After a very good response to the concept in the first part (and some really good writing points) I rewrote the whole second part from scratch. I may have improve, if not please don't kill me. Here is the second part of Clr+Z my sci fi short story.
***But first***
Special thanks to the folks of Hacker News to give such a good review of the first part. And I think I have given you all a change of pace by asking you to review a Sci Fi story.
***Now I return you to your usual programming***
Many days had passed without much results. His "third quarter of the third session" had long passed so he was seriously short of luck, that was for sure.But he just knew that it was all worth it. He knew that if he could pull it off, it could actually change a life or two (one was for sure).
It was one fine Friday morning. There was something about Friday mornings which made them so dull, but had been working on this project for 3 months, breaking his personal record of 1 month long project (the intergalactic worm holes). Every time he thought he was pinkie finger close to finding the right answer he got trapped into another question.It was like he was exploring a mansion and just as he thought he had found his room the walls moved.
But today was different, sitting in his office he discovered something so obvious but so elementary that it actually shook his base equations. It was like a door left there on the wall but disguised and blended-in in such a way that nobody would ever notice it. But he did notice it and entered. There ... there it was lying there like a baby. He found it. The fundamental equation of our existence. The fundamental math behind the reality (or vireality like he like to call it) we experience.
He discovered the source of math behind our simulation. The math was strong enough to tell that he was being accessed by some other source. He was able to solve it all. After the discovery of the base equations it felt like he could do the rest when he was 9. But there was still a problem. Although his computer was now capable of predicting the future, he was not satisfied. He could get rich, have it all, save the future. But no problem is complete till you have total control over it. He still needed a way to access the simulation machines. A way to have root access to w0nz0r the machine.
There had to be some connection between the reality and vireality. He already had a lead on it. It was apparent from the equation that it had to be some source of energy, because energy was the measure of there machine power. That was why energy was always conserved but whenever we discovered another Galaxy the conserved energy changed. That was because they added more hardware to it. But he actually knew nothing about where to look for it. How to trap the energy and convert it into code.
4 weeks from his determination to control the machine, he was still listless what to do with his math. He just couldn't release it as a thesis, it was too sensitive and would ruin the beauty of the emulation. But he was still not even close to getting control over the emulation machine. But he did managed to get meager connection sometimes.These millisecond connects all must have a pattern, he just wasn't looking at it from the right angle.
It started to grow on him. He must have aged a century from the day he discovered _the_ basic math behind vireality.Blood was rushing through his veins, he was angry.Perhaps first time in his life. He got angry and threw his keyboard out of his sight (or so he intended). He sat down and calmed himself. He tried to think, in the past 4 weeks he had exhausted his database of all the info. He had worked on nuclear power, gravitational forces, basically any natural force he could think of. But of no use, he started thinking of the basics of it all, went back in time the basics of energy ...
He felt like banging his head on the wall. What was he thinking....of course. From the prehistoric times the main source of energy. The source from which most of the earth (considering it a separate platform) generated all other forms, everything else was basically harnessing its energy. It was LIGHT. He quickly found his keyboard and started generating parameters. He fed them to the machine. It felt like wait of a lifetime. It all contained this sense of finality to it. And then he got it he saw the prompt.
The solutions came on the screen. He had done it. Got the root on the machine. He felt his keyboard with trembling hands. The earth slid from under his feat. And then he started falling, falling like in a ocean. The viscous medium was ideal for some reason. He could almost feel that the behavior of all what was around it was ideal. It felt familiar though, the next scene made it more clear where he had seen it. It was the machines, the Big Black Machines. The same machines through which he had ran through for the past many months, trying to find a pattern. A door, a path, a crack between the machines, a ray of light, but nothing was to be found. He ran and ran and ran like a race horse, speeding his brain for a pattern. But none was to be found. And then he fainted.
He woke up in a white room. It felt to extend to the infinity, but he knew it was the the illusions at work, white looks big. Then a voice,
"What do you think you were doing."said a godly voice
"Who's it, show your face, step out of the shadows, or where ever you are
hiding."
"If you insist."
Then a face or would you call it a silhouette of a face extruded from the wall
above him.
"Here you can see my face as you demanded, now tell me what do you think you
were doing."
"I don't understand how did I reach here from my office, where I was working on
my ..." he broke off. He had heard of researchers being pick up by unknown
forces to extract there work from them. "No I will not tell you my work.
You ..."
"Shut up you moron, I am the one emulating your reality, or vireality or
whatever you call it. It was my lives work you have just destroyed."
"What!!!"
"Yes you are being pulled out of the simulation. Let me explain the situation to you. You already knew that you are being simulated.Actually its you third time each time at the interval of 1 month. So you never broke your personal record. If it is of any comfort I would be glad to let you know we are also humans, or at least we were. Around 3 centuries after your time there was a sudden burst of intelligence, cure of death, trance humans, advanced AI which you cannot separate from human intelligence pretty much all what you read in your simulated world about _singularity_. First people were excited, they started to have fun after the cure of death, but birth rate fell. Then came the Suciety , or what we call kill-yourself society. They said that nature made us to get destroyed. We don't know why but people complied with them. Started killing themselves. So the death rate increased. Soon we were left with a population in only millions and limited intelligence which soon ran out. So we started you Sims so we can generate more intelligence to sell to other planets which had the hunger for it."
"I must be a major break through, my work will really sell for a plenty. But tell me why did you pull me up when I was so close to solving the puzzle of this little world that you have created."
"Because you were starting to become a threat. If you would have cracked all this we would become unreliable. People will not buy our work. I am sorry sonny but you are a major threat now, I think you would understand what will happen to you now."
"What are you goin...."
