Earth to AI world

 In the process of reviewing the idea of adding hobbies and interests to my resume, I realized I used to have a hobby called blogging. Took me a few tries to get to my blog, but was so much fun to go read some of the old posts. Hey, I don't write too badly, do I?

Well, for one, I am not a PhD student anymore, for another, I am not young anymore. Phaedrus and Lotstodo have a 9-year-old daughter, who is nothing like the 2 of us and everything like the 2 of us.

Lotstodo is a bit LOSTtoDo lately. Almost 20 years of dabbling around in optoelectronics. What is next?

AI tools to get a blog post written everyday for me?

Prompt 1: Write a blog post about the pleasure of fitting into old grad school t-shirts from way beyond when - the first Doughman, a homebrewn ECE t-shirt, another one called Karma Recycles and of course, the one I am going to auction if I run out of money in retirement, which I surely will in California: 2010 NCAA Basketball Championship. This prompt is getting long, guess I wrote the content already.

Prompt 2: Writ a blog post about the actual possibility of working with your Ikigai. What am I good at: whipping people's a*&^ to get sh$% done. What does the world need? Getting sh$% done. What do I love: bossing people around to get sh$% done. Will the world PAY FOR IT, please??? Okay, why am I writing this, wasn't this Miss AI's job?

Prompt 3: This hobby is becoming work. Sam Altman, can you get Your sh$% together and stop losing all your mega deals and mega superintelligent people, so that LotsToDo can have her blogs written for her while she is whipping people's as*&s to get stuff done, wearing her XX year old Doughman t-shirt? Thank you very much.

PS: The above was AI generated

PPS: The above was clearly written by a human.

PS and PPS fight it out and LotstoDo has definitely lots of time in the post-apocalyptic AI world

Originally from June 2016 - I have a 7 month old, and a lot of my friends who are parents often get offended when I compare human babies and puppies and say how similar they are.
The aforesaid friends obviously have never had puppies. Neither have I, literally speaking. But the offense puzzles me. I am not degrading a human baby, I find it fascinating that so much of animal life, mammals in particular, are so similar in this circus of life, that you wonder about the humour of the ringmaster and the hubris of humans.

Explanations to a 4 year old

As of today, these are some questions my 4 year old and I are wrestling with:

What is the Government ?

What does the President do ?

What is the coronavirus ?

Methinks the last one is easiest to comprehend and explain - It is a germ. It makes you sick. Keep washing your hands to get it off so it doesn't make you and others sick.

In the present day, the answers to all three questions may be indistinguishable from each other.

Pots and Pans

Pots and Pans

These colorful toys with lights and bling
These farm animals that moo and sing
These fancy cloth and textured books
These boxes with sounds of waves and brooks
These silicone, acacia and latex teethers
These non bpa stage 1 stage 2 feeders
These whirling mobiles and swinging dolls
These swirly tops and bouncy balls
They catch my eye for a moment or two
They soon become old what were just now new
From your kitchen give me a pot and pan
And a wooden spoon to bang and clang
You will make me smile and laugh and play
For hours on hours of  my day!

Who you?

Stare at the mirror today.
Look at its eyes
Who is it?
A First name ,  Last name?
With a temporary postal address?
Somewhere on Google Maps?
On a postage stamp of land
that the owner of the eyes stands on
claiming ownership of a unique consciousness
borne of firing neurons
and pumping blood,
identifying it as A 'Person'
with a First name  and a Last name
Somewhere on Earth.



 

Another oversimplified quantum physics metaphor

A simple web search of any keywords involving quantum physics, spirituality and god reveals articles that are a dime a dozen. Given any layman's rather limited understanding of what quantum physics is all about, not to mention most physicists not reaching any consensus on how to explain quantum physics in layman terms, means that I can add a few more intellectual sounding buzzwords to this quantum soup and get away with sounding pretty (and!) intelligent.

A concept of quantum physics that has always fascinated me is that the very act of measuring or observation changes the experiment. It forces the phenomenon being observed into a state that it wasn't in prior to the act of observation. In other words it affects the experiment. And hence another quantum physics metaphor that I would like to add to the growing list of "quantum physics explains everything".

Consider the concept of memory and recall. Say you have to commit to memory a long list of complicated calculus theorems (I don't know why you would...maybe to impress your equally dorky significant other), or a grocery shopping list for the next day (what happened to the smartphone or the old school post-it...just go along with me, will you?). Time = t0, You first look at the list and repeat it to your self. I poll you at time t1 and t2 to check how much of the list you remember. Time t3 is showtime. Now, imagine I didn't poll you at time t1 and t2 and you directly move to time t3 = showtime. You know where this is going. There is a much higher likelihood that you will remember more of your list when I polled you, than when I didn't. The very act of forcing you to recall reinforces the memory of the shopping list. The act of observation (is the shopping list in your memory?) changes the physical state of the memory by reinforcing it.

