheists, please continue reading; Must be interesting. And hard-core believers, this is just another viewpoint.)

    Can you think about something that is 100% perfect and that materially exists too..?! NO. Nothing is absolutely perfect that materially exists. Even idealized entities like a perfectly black body or an Ideal gas doesn't exist. So the perfectly perfect entity - God has no material existence. That is, "God is nothing". Or God is "Nothingness" or "vacuum" or "emptiness".

    White is the overused color of God. But Black color better represents God. Because black represents "vacuum" or "emptiness".(The color of Lord Krishna in Hinduism is Black.) Black is the absence of everything, but it contains everything.

Read the last sentence once more..

Is nothing but contains everything.

    This is nothing but the notion that everything is balanced. Isn't this the basis of all scientific theories and laws? For example, Newton's 3rd law of motion - "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". That is "Everything is balanced".

    What ever be the concept, under all its abstractions lies down this universal, Zero-Sum concept. Summing up, you get a Zero. Or everything altogether is a zero or nothing. Many religions puts forward a concept that everything that exists is a part of God. Or God is present in everything; In all of us, sand, stone etc. That agrees with the zero - sum of the universe.


    Universe can be considered as an instance of an initially-calm-pond disturbed by a stone. The scene contains randomly distributed troughs, crests and droplets, which was altogether in an equilibrium position. Or as in a number line, how ever/ what ever random warps are made towards one direction, there exists something that balances it on the other side and what exists before, after and within these warps is the Zero. Likewise the universe is a result of infinite-warps in multiple-dimensions from nothing or zero.




    Thinking in the Hindu way, "Maya is the limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled. Maya is held to be an illusion, a veiling of the true, unitary Self — the Cosmic Spirit also known as Brahman" - Wikipedia

So Maya or Illusion is those warps.


                                                     &


    Quoting from http://1stholistic.com/prayer/Hindu/hol_Hindu-brahman.htm 
- "Brahman is the ground of all reality and existence. Brahman is uncreated, external, infinite and all-embracing. It is the ultimate cause and goal of all that exists. It is One and it is All. All beings emanate from Brahman; all beings will return back to the same source. Brahman is in all things and it is the true Self (atman) of all beings."


    And this uncreated, all-embracing Brahman, the reality from which everything emanated and everything will return back to, is the "nothingness" or "emptiness".




    Thinking this way God is the ultimate truth and emptiness is that ultimate truth. Or "Everything is balanced" says it all...


    The Bhagavat Gita teaches about Karma yoga("discipline of action"). Karma Yoga is described as a way of acting, thinking and wishing by which one orients oneself toward realization by acting in accordance with one's duty (dharma) without consideration of personal self-centered desires, likes or dislikes. Acting without being attached to the fruits of one's deeds.


    According to Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda, we produce Karma in four ways:

• through thoughts
• through words
• through actions that we perform ourselves
• through actions others do under our instructions

    The Hindu scriptures also teaches that according to each one's karmic history and "karmic account balance" the jiva(soul) goes through a cycle of birth, death and rebirth(Samsara). And when the karmic balance becomes zero the soul attains moksha(salvation).


    Advaita Vedanta's description on Moksha : "Moksha is seen as a final release from one's worldly conception of self, the loosening of the shackle of experiential duality and a realization of one's own fundamental nature which is true being, pure consciousness and bliss an experience which is ineffable and beyond sensation."


    And this unification with the universal reality ("nothingness") is in becoming nothing. So be nothing..!


    A good summary of this article is that: "God does not make one suffer for no reason nor does He make one happy for no reason. God is very fair and gives you exactly what you deserve."