Before he could complete his sentence he started falling. He woke up in his bed, wet, like someone had poured a gallon of H2O on him. He got up, dressed and shaved (he knew it was a strange pattern but it was stuck as a habit, he was not working on it). He felt like something was missing. He was ignoring something. In his car he checked what was to be done today, it was an appointment with the chief, strange ... he didn't remember that.
***END***
So this is it.My first published sci fi story. Please do comment.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Clr + Z (Part One)
I have been working on a story, a sci fi one. It is based on a concept I am most fascinated with. "Are we real?". Many theories have been made about it. I read up a lot on it so decided to write a speculative fiction. So I just decided to post it on the internet and see the response. Its just the first part and I would post the second day after tomorrow after some tweaking. Please post some comments here and recommend to your friends to this story so they can recommend to there friends and on and on and on....Ok its far too much, but this is supposed to be a speculative fiction so what the hell ;)
So here goes nothing.....
Clr+z
The year was 3065. The era of free energy, free thoughts, free market. The era
of robot rights, fierce court battles between the old timers and the computer
aid lovers over the transparency of the public AI systems. People now happier
than they ever were,thought it as there best time for living. Scientists were
positive that in about 25 years or so the technology to upload the brain will be
available (although this time also it seemed more like a vapourware again, they had
claimed this many times but never succeeded.)
There he was in his office at the research center working on his math problems.
He was normal. OK if you eliminate the fact that he was a researcher of math at
the age of 25, but what do you know, he was actually _the_ math genius. It
wasn't like he always wanted to be like this or worked on it, numbers just came
naturally to him. It wasn't just numbers, same was true for logic, innovation,
ability to ask the awkward question, and then solving the hell out of them. He
usually kept a big _log_ of his daily thoughts, wrote in it daily right from the
day when he was 8 and discovered that he could solve the questions even his dad
(who was a scientist) would take a while to even understand.
Once in a while he got bored (hell anyone does). And he considered reading his
_logs_ as reading science fiction because he didn't even remember writing
something at 2 am after solving a big equation, and reading it usually gave him
new questions. That was his day job actually. Down where he lived (the research
center) he was actually an anomaly. The center was actually meant for research
on physical aspects of daily life, and what he did was totally different. But at
that fine day he did get a question concerned with daily life. OK a question
asked daily by many. It was dark already and he had a superstition that math
should not be started after the sun is set he had a logic behind it also, but he
was never ever able to explain it to anyone.
He had a troubled night. He dreamed of machines. Big Black Machines. He was lost
in the big grid of them. Frantically trying to find a logic to get out of it. A
door, a path, a crack between the machines, a ray of light, but nothing was to
be found. He ran and ran and ran like a race horse, rattling his brain for a
pattern. But none was to be found. And then he started falling, falling like in
a ocean. The viscous medium was ideal for some reason. He could almost feel that
the behavior of all what was around it was ideal. And then it was over. He lay
on his bed, wet, like someone had poured a gallon of H2O on him. He had a crazy
feeling in his head.
He got up, dressed and shaved (he knew it was a strange sequence but it was
stuck as a habit, he was not working on it). He felt strange, the same feeling
he got when he thought he was pinky finger close to proving that time travel was
actually possible but went on proving that intergalactic wormholes can be
created artificially without any harm. But it was even worse. He felt like
something was missing. He was ignoring something. In his car he checked what was
to be done today, it was the question from the previous day. He reached his
office. His work desk was already been setup by the office robot going over his
check list for that day which he had filled the previous night. He didn't really
thought about robots , but he did knew that his secretary robot was a good talk.
He enjoyed her witty quotes, though they were pre-programmed responses but it
always felt ... real.
He got to work. First pulled in everything which was fired back by Google on the
query "birth universe". He was a Google power user but still considered that
simple queries are just fine, after all Google had smartened enough in its god
knows how many years. Really people had started taking Google for granted in
there InterPlaNet experience(it replaced grid a while ago which in turn had replace the
great grandfather Internet). He made a data base out of all the web
pages he downloaded. He used a lisp program for all this stuff.He had read in school that it
was one of the most oldest languages around but never belived that,it had the most advanced
features.While the database was being indexed he fiddled with his ebook reader, spidering the
Net for books ofhis interest (mostly books on the birth of the free era which he loved so
much).He found an old book called Content which contained essays by an author of the
First Net era (this was the term used by many people to refer to the Internet
because it was also called net). It contained essays on the authors thoughts
about how DRM sucked. DRM only existed as definitions in old law books. The
present was all free. The era of the First Net was a stark contrast from today's
Creative Commons powered market. Reading it he felt good.
By this time the database was over with indexing and he was presented with a
nice command prompt on his DataBaseLinux machine. He started by firing queries
to list things with different categories, trying to give dependability points to
them. He usually did this. Dug out old forgotten theories and combined a few to
form a hybrid which could explain it all. Then he dived right into reading all
of them. First starting from the most obvious point, the book of genesis, which
after so many years (and many scientific proofs) was one of the most speculated
upon theory. But he thought better of it, too much work was being done on it and
another person working on it wouldn't really boost up its case more. Then he
stumbled upon the first scientific theory, the Big Bang, but it had the same
case for, it too much work, no results. He skimmed through a couple hundred more
not finding anything appropriate he called it a session and called his secretary
bot in.
"Get me some coffee."
"Yes sir but I must tell you first that you are drinking too much of Mud these
days, this could harm your health."
"Bring it, I do too much brain exercise to burn it all."
The robot went to the little coffee machine and brought in a cup of hard coffee.
He drank it, it made his mind clear. "May I know what sir is working upon." the
bot started.
"Oh, thought you would never ask."
"I had to wait the obligatory 3000 seconds before starting my chitchat session
sir."
"Oh ya, well I am working on a very complex project. Its... hard to explain what
the project is."
"By your recent pulls and Google queries I can see sir is working on finding the
origins of universe."