I feel very intellectual.

Very Funny

Funny does what Funny says

Funny does it for funny's praise

When Funny tries too hard to fun it up

Funny falls and can't get up

(Almost) Everybody is a Bengali

Now that I have your attention , with the Paati (pure) Bengalis' neck hairs prickling and the Abangalis ( rest of the world) wondering what they did to deserve such exaltation , or demotion, depending on how you view The Bengali.
No. it is not the Hilsa jhol, unreasonable Pujo euphoria, red bordered white saris, white shanka red paula, excruciatingly slow Tagore song singing singers in every family,  and saccharin sweet shandesh that makes a Bengali, though that helps. What defines a Bengali is a poetic mind and a philosophical bent, or poetic bent and philosphic mind. We thinks of words and ideas, lay them out, rearrange them, discuss them, frown over them, pedantically peddle them to our fellow human beings. With furrowed brows and a smirk, from the comfort of our arm-chairs, our self-worth supported by other cha-drinking arm-chaired learned pedants, we pontificate on how things are and how they should be. The arm chaired artistic Bengali  will look in horror at the plebian who gets up and says, okay my cha is finished, my ideas formulated, the rest of my learning shall be in the doing.  Oh no, the  beauty of our thoughts and words should never be soiled by the pedestrian action of reduction to practice.
So are we, the rest of the privileged world, keyboarded and tethered to our electronic armchairs, our self worth propped up by the mirroring of our words and images,  through tweets and retweets, posts and re-posts, a plethora of comfortable online petitions and an occasional feel-good donation, updated statuses of a flock of  bright parrots all perched on a 10 Gbps fiber optic line, chanting Me-too, me-too. Just like this blog post, re-posted and re-linked, waiting for X comments and Y likes. And I, doubly doomed, a Bengali sceptic and a Facebook Filosopher, an air-conditioned American Armchair Activist, so little to say of worth, so little to do of worth, yet so much to Update!

Angootha Chaap (Thumbprint Signer)

How easy it is to be reminded, that one's life experiences are but an infinitesimal fraction of the world's and one's knowledge and learning in one sphere is of little consequence in another.

Two weeks ago I prided myself on being able to speak 4 languages. A week later, stepping into the far-east, my utter illiteracy felt like a scathing slap to my misplaced hubris. Mandarin, a language spoken by over 20% of the world's population, with a beautiful pictographic script evolved from 5000 years of rich culture and history, where each character/word is laden with meaning, heavily nuanced, differently intonated,  and an art and history lesson in itself.

Yet, all I could do is make vague hand gestures, or get things written by helpful hands for me to wave to taxi drivers and tour guides. In other words, I had become LotstoDo, PhD. Angootha Chaap (thumbrint signer).

The last 45 days

It has been a lovely last 45 days, three of of Phaedrus' and my friends got great job offers, Phaedrus and I finally moved together to upstate NY to the same city (and apartment!) after 18 years since we became friends in middle-school, and are finally fighting it out over choice of living room furniture. We might live to tell the tale yet.
In the last 45 days I also said good bye to many many friends in Durham, who helped me survive grad school, and became my extended family. Turns out Durham is colder than Albany today. So can't moan and use the line: "I miss NC weather" anytime soon, and have to admit to "I miss NC friends " instead when I am in a complaining mood. On the other hand, we've reconnected with old friends in the new place and made new ones, so it's not altogether bad.
In the last 45 days I also put my sister back on the plane to London, having met her after 2.5 years. The Lotstodo sisters had traveled to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Washington DC, The Blue Ridge mountains, New York City and of course Durham and up-state NY. Very eventful, as would be expected with 2 strong willed sisters and an "I know what is best for you"elder sister (ahem).
In the last 45 days I learnt that furniture that isn't sourced from Craig's list or the last grad student in the apartment actually costs $$, and 0% financing is a good thing while you are trying to repair your bank balance buffeted by the domestic airline industry for the last so many years (MSP, here I come!, RDU here I come!).
Phaedrus already started work....I still have a week more to go. So In the last 45 days I also learnt, that feminism or otherwise, it is great to have a guy pay for everything. He feels chivalrous, and I feel pampered. My feminist core doesn't seem to be taking much of a beating, so maybe I am not a feminist any more. In the last 45 days I also learnt that though I can cook decently if I put my mind to it (to feed the family and friends like a good wife should), I'd rather be doing something else, like putting a mean spin on a ping-pong ball or reading a book or agonizing over how ill-prepared I feel for a job that is designated "scientist". So post-grad world, umm... here I come?!

Another list of things

In the past 3 months....

