Staying Alive

I am still very much alive. These days, time is mostly spent in excel sheets and microsoft project documents :(

Took a few photographs during my trip to trivandrum. One of my personal favourites,



A few more can be seen at my flickr page.

Comments have been disabled because I got tired of fighting comment spammers. They seem to get around blacklists, captchas and what not. Trackbacks are still available. Waiting for my first trackback spam...

Leaving you with a quote,

“The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.”
- Tara Ploughman

Sathish Chimes in

“Has an argument ever been won?”

Sathish chimes in.

That would have been the perfect comment on the recent communism discussion in tamizhan.com.

Self Control is easier said than done. A detached attitude to life might help, I suppose.

Note to self : Don't get passionate about anything. Stay disconnected.

I was wrong

Again, a lot has happenned. But this time over, most of it was for good.

Sonia Gandhi disproved me with her surprising decision. It took conviction to make that decision in the first place and courage to standby it thereafter. I bet, Sushma never saw that one coming.

I am not going to comment on what followed Sonia's decision that evening. Some other day, maybe. But for now, let us focus on the good that happenned that day.

The matrix explained

Asatho Maa Sad Gamaya,
Thamaso Maa Jyothir Gamaya,
Mrithyo Maa Amritham Gamaya.

(
Lead me from untruth to truth,
Lead me from darkness to light,
Lead me from death to immortality.
)

Thus ends the Matrix revolutions, with a prayer for moksha from the eternal cycle of birth and death.

Much has been written about the trilogy. Popular opinion seems to be against the sequels. Too many seem to have gone to the theatres to find answers to the tantalising questions posed by reloaded. Perhaps, the greatest triumph of the trilogy is that there were no answers. Only an interesting way to look at life and ask questions that the vast majority would never think of.

It wasn't perhaps the easiest of films to understand. Everyone seems to have interpreted the film through the filter of their own beliefs mostly religious. The fact that the brothers chose to derive from multiple belief systems makes every interpretation seem correct.

Here is my interpretation.

Humanity has been enslaved by the machines to generate energy for them to run. The fact that skies have been scorched by a nuclear war prevents them from using the sun as the source. Now to keep the humans alive and interested, the machines plugged them into an illusory world called the matrix.

The architect, the program responsible for the creation of the matrix, created a perfect world in its first avatar. But he soon saw that perfection was not acceptable to humans. Indeed humans rejected this world ( Smith says humans define their existence through misery ) and this led to the crash of the system. The architect then devised a program with a lesser mind, a more intuitive one if you will, the oracle to understand human behaviour and build a system which will last longer. The oracle understood that humans needed to believe that they have choice even if there was really none. This arrangement worked out well for 99% of the humans. But a 1% of the humans still saw through this illusory world and felt something was not right. Now it was the oracle's responsibility along with Mr.Smith to “control” this few people and ensure that they don't go out of hand.

The oracle did this with prophesies which led to the creation of zion and the human resistance. At the end of every cycle, there would be a war between the machines and humans with the One required to make a choice : Whether to return to the source and reload the matrix or to go back to the matrix and risk complete anihilation of humanity and the machines. For five times, Neo has chosen to return to the source reloading the matrix and picking the 23 people who will lead the human resistance in the next cycle. It is not Neo but the oracle which makes the choice for him everytime.

The oracle got tired of this endless cycle of creation and destruction. She wanted a way out, a peaceful way out.

She played a game, a dangerous one. She introduced a new variable into the system. Love in the form of trinity.

She hints to trinity even before she sees Neo that she will fall in love with the one thereby ensuring she does.

When the time comes for Neo to make the choice, for the first time he choses to go back into the matrix. Indeed he doesn't need to make the decision. Like the architect says, the decision has already been made by the oracle when she made him fall in love. All he needed to do was to understand it.

Smith is again different this time around. Neo entered him at the end of the part one and changed him to become his antithesis. Now smith is a program with “one like” powers. This ensures that he goes beyond the matrix to the other world thereby taking a step beyond the machine's control.

Seraph, the oracle's bodyguard is ofcourse a previous incarnation of the one and the one which caries the program code of the one which the oracle uses to create the one in every cycle.

Cut back to the sixth cycle. Love makes neo re-enter the matrix to save trinity. He brings her back from the dead at the end of reloaded. Remember she did the same thing to him at the end of part one.