"No, its not exactly that, many people are working on that already. My project
is different. Its not like finding out origins of universe will change a life or
two in anyway. But what I want to achieve ... origin of universe looked like a
good starting point."
"Did sir find any luck."
"No nothing till now. But what do you know, its just the first session."
"Yes sir and you have really had your best results by the third quarter of your
third sessions."
"Where did you get that from."
"Perhaps you forgot sir that I keep logs for you research and I do analytic work
on it. Its quick, the analytic program is fether light and you like listening
to such facts. But sir you haven't yet told me what sir's been working on."
"Oh you are such a darling. Well if you really wanna know, I am working on
finding out what is _real_." the robot opened his mouth to say something but he
interrupted it,"I don't want the dictionary meaning darling. And perhaps that is
all we know about reality till now."
"But sir that is a false question to ask fundamentally, if a thing is not well
defined how can you really intend to find it out."
"That's the point, I want to give it a definition. How can a concept that old be
so ... so ... I don't have a word for it."
"Ignored sir."
"Exactly."
"Sir, there was an old author called Paulo Coelho he had said ' Reality is what
masses believe.' "
That's when it dawned on him. What if reality is not ... _real_. What if
everything around them is virtual. What if we are made to believe it all was
real. He vaguely remembered reading something of this sort. Something about a
mathematician, living way back in time , who had done some work on it. What was
it ... he tried to remember, "We are someones dream but of whom we cannot know".
But somewhere in his gut he was sure that this held juice in it. He didn't want
to muddle his conclusions by reading previous matter this time, which was very
odd for him, but this time it was all different. Everything should be his, just
to make sure that he didn't carry forward any flaw that someone else might have
committed. He set to work.
Thanks for stopping by, please do comment.
So here goes nothing.....
Clr+z
The year was 3065. The era of free energy, free thoughts, free market. The era
of robot rights, fierce court battles between the old timers and the computer
aid lovers over the transparency of the public AI systems. People now happier
than they ever were,thought it as there best time for living. Scientists were
positive that in about 25 years or so the technology to upload the brain will be
available (although this time also it seemed more like a vapourware again, they had
claimed this many times but never succeeded.)
There he was in his office at the research center working on his math problems.
He was normal. OK if you eliminate the fact that he was a researcher of math at
the age of 25, but what do you know, he was actually _the_ math genius. It
wasn't like he always wanted to be like this or worked on it, numbers just came
naturally to him. It wasn't just numbers, same was true for logic, innovation,
ability to ask the awkward question, and then solving the hell out of them. He
usually kept a big _log_ of his daily thoughts, wrote in it daily right from the
day when he was 8 and discovered that he could solve the questions even his dad
(who was a scientist) would take a while to even understand.
Once in a while he got bored (hell anyone does). And he considered reading his
_logs_ as reading science fiction because he didn't even remember writing
something at 2 am after solving a big equation, and reading it usually gave him
new questions. That was his day job actually. Down where he lived (the research
center) he was actually an anomaly. The center was actually meant for research
on physical aspects of daily life, and what he did was totally different. But at
that fine day he did get a question concerned with daily life. OK a question
asked daily by many. It was dark already and he had a superstition that math
should not be started after the sun is set he had a logic behind it also, but he
was never ever able to explain it to anyone.
He had a troubled night. He dreamed of machines. Big Black Machines. He was lost
in the big grid of them. Frantically trying to find a logic to get out of it. A
door, a path, a crack between the machines, a ray of light, but nothing was to
be found. He ran and ran and ran like a race horse, rattling his brain for a
pattern. But none was to be found. And then he started falling, falling like in
a ocean. The viscous medium was ideal for some reason. He could almost feel that
the behavior of all what was around it was ideal. And then it was over. He lay
on his bed, wet, like someone had poured a gallon of H2O on him. He had a crazy
feeling in his head.
He got up, dressed and shaved (he knew it was a strange sequence but it was
stuck as a habit, he was not working on it). He felt strange, the same feeling
he got when he thought he was pinky finger close to proving that time travel was
actually possible but went on proving that intergalactic wormholes can be
created artificially without any harm. But it was even worse. He felt like
something was missing. He was ignoring something. In his car he checked what was
to be done today, it was the question from the previous day. He reached his
office. His work desk was already been setup by the office robot going over his
check list for that day which he had filled the previous night. He didn't really
thought about robots , but he did knew that his secretary robot was a good talk.
He enjoyed her witty quotes, though they were pre-programmed responses but it
always felt ... real.
He got to work. First pulled in everything which was fired back by Google on the
query "birth universe". He was a Google power user but still considered that
simple queries are just fine, after all Google had smartened enough in its god
knows how many years. Really people had started taking Google for granted in
there InterPlaNet experience(it replaced grid a while ago which in turn had replace the
great grandfather Internet). He made a data base out of all the web
pages he downloaded. He used a lisp program for all this stuff.He had read in school that it
was one of the most oldest languages around but never belived that,it had the most advanced
features.While the database was being indexed he fiddled with his ebook reader, spidering the
Net for books ofhis interest (mostly books on the birth of the free era which he loved so
much).He found an old book called Content which contained essays by an author of the
First Net era (this was the term used by many people to refer to the Internet
because it was also called net). It contained essays on the authors thoughts
about how DRM sucked. DRM only existed as definitions in old law books. The
present was all free. The era of the First Net was a stark contrast from today's
Creative Commons powered market. Reading it he felt good.
By this time the database was over with indexing and he was presented with a
nice command prompt on his DataBaseLinux machine. He started by firing queries
to list things with different categories, trying to give dependability points to
them. He usually did this. Dug out old forgotten theories and combined a few to
form a hybrid which could explain it all. Then he dived right into reading all
of them. First starting from the most obvious point, the book of genesis, which
after so many years (and many scientific proofs) was one of the most speculated
upon theory. But he thought better of it, too much work was being done on it and
another person working on it wouldn't really boost up its case more. Then he
stumbled upon the first scientific theory, the Big Bang, but it had the same
case for, it too much work, no results. He skimmed through a couple hundred more
not finding anything appropriate he called it a session and called his secretary
bot in.