1. I traveled to 7 cities
2. 3 of which were with my gori (white) advisor and desi (Indian) labmate.
3. I saw a tigress in the wild from afar.
4. And got growled at by a mother bear in the wild from very near.
5. Got hurled through time and space in an open jeep down a steep cliffy road at 60 kmph.
6. Haggled over a $850 silk rug and got it down to $700 by using the argument that we would have to walk (instead of taking a chauffeur driven car) and eat only glucose biscuits (instead of paneer and the works in room service)
7. Be driven around the Ranthambore forest by a guy who my advisor christened "lovely face".
8. Stayed in a hotel room where the bathroom walls were transparent glass (why?). In case you are wondering, we found electronically controlled blinds to allow us to perform our ablutions in private.
9. Stood in a temple queue for 5 hours, to glimpse the deity for 5 seconds. No kidding. (Tirupati)
10. Met a Duke alum on the other side of the counter at the US Consulate in Mumbai, who DID NOT give me my visa in spite of chatting with me about Duke basketball.
11. Enjoyed 8 straight hours of live Indian classical music performances.
12. And another 2 to the backdrop of a historic fort.
13. Barely made it back to the States. (involved a tire blowout, mixup of airports, delayed flights, and a suspiciously shaped box on my back that was my size)

All to the refrain of "May tori tori Hindi samaajtee HOONN" (The American way of saying "I understand a little bit of Hindi")

Each of the above deserves it's own blog post, but in the meantime, feel free to wonder.

All in a Night's work

Last night I did the following:

1. Helped the police in catching a murderer by tricking him into confessing.
2. Got caught in a tidal wave with a 100 other people and swam to safety to an island while taking out teabags from a cardboard box to dip in the sea. (The teabags seemed very important at the time)
3. Warded off a swarm of locust-like birds that were flying low over the sea.
4. Prevented a bunch of people from entering a painted sandcastle (more a sandhouse?) with a blue door. In actuality it was a time machine for the brain that caused you to think backwards.
5. Was pushed in a maze with multiple locked doors and multiple elevators. I found the right one to get out, to only be asked to play hopscotch on a terrace garden before I was allowed to leave. Playing hopscotch on a terrace garden is a difficult task, I tell you.
6. Learnt to hold my breath while sitting on my haunches, and sink to the bottom of a swimming pool for more than 5 minutes using a yogic technique which I am trying really hard to recall now.
7. Demonstrated some very intricate vintage embroidery techniques with big red beads and red thread. The demonstrations were held at the edge of the pool from #6 above, with short breaks when I sank down to the bottom of the pool again for practice.

As you would imagine, I am very exhausted. This weekend shall be spent relaxing after last night's adventures.

And the Mouse said to the Tiger

"Run! Else I am going to bite the back of your hind leg, and you know can't even reach me there."

So the Tiger ran away.


Moral: Valid logic can get you out of scrapes.

Pumping iron

The weight training class I joined this semester is, to use an overused sophomoric word, awesome.
We been throwing medicine balls, doing pull-ups, bench presses, free weights, squats with bands around our legs and uncountable crunches sitting on a Swiss ball. In the words of my instructor, "You are much stronger than you think you are. " Indeed.

Not to mention that we have been told to groan if we need to when lifting weights. Now I see.

The biography of a rag, a scrap piece of silicon, and a holey pocket

It is enlightening when I discover traits that I used to tease my mother about are the same set of traits that I cannot seem to shake off from myself anymore.

The basic philosphy carries in from my grandmother who told this little parable in Marathi, which roughly goes like this:
My mother had a sari which she wore for many years. When it became a little too worn to be worn, then she cut it up into two, and used them as light sun-curtains for two windows in the bedroom. When the curtains became a bit faded, she took them off, and used them as hair-drying towels, as they were soft cotton. When they got a little threadbare, they became dish-rags. The dish-rags turned into a floor mop, and finally when only strips of stringy cloth remained, they got thrown into the ragpicker's bag.

As is to be expected, the little story when told in its original colloquial Marathi, sounds much better than this dry version.

This is not as much of frugality as about innovation. Of finding multiple uses for a single item before its life is considered to have ended. Not use once and throw. But, use, reuse, use, reuse, recycle, use, reuse. My grandma and mom were using environmentally sustainable practices much before it was the new in-thing to do.

At least a fraction of it got retained into my generation. In the unavoidably resource-intensive field of semiconductor fabrication, I grin to myself when I use a single cleanroom wipe through a 6 hour process, use smaller pieces of silicon saving the scrap pieces for other dummy/test runs, reuse pieces when I can, and wonder what the heck is wrong with me since this is not even coming out of my pocket. Which reminds me, that I have a hole in this pocket I need to fix before I get too lazy and just go out and buy a new pair of jeans instead.

Books = $2.50, Enjoyment = priceless.