The war between the machines and the humans start for the sixth time. Smith meanwhile has found his way into the real world and engages in a battle with Neo blinding him in the process. With his eyes blinded, Neo is able to see for the first time. Neo and trinity go back to the machine world into the heart of the machine city. The machines attack and trinity dies relieving neo of the final attachment he had. Now Neo understands his true karma without the distraction of love.

Neo goes on to make a deal with the machines. Peace in return for the killing of Smith who had gone beyond the control of the machines. Smith and Neo engage in a battle of titanic proportions reaching nowhere since they are both equally powerfull.

At the very end, Oracle speaking through smith shows Neo the way out. The death of neo is the purpose of Smith's life. Smith will die the instant neo dies. The solution is clear. Like christ, neo dies for humanity by carrying the burden of their sins ( Smith stands in for evil ) for them.

If you have read till this, you would have seen I have not chosen to comment upon the little girl sati. Indeed her presence puzzles me. What does she stand for ? The next generation of programs able to feel emotion ? An elaborate take on Shiva's wife Sati who commits suicide by burning herself and being reborn as parvati ( Trinity being reborn as Sati ?? ). Or is she the next oracle ? Or the next One ? Or the next architect who defines a matrix born out of love ?

Still a long way to go before I understand the matrix. If you have any thoughts, jot them down here.

28th Bharateeya Blog Mela

“Bharateeya Blog Mela is a celebration of the best content in the Indian blogspace. The latest Mela is always available at this URL (bookmark it).

This page is the 28th edition of the Mela. It's archived at this URL.

Any type of feedback is always appreciated. Leave a comment.

This is a spoof of the Indian Express. Please don't bother warning me about it.

The 28th Mela was brought to you by the brewers of...”

28th Bharateeya Blog Mela

Redesign and an explanation

Not much of an original design, I 'm afraid. But a functional one, I would think and hopefully would help in cutting the bandwidth usage of this site. With over a thousand visitors everyday and growing, there was a serious threat of breaking the 5GB banwidth limit that I have.

As you would have noticed by know, ads are all over the place. Many have mailed in their concerns about how itismylife.com is full of ads and how tamizhan is slowly moving in that direction.

I guess, it is a valid concern, one which I should have addressed long back.

It all boils down to one word, as it always does, money.

Over the last year and a half, I have blogged many a time, about what I really want to do with my life. Now unless and until, I have money backing me, I cant really throwup everything that I am currently doing and go on the path I want to be. Dreams aren't always practical.

In short, I want to retire early. I have always had this nightmare of waking up one day and realising that life has slipped past me. I have far too many dreams simmering inside me to allow that to happen.

So what do I do ?

The internet offers me a unique chance of earning without really breaking into a sweat. About a month and a half back, I decided to do something about it. I have seen in the past few weeks, it is indeed feasible and I have decided to go ahead.

Hopefully, the advertisements would stay in the background and wouldnt come in the way of whatever you came to do on this site.

I would really appreciate your understanding of the whole situation ( there isnt one really :) ).

Feel free to comment on all of this.

Sun sued.

If anyone was under the mistaken impression that america is a freedom loving country where there is no discrimination based on nationality or color, read this slashdot discussion. Set the threshold levels at -1 lest you miss the racist comments.

A country which believes in capitalism, a policy wherein everything is governed by the price at which you sell, is now seeing the perils of the same. Interesting.

A country which has benefited the most from globalisation is now feeling the heat at its own doorsteps. Who would have thought ?

People do ever so often ask why america is so rich.

Well, America had a huge geographic advantage and a small population when it started off. It was “born” at the right time for it to be at the forefront of the industrial revolution with absolutely no problems inherited ( for there were no ancestors but for a few native indians ). India, at the same time, were being brutally exploited by the britishers and by the time they left, we had enough problems so as to not to be able to think beyond survival.

Very often, Japan is cited as a country which was reduced to nothing by the end of the world war and yet managed to rise so fast in so little time. This has a lot to do with the fact that Japan is small, inherited very little by way of problems and had a small population. Often when you are small, you can grow very fast. Growth ofcourse becomes quite difficult when you are a giant beset with problems.

But our time will come. I will wait for the day.

NOTE : I am no economist but the above are thoughts which strike me as plausible reasons for the current scenario. I might be wrong but this is what I think. If you know better, then let me know as a comment.