"Get me some coffee."
"Yes sir but I must tell you first that you are drinking too much of Mud these
days, this could harm your health."
"Bring it, I do too much brain exercise to burn it all."
The robot went to the little coffee machine and brought in a cup of hard coffee.
He drank it, it made his mind clear. "May I know what sir is working upon." the
bot started.
"Oh, thought you would never ask."
"I had to wait the obligatory 3000 seconds before starting my chitchat session
sir."
"Oh ya, well I am working on a very complex project. Its... hard to explain what
the project is."
"By your recent pulls and Google queries I can see sir is working on finding the
origins of universe."
"No, its not exactly that, many people are working on that already. My project
is different. Its not like finding out origins of universe will change a life or
two in anyway. But what I want to achieve ... origin of universe looked like a
good starting point."
"Did sir find any luck."
"No nothing till now. But what do you know, its just the first session."
"Yes sir and you have really had your best results by the third quarter of your
third sessions."
"Where did you get that from."
"Perhaps you forgot sir that I keep logs for you research and I do analytic work
on it. Its quick, the analytic program is fether light and you like listening
to such facts. But sir you haven't yet told me what sir's been working on."
"Oh you are such a darling. Well if you really wanna know, I am working on
finding out what is _real_." the robot opened his mouth to say something but he
interrupted it,"I don't want the dictionary meaning darling. And perhaps that is
all we know about reality till now."
"But sir that is a false question to ask fundamentally, if a thing is not well
defined how can you really intend to find it out."
"That's the point, I want to give it a definition. How can a concept that old be
so ... so ... I don't have a word for it."
"Ignored sir."
"Exactly."
"Sir, there was an old author called Paulo Coelho he had said ' Reality is what
masses believe.' "
That's when it dawned on him. What if reality is not ... _real_. What if
everything around them is virtual. What if we are made to believe it all was
real. He vaguely remembered reading something of this sort. Something about a
mathematician, living way back in time , who had done some work on it. What was
it ... he tried to remember, "We are someones dream but of whom we cannot know".
But somewhere in his gut he was sure that this held juice in it. He didn't want
to muddle his conclusions by reading previous matter this time, which was very
odd for him, but this time it was all different. Everything should be his, just
to make sure that he didn't carry forward any flaw that someone else might have
committed. He set to work.
Thanks for stopping by, please do comment.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
My obsession with your nostalgia...
I have read many posts written by the people from the era of 80s or 90s talking about how great the computers or networks (respectively) were in there days. I was born in 1991 as I didn't own a computer till the age of 12 and had broadband when I was 15, I missed the whole apple IIe and C64 era and most of the BBS and network hacking era (also contributing to the fact is that I was born in india which is not so into computers till the IT boom here). Thus, I hear many times dialogs on IRCs along the lines of "You have to be there to feel it" or "you don't know hardware till you have installed with your bare hands". I have mixed feelings about the dialogs, as its still the same with our complex computers today but that's somewhat besides the point. I have read many books and watched many documentaries of those times, my personal favorite being Underground (http://www.xs4all.nl/~suelette/underground/justin/). And now I am kinda obsessed with those times. I constantly seek knowledge of those times. Like people find solace in pulp radio dramas from the 1950s, I find solace in old video games, mostly which were available on cartridges for my old video game which directly hooks up to my TV.
I am always thrilled by stories from those times. I find them much simpler. Not simpler in the sense that it was easy, no definitely not. But it was definitely simpler in the sense that you can dive into the hardware and software right away. Hack away on you commodore 64 or just hook up your apple IIe with your phone lines and you had access to a vast variety of mostly like minded people. Today its much easier but not simple. Hardware is much more complex and you just dont get the satisfaction on printing just "hello world" on the screen that you got when you did it with a apple IIe or better yet programming an altair 8800 with raw hexadecimle vaules. Today you have seen so much of GUI that you just cannot appriciate the work of art you do by just printing "Hello world", you dont know the hardwork done by your compiler or interpreter. And the internet is no longer the world of techno citizens. There are too many trolls around and there are just a few places left like Hacker News where you can count on it that the person commenting is worth his salt at all.
I am not saying that people born in my era are just not smart enough or cool enough (well i am biased on the cool part...but anyways), I just crave for those simpler times.
PS: if anyone can point me to better resources where I can feed my hunger more please leave the link in the comment.
I am always thrilled by stories from those times. I find them much simpler. Not simpler in the sense that it was easy, no definitely not. But it was definitely simpler in the sense that you can dive into the hardware and software right away. Hack away on you commodore 64 or just hook up your apple IIe with your phone lines and you had access to a vast variety of mostly like minded people. Today its much easier but not simple. Hardware is much more complex and you just dont get the satisfaction on printing just "hello world" on the screen that you got when you did it with a apple IIe or better yet programming an altair 8800 with raw hexadecimle vaules. Today you have seen so much of GUI that you just cannot appriciate the work of art you do by just printing "Hello world", you dont know the hardwork done by your compiler or interpreter. And the internet is no longer the world of techno citizens. There are too many trolls around and there are just a few places left like Hacker News where you can count on it that the person commenting is worth his salt at all.
I am not saying that people born in my era are just not smart enough or cool enough (well i am biased on the cool part...but anyways), I just crave for those simpler times.