Reader's Digest's The Last Two Million Years : $1
Rodale's No-Fail Flower Garden: $1
Steinbeck's The Short Reign of Pippin IV: $0.50

Okay, so it is not like I found a rare book, and will make a million off it later, but there is nothing like spending only $2.50 on three books, and the pleasant anticipation of spending many quiet hours reading history and gawking over photographs of man-made artifacts of the last two millenia, contemplating new approaches towards sowing the perfect flower bed (once I have that perfect house!), and chuckling at the sad state of affairs M. Pippin finds himself in.

Life is good with a book in hand.

What were you doing on September 11, 2001?

The morning the political landscape and our lives in the US changed, I was getting ready to go to school. Driving from my house to my classmate's who was carpooling with me, I turned on the radio to my favorite music channel, 100.7, The River, I think...or was it NPR? No music. Two radio hosts were talking about a major attack on the WTC in New York. "The jet plane got flown into the twin towers, and while were thinking it was an accident, a second plane has hit the towers. This seems to be a terrorist attack." Picked up my friend and told her something major was up in New York.

School: Dr. H's VLSI design class. She started the class with saying, "I hope you are aware of the ghastly terrorist attack that has occurred in New York this morning. Please pray for the victims."

Came down to the student commons after class. The small place was very very crowded, with gray haired faculty, freckled freshmen...the whole lot. All looking up at the wall mounted television sets replaying the disaster. The room was, and continued to be very quiet, as the actual magnitude of the attack became clearer.

Went to my lab, and my labmate SD was trying to reach his mom on her cell phone. She went to work every morning taking the subway that passes underneath the WTC. We all sat and brooded and worried, while he kept trying to call her every 10 minutes or so. He didn't get through to her till the evening. She was safe but had walked most of the day to get back home after the subway and other public transport grinded to a halt.

How panic can spread, is evident by all the phone calls my parents in India fielded from concerned friends, asking if I was alright. Heck, I am in the midwest, and even they knew that. But they panicked with all the phone calls and kept trying to call me all day not getting through till the evening as well.

Gas prices hit the roof (went above $2) that night, we came up with strategies for car pooling.
The next day the city mayor ordered gas pump owners to keep prices under control, and we went back to our convenient single-car-occupant selves again.

I made history today

That was easy.

Help! Neverending days of Summer!

A plan to watch a historic outdoor 70th anniversary screening of Gone with the Wind got washed out with the thunderstorms, so we ended up watching "500 days of Summer" at Carolina Theater. I wish that had got washed out with a late summer thunderstorm too.

Here is how the story goes:

Boy meets girl.
Girl has different expectations of relationship.
Boy has different expectations of relationship.
But he makes out with her anyway because he is in Love. And for any Bollywood fans out there, there is even a group song and dance sequence with an animated cartoon birdie perched on Boy's shoulder. He has a Spring in his step, because he fell for Summer!

Girl says I told you so and gets married to someone else.
Boy keeps moping.
And moping.
And moping.
And moping.
And moping.
And thinks about all the oh-so-cute things (playing pretend house in Ikea?!) they did when they were together.
And then he mopes again.
And thinks again about all the oh-so-cute things they did when they were together.
And mopes.
And mopes.
And...zzzzz.
Oh sorry, I need to finish this neverending story, don't I?
One day he meets Girl again, and has the aha moment (he wasn't THE ONE!).
The End.

Friday, Friday at the FIP.

My favorite part of Friday is going to the breakfasts that are held by the Fitzpatrick Institute of Photonics (FIP, for short), of which our research group is a part.

Now, graduate researchers are a breed that are to be read, not to be seen. Who knew, or would believe, that our department for example, had more grad students than undergrads? They are hidden away in labs, offices and cleanrooms and such. But come Friday, two very diligent grad students put together a lovely spread of coffee, muffins, biscuits and fruits in the atrium, and magically, there is a crowd. Of grad students. And post doctoral researchers. And a few professors (who can get over themselves!).

Sure, some folks just come grab the grub and head back wordlessly straight to their offices. I have seen some students, and even a postdoc who pile up five plates of food, make three trips back and forth from their office, making arrangements for lunch, dinner and then breakfast for Saturday, without a word to the people around them. Then there is the other lot who don't even step out of their offices. The very thought of possible socializing seems to paralyze them and chain them to their desks.

As for the rest, the saner of the lot, for the ones who come and hang out, the atmosphere is light, the conversation refreshingly rambling. Sometimes a technical poster is displayed for discussion. It may just be an excuse for giving an academic sheen to a social get-together, but it is well worth it. And there are discussions. Once, we came up with a detailed outline for a technical poster to describe the etching of a macro-cavity in pulverized silicon dioxide (dig a hole in the sand, you bozo!)

45 minutes later, the place is empty, but it is a lovely start to the weekend.