PS: if anyone can point me to better resources where I can feed my hunger more please leave the link in the comment.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Computer Archeology
Just read this and my jaw fell somewhere between the discovery of basic and the date of the origin of PC (I am not saying computers coz that is not the case here it was IBM PC not home computers). The article teaches us a major lesson about human tendency to improvise on what we have already done. As the author uncovered every layer of his computer's system I had chills going down my spine through the legs and into the floor. He demonstrated how amazing amount of knowledge is hidden in the depth of anything we create and I am talking about the knowledge of our basic instincts.
Every human being has a set of basic instincts like survival, attraction towards an appropriate partner (well however your sexuality interprets that) and above all to improvise on things. It was thrilling to know that at the base of it all we have the starting and someday we may be able to dig out bundles of knowlege from all things.
Every human being has a set of basic instincts like survival, attraction towards an appropriate partner (well however your sexuality interprets that) and above all to improvise on things. It was thrilling to know that at the base of it all we have the starting and someday we may be able to dig out bundles of knowlege from all things.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Why artists should make mistakes.
"Paresh you make horrible mistakes in your usage of poetic devices". This was what my teachers used to say when I would walk up to them recite to them my latest answers. This was because I used to give _horrible_ similes. But now I have a perfect answer to there question (alas, there is no one who asks anymore). I think artists are allowed to make mistakes. No actually this is there moral duty to make mistakes. If we must, we should first define what a mistake it. As I see it a mistake is something which does not match the reality. But as far as we know reality is what masses believe. 1500 years ago everybody knew that the earth was flat. 500 years ago everybody knew that we cannot go out of the earths atmosphere. 100 years ago everybody knew that we will run out of food some day. 50 years ago everybody knew that computers could not be home appliances. And that was the reality that time. Any statement contradicting that would be considered a mistake.
But now we know that they were far from mistakes. They were the prophecies of the future. So we gather that a _mistake_ is a relative term. Its definition changes from time to time. Now think about this, aren't we not a result of some big mistake. No really before the big bang some system made a mistake which resulted in the formation of the universe. Then earth was mistakenly grabbed into the gravitational field of sun, it started to cool down. Then some molecules made mistake of combining falsely and made a living organism. But they were all unicellular. Then an unicellular organism made the mistake of tearing off falsely and created a multicellural. This process of mistakes went on to create other complex creatures, which lead to us proud humans. Mistakes are the basis of evolution. If all of this would not have happened imagine how boring it would have been.
The same is with artists. If they all fail to make horrible mistakes in the form of there arts they will never be able to generate anything new. Imagine how boring it would be if all the artists follow a thumb rule for there art and never look at different, untouched aspects of there art how predictable it would be to go into a art gallery. After all Art (and in this context anything) is a live form of expressing your thoughts.
So as I was saying to make a mistake is not that bad. What is bad is doing it realizing it and then not thinking about the new areas it has opened to think and ponder on. So please don't stop people from making mistakes because this is the essence of art...
But now we know that they were far from mistakes. They were the prophecies of the future. So we gather that a _mistake_ is a relative term. Its definition changes from time to time. Now think about this, aren't we not a result of some big mistake. No really before the big bang some system made a mistake which resulted in the formation of the universe. Then earth was mistakenly grabbed into the gravitational field of sun, it started to cool down. Then some molecules made mistake of combining falsely and made a living organism. But they were all unicellular. Then an unicellular organism made the mistake of tearing off falsely and created a multicellural. This process of mistakes went on to create other complex creatures, which lead to us proud humans. Mistakes are the basis of evolution. If all of this would not have happened imagine how boring it would have been.
The same is with artists. If they all fail to make horrible mistakes in the form of there arts they will never be able to generate anything new. Imagine how boring it would be if all the artists follow a thumb rule for there art and never look at different, untouched aspects of there art how predictable it would be to go into a art gallery. After all Art (and in this context anything) is a live form of expressing your thoughts.
So as I was saying to make a mistake is not that bad. What is bad is doing it realizing it and then not thinking about the new areas it has opened to think and ponder on. So please don't stop people from making mistakes because this is the essence of art...
Friday, July 4, 2008
Shoe-Laces (how to get a grip on shoes) part I
Shoe-Laces(I)
How to get a grip on Shoes
This is my how-to-do-it guide to shoes,a small gui app building toolkit by _why. I first came across it when i was working on rubylearning.org. There a japanease teacher told me about the toolkit. He wrote a paper on how to build a mp3 player in shoes. Well i decided to give it a try. I tried _why Nobody knows shoes but soon found out it was not my type. So soon after I started to give the in built mannual a try but yet again was dissapointed because it after all was still a mannual no tutorial for me. So I started reading the mannual and taking notes. I developed some programs to understand the concepts myself. But then as always i felt an urge to write what i didn't have when i started. A how-to-do-it tutorial. So here is my attempt. Do give feed back.
Lesson one:- What is shoes
Shoes ultimatly is a tool kit to make gui apps in ruby. The thing that makes it distinct from other tool kits is that it makes the code look more ruby and less anything else. The tool-kit is inspired from the web, but its not really a web developing language (though people have written articals on how to do it with merb). You can make just about GUI using sheos and ruby. The beauty of the code lies in the fact that on the first look it looks more like and mathematical algorithm. So you can gather how easy it is to write an application.
I presume you have a fair knowledge of ruby programming language. If not go read some books on it like one at techotopia or take an online course at www.rubylearning.org.
Also I assume that you have to ruby and shoes installed. If not please read the instrutions on there sites
I am writing this on a (Arch) linux machine so I will presume your on a console (either *nix or dos). I dont really know how things work on OS X coz i have never used it so i won't comment.
Lesson two:- Getting it started
As this is a how-to-do-it tutorial lets get started. First of all the basic. A shoes app is essentially a loop on the shoes class. Something like this
Shoes.app do
alert("Hello")
end
OR
Shoes.app {alert("Hello") }
(Dont worry about the alert funtion yet i will explain it to you latter). What you just saw is the worlds smallest GUI hello world program. Now to run it just save it,by a name say file1.rb, open a console and type:-
$shoes /path/to/file1.rb
and it will give you an nice alert box helloing you. Now what did we gather from this is that a Shoes app is essentially a loop.
Lesson 3:-Some basic functions
Now as we have learned how to make a skelaten shoes app and run it, lets make something useful (at least useful enough to brag about it to friends). Now we will make a new file basic.rb, and start a new loop with some styling.Styles in shoes are basic attributes of the app window(like its title breadth and width). So lets set these
Shoes.app(:title => "A basic shoes app",:width => 200, :height => 200) do
end
(I prefer the do end blocks over the {} because it looks too c++ish,you are free for your choice)
When you run it you will be supplied with a neat 200x200 box (well nothing very facinating about it for seasoned programmer but for beginners it feels like they have just hacked a supercomputer). Now in this part I will sho(e)w you how to make a very basic app with only few funtions background,rgb,ask_color, gradient,button & alert. Bacially here is the synopsis in my way (refer to the manual for the formal synopsises)
button(caption_here){ working_here}
alert(caption_here)
background
ask_color()
gradient(int,int)
location()
confirm()
(the names are self explainatory i think)
Also we will be using some inbuild constants.
Our basic app will use these functions to answer the most basic questions and change some colors around.
1 Shoes.app(:title => "Basics of shoes",:width => 500,:height => 500,:resizable => false) do
2 background rgb(0,100,0)
3
4 border("paresh",:strokewidth => 50)
5 button("Quit") do
6 if confirm("Do you wanna quit")
7 exit()
8 end
9 end
10 button("Change Backgound color") do
11 color = ask_color("Give the color")
12 background color
13 end
14 button("Make gradient") do
15 color1=ask_color("Enter color # 1")
16 color2=ask_color("Enter color # 2")
17 background gradient(color1,color2)
18 end
19 button("Where am I") do
20 alert(location())
21 end
22 button("What am I using") do
23 alert("You are using shoes-#{Shoes::RELEASE_NAME}-#{Shoes::RELEASE_ID} with the subversive number #{Shoes::REVISION}")
24 end
25 end
You can get the source code from here.
Ok lets start by putting up the carcass of shoes app
Shoes.app(:title => "Basics of shoes",:width => 500,:height => 500,:resizable => false) do
This starts a shoes app loop with some initializations. We have passed the basics here the height, width, title and making the resizing flase (this is my personal intrest to make resizing false).
Now lets start by setting up the background
background rgb(0,100,0)
Now this is two new functions.
First is "background" which will set the background color.
We are passing the color generated by rgb to it.
rgb is a funtion which accepts red blue green values and generates the color code for it.
Next we make our first button
button("Quit") do
if confirm("Do you wanna quit")
exit()
end
end
a button in shoes is also essentially a loop. We pass the caption to the button (which is displayed on the button). And then pass a loop which is executed whenever the button is pressed.
Now for the loop we have passed. confirm pops up a Cancel-Ok dialog box. It returns true if ok is pressed returns false if cancel is pressed. If Ok is pressed we have exit() which exits the shoes app.
Moving on
button("Change Backgound color") do
color = ask_color("Give the color")
background color
end
Now we made another button to change the background color. ask_color pops up a small color panel where you can chose your fav color the funtion returns the color code which we have caught in color (this is the best thing about ruby I dont have to determine of what type color is , it is done by the interpretor!!). Then we pass color to background function which sets the background.
Now to move on
button("Make gradient") do
color1=ask_color("Enter color # 1")
color2=ask_color("Enter color # 2")
background gradient(color1,color2)
end
Again a new button to make a gradient. gradient function excepts two colors and generates a nice gradient from it. We get those colors from the user by the ask_color function. A gradient is essentially a type of background that can be applied. So we pass it to background function. You see its nice to see a gradient as a background.
To the next
button("Where am I") do
alert(location())
end
alert() is a function which pops up a small applet on the screen with text written on it(which is passed to it). location() gives us the location of the current app in the file structure. Combining these two we have created a popup box which gives us the location of program (neat isn't it)
Now for the las but not the least some constants
button("What am I using") do
alert("You are using shoes-#{Shoes::RELEASE_NAME}-#{Shoes::RELEASE_ID} with the subversive number #{Shoes::REVISION}")
end
These are just some constats we have predefined by shoes
Shoes::RELEASE_NAME - gives the release name of the shoes you are working on.
Shoes::RELEASE_ID - gives the release id
Shoes::REVISION - its the subversive release number.
So kids thats about it (don't forget to put and 'end' to the shoes loop).
Well in this lesson i have tried to get us some basic knowledge of how to use shoes buttons and alerts. May be (if i get enough responce == 2 or more emails and 7 or more comments by diffrent people) next time I will tell more about making a nicer app (may be a calculator).
Do write comments. Don't be too harsh this is my first attempt at making a ruby (or for that matter of any kind) tutorial and i am nervous about my way of presenting it.
How to get a grip on Shoes
This is my how-to-do-it guide to shoes,a small gui app building toolkit by _why. I first came across it when i was working on rubylearning.org. There a japanease teacher told me about the toolkit. He wrote a paper on how to build a mp3 player in shoes. Well i decided to give it a try. I tried _why Nobody knows shoes but soon found out it was not my type. So soon after I started to give the in built mannual a try but yet again was dissapointed because it after all was still a mannual no tutorial for me. So I started reading the mannual and taking notes. I developed some programs to understand the concepts myself. But then as always i felt an urge to write what i didn't have when i started. A how-to-do-it tutorial. So here is my attempt. Do give feed back.
Lesson one:- What is shoes
Shoes ultimatly is a tool kit to make gui apps in ruby. The thing that makes it distinct from other tool kits is that it makes the code look more ruby and less anything else. The tool-kit is inspired from the web, but its not really a web developing language (though people have written articals on how to do it with merb). You can make just about GUI using sheos and ruby. The beauty of the code lies in the fact that on the first look it looks more like and mathematical algorithm. So you can gather how easy it is to write an application.
I presume you have a fair knowledge of ruby programming language. If not go read some books on it like one at techotopia or take an online course at www.rubylearning.org.
Also I assume that you have to ruby and shoes installed. If not please read the instrutions on there sites
I am writing this on a (Arch) linux machine so I will presume your on a console (either *nix or dos). I dont really know how things work on OS X coz i have never used it so i won't comment.
Lesson two:- Getting it started
As this is a how-to-do-it tutorial lets get started. First of all the basic. A shoes app is essentially a loop on the shoes class. Something like this
Shoes.app do
alert("Hello")
end
OR
Shoes.app {alert("Hello") }
(Dont worry about the alert funtion yet i will explain it to you latter). What you just saw is the worlds smallest GUI hello world program. Now to run it just save it,by a name say file1.rb, open a console and type:-
$shoes /path/to/file1.rb
and it will give you an nice alert box helloing you. Now what did we gather from this is that a Shoes app is essentially a loop.
Lesson 3:-Some basic functions
Now as we have learned how to make a skelaten shoes app and run it, lets make something useful (at least useful enough to brag about it to friends). Now we will make a new file basic.rb, and start a new loop with some styling.Styles in shoes are basic attributes of the app window(like its title breadth and width). So lets set these
Shoes.app(:title => "A basic shoes app",:width => 200, :height => 200) do
end
(I prefer the do end blocks over the {} because it looks too c++ish,you are free for your choice)
When you run it you will be supplied with a neat 200x200 box (well nothing very facinating about it for seasoned programmer but for beginners it feels like they have just hacked a supercomputer). Now in this part I will sho(e)w you how to make a very basic app with only few funtions background,rgb,ask_color, gradient,button & alert. Bacially here is the synopsis in my way (refer to the manual for the formal synopsises)
button(caption_here){ working_here}
alert(caption_here)
background
ask_color(
gradient(int,int)
location()
confirm(
(the names are self explainatory i think)
Also we will be using some inbuild constants.
Our basic app will use these functions to answer the most basic questions and change some colors around.
1 Shoes.app(:title => "Basics of shoes",:width => 500,:height => 500,:resizable => false) do
2 background rgb(0,100,0)
3
4 border("paresh",:strokewidth => 50)
5 button("Quit") do
6 if confirm("Do you wanna quit")
7 exit()
8 end
9 end
10 button("Change Backgound color") do
11 color = ask_color("Give the color")
12 background color
13 end
14 button("Make gradient") do
15 color1=ask_color("Enter color # 1")
16 color2=ask_color("Enter color # 2")
17 background gradient(color1,color2)
18 end
19 button("Where am I") do
20 alert(location())
21 end
22 button("What am I using") do
23 alert("You are using shoes-#{Shoes::RELEASE_NAME}-#{Shoes::RELEASE_ID} with the subversive number #{Shoes::REVISION}")
24 end
25 end
You can get the source code from here.
Ok lets start by putting up the carcass of shoes app
Shoes.app(:title => "Basics of shoes",:width => 500,:height => 500,:resizable => false) do
This starts a shoes app loop with some initializations. We have passed the basics here the height, width, title and making the resizing flase (this is my personal intrest to make resizing false).
Now lets start by setting up the background
background rgb(0,100,0)
Now this is two new functions.
First is "background" which will set the background color.
We are passing the color generated by rgb to it.
rgb is a funtion which accepts red blue green values and generates the color code for it.
Next we make our first button
button("Quit") do
if confirm("Do you wanna quit")
exit()
end
end
a button in shoes is also essentially a loop. We pass the caption to the button (which is displayed on the button). And then pass a loop which is executed whenever the button is pressed.
Now for the loop we have passed. confirm pops up a Cancel-Ok dialog box. It returns true if ok is pressed returns false if cancel is pressed. If Ok is pressed we have exit() which exits the shoes app.
Moving on
button("Change Backgound color") do
color = ask_color("Give the color")
background color
end
Now we made another button to change the background color. ask_color pops up a small color panel where you can chose your fav color the funtion returns the color code which we have caught in color (this is the best thing about ruby I dont have to determine of what type color is , it is done by the interpretor!!). Then we pass color to background function which sets the background.
Now to move on
button("Make gradient") do
color1=ask_color("Enter color # 1")
color2=ask_color("Enter color # 2")
background gradient(color1,color2)
end
Again a new button to make a gradient. gradient function excepts two colors and generates a nice gradient from it. We get those colors from the user by the ask_color function. A gradient is essentially a type of background that can be applied. So we pass it to background function. You see its nice to see a gradient as a background.
To the next
button("Where am I") do
alert(location())
end
alert() is a function which pops up a small applet on the screen with text written on it(which is passed to it). location() gives us the location of the current app in the file structure. Combining these two we have created a popup box which gives us the location of program (neat isn't it)
Now for the las but not the least some constants
button("What am I using") do
alert("You are using shoes-#{Shoes::RELEASE_NAME}-#{Shoes::RELEASE_ID} with the subversive number #{Shoes::REVISION}")
end
These are just some constats we have predefined by shoes
Shoes::RELEASE_NAME - gives the release name of the shoes you are working on.
Shoes::RELEASE_ID - gives the release id
Shoes::REVISION - its the subversive release number.
So kids thats about it (don't forget to put and 'end' to the shoes loop).
Well in this lesson i have tried to get us some basic knowledge of how to use shoes buttons and alerts. May be (if i get enough responce == 2 or more emails and 7 or more comments by diffrent people) next time I will tell more about making a nicer app (may be a calculator).
Do write comments. Don't be too harsh this is my first attempt at making a ruby (or for that matter of any kind) tutorial and i am nervous about my way of presenting it.
Monday, April 21, 2008
How I came into the open land
It was a really fine evening. I was watching TV. Normally i dont really bother what is on the news. But on that day it was fate that I switched to one of the many 24 hour news channels. There was a program on kids going on. I thought that it would be fun watching these kids doing the regular discussion stuff. But that day was different. The show was about the achievements of kids. It had people,kids rather, from all over the world. Some of them were sports persons, some chess players, some scientists. I was really irritated. I thought that why would someone wast there time on such nonsensical things when there are so much better things to do. I switched the TV off. It was sleep time already so off I went under the covers.
Next thing I saw I was at the dhaba(a small street hotel) working as a waiter. It was horrible. I was going from table to table. i was wearing Pajamas and tee shirt. Then i saw one of my best friends ashish entering the dhaba. He was dressed well. In a suit and had a person by his side who was showing him sumthing in a file. I got delighted seeing an old friend. When i tried to walk up to him his sec walked up to me and stopped me. " I will give his order. Its pathetic that a famous and rich businessman likes to breakfast here" he said.
" Oh it is his fav place we used to come here bunking our classes" I said.
"What do you mean we".
"He is my childhood friend"
"Sir does not know anyone working in a DHABA".
"It seems he does"
"Let me ask"
he walked up to him.
"Sir do you know this guy... hey whats ur name."
"PARESH"
"Sec do I know anyone named paresh" Ashish said to the one holding a file.
"No" the guy said.
"Next thing i knew i was being dragged off the floor"
NO...NO .... his is my friend.... one of the best... we used to work together....dont drag me ashish ashish its me...
SNAP I was all wet (because of sweating) on my bed. Fighting with my pillow. It was all a dream no not a dream a nightmare and a really bad one. Anyways it was time for school and went into the shower. There was when I started to think of my life right in the shower. And the whole day I kept thinking. I said to myself here I am working like a dog the whole day just to get an A in the reports. Heck man people 2 years older are coming on TV. They are not just plane lucky or even if they are i am not. I must get it straight. What would happen to me in this rate. I must do somthing or i will be left behind.
I asked myself. What am i good at? umm...um.. yup i do right stories. Nobody is interested in your stories you idiot. Heck writing wont work(this was b4 i read about Creative commons). Then what can i do. Let me see i can program in c++. But who cares i dont have any degree. Thats when I turned to google and shooting strange queries at it. Then I hit linux. I thought it would be cool to have an distro who people rarely use on my computer.I thought i can become the youngest person who uses linux. Then i started to search for the pirated CD. FIrst i went to my local CD library. He thought linux was a game and said he doesn't have it. So i thought i will again have to do my cyber cafe trick.(What i used to do was i went to a cyber cafe, we dont have serious security in cafes in india, i put the download on and sit there for half an hour dont stop the download. walk out and return again the next day to copy the file.) But then i realized that linux was a free download. Also i hit the ubuntu shipit page. I was like what they are giving me a free CD. I searched the whole page for a catch but as everybody knows there is no catch. I ordered one.
Then as the perfect timing we had our own broadband connection at home. I started to surf about linux and learned about the OPENLAND. And rest is the same for everyone
Next thing I saw I was at the dhaba(a small street hotel) working as a waiter. It was horrible. I was going from table to table. i was wearing Pajamas and tee shirt. Then i saw one of my best friends ashish entering the dhaba. He was dressed well. In a suit and had a person by his side who was showing him sumthing in a file. I got delighted seeing an old friend. When i tried to walk up to him his sec walked up to me and stopped me. " I will give his order. Its pathetic that a famous and rich businessman likes to breakfast here" he said.
" Oh it is his fav place we used to come here bunking our classes" I said.
"What do you mean we".
"He is my childhood friend"
"Sir does not know anyone working in a DHABA".
"It seems he does"
"Let me ask"
he walked up to him.
"Sir do you know this guy... hey whats ur name."
"PARESH"
"Sec do I know anyone named paresh" Ashish said to the one holding a file.
"No" the guy said.
"Next thing i knew i was being dragged off the floor"
NO...NO .... his is my friend.... one of the best... we used to work together....dont drag me ashish ashish its me...
SNAP I was all wet (because of sweating) on my bed. Fighting with my pillow. It was all a dream no not a dream a nightmare and a really bad one. Anyways it was time for school and went into the shower. There was when I started to think of my life right in the shower. And the whole day I kept thinking. I said to myself here I am working like a dog the whole day just to get an A in the reports. Heck man people 2 years older are coming on TV. They are not just plane lucky or even if they are i am not. I must get it straight. What would happen to me in this rate. I must do somthing or i will be left behind.
I asked myself. What am i good at? umm...um.. yup i do right stories. Nobody is interested in your stories you idiot. Heck writing wont work(this was b4 i read about Creative commons). Then what can i do. Let me see i can program in c++. But who cares i dont have any degree. Thats when I turned to google and shooting strange queries at it. Then I hit linux. I thought it would be cool to have an distro who people rarely use on my computer.I thought i can become the youngest person who uses linux. Then i started to search for the pirated CD. FIrst i went to my local CD library. He thought linux was a game and said he doesn't have it. So i thought i will again have to do my cyber cafe trick.(What i used to do was i went to a cyber cafe, we dont have serious security in cafes in india, i put the download on and sit there for half an hour dont stop the download. walk out and return again the next day to copy the file.) But then i realized that linux was a free download. Also i hit the ubuntu shipit page. I was like what they are giving me a free CD. I searched the whole page for a catch but as everybody knows there is no catch. I ordered one.
Then as the perfect timing we had our own broadband connection at home. I started to surf about linux and learned about the OPENLAND. And rest is the same for everyone
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