Evolution of discoveries and inventions.

Note:Draft

Few days ago I was done with reading the book “Is God a mathematician” by Mario Livio.Mario Livio beautifully explains the perceptive of many philosophers and scientists towards mathematics. He views the world as dual pronged -----Plaotnists-the ones who believe mathematics as discovery and the other group which considers it as external reality-an invention.He also explains how mathematics has evolved from simple addition during the times of Pythagorus—a philosopher and a religious thinker ,to be the basis of most complex system of today’s world.

I have a different discourse here which has nothing in common to the thoughts projected by Mario Livio except work, thoughts, inventions and discoveries by scientists/philosophers he mentions. I write here how the nature of discoveries and inventions has changed over a long period of time (centuries and millennia).The discoveries/inventions/thoughts of antiquity sprouted exclusively by observing nature and its complex/simple phenomenon.Mario Livio explains “Pythagorous and Pythagoreans were so enraptured by the dependency of geometrical figures,stellar constellations and musical harmony on numbers that numbers became both the building blocks from which the universe was constructed and the principles behind its existence”. The study of Pythagoreans was oriented towards the study of universe .It could be that nature is all they had that time and brain aligns itself to what it imbibes ideating those wonderful processes of universe.Like in today’s world,computer has gotten in everybodys’ mind and all minds are aligned towards creating robots,making it more like humans, creating programs or talk about 50-60 years ago ,when minds were aligned towards creating the world of digital computers.The contemplation of Pythagoreans of the universe lead a great step for the mankind.

Another hero of antiquity Mario Livio discusses is Plato.He explains “Plato was the relentless seeker of pure knowledge, absolute conduct and eternal truths”. Look at the powerful words used by Mario Livio to describe the knowledge Plato sought—“Pure knowledge”,”absolute conduct” and “eternal truths”. Usage of any such words to describe the knowledge floating around in today’s world will sound humorous, say eternal truths of computer, absolute conduct of robots.We, living at this age are far away from being considered the seekers of pure knowledge. People like Plato have acquired considerable amount of such knowledge centuries ago and large part is yet left but there are plethora of things existing in today’s world that divert man’s mind to things which are either superficial or loose meaning in short span.

Please keep in mind that I don’t intend to compartmentalize present and past into good or bad, rather the colossal difference between the two which in turn has enormously affected the thought process of humans.The way we work,think today is indescribable to our ancestors or lets take a step back and imagine explaining ANALOG computers(the ones which used punched cards) to people who have lived before their existence.Now lets take step a further and imagine shopping on the moon and be back before dusk, it would be denounced as baloney if you try to explain this to someone today.So at every stage(say after centuries), the brain of a human adjusts (or should I say evolves) to the surrounding created by himself and it cascades to the whole generation existing at that particular time and to generations further down till there is another major adjustment needed and the process continues.

Another great man Mario Livio describes in his book is Galilio Galili.Galio, in one of the letters to his student Castelli writes –(paraphrased)—There are truths about nature which are far above man’s understanding and cannot be made credible by any learning or any other means.According to Galilio-Mathematics is the language of God.Galilio talks about the truths of nature, universe and God which by all means are related.Its incredibly amazing how the scientists and philosophers who existed centuries ago emphasized the existence of divine power The depth of their studies about nature gathered huge information for posterity.

I think rather I am forced to think that there will be some truths about universe beyond the reach of man’s imagination and with complexity orders of magnitude higher than man’s understanding. The antiquity left us a platform, a base, we have grown our world on.The deafening music, crazy dance, artificial intelligence, anti-aging, artificial growth and all modern day buzz words which are so-called the boon for humans, sometimes feel a huge regiment piling up for the disaster(may be otherwise) of humans.

Mario Livio then writes about Newton.He formulated the fundamental laws of mechanics, deciphered the laws describing the planetary motion, erected the theoretical basis for the phenomenon of light and colours and founded the study of differential calculus and did a great work on gravity.All this together would have called for a great deal of contemplation and thoughts.

As I proceed reading the book, I notice how a man started with observing/studying things which involve nature/God/universe, drifting slowly towards creating things which virtually benefit him, giving his explanation/solutions/theories for natural phenomenon while eliminating the hand of divine power from these beautiful complex systems of nature.

Newton was confronted with a question for a long time…why is solar system as stable as it is. Newton, in addition to gravitational force involved the God’s hand(any divine power) in keeping the solar system intact.But the question was answered by Laplace –a great mathematician who wrote 5 volumes of a book giving virtually complete solution to the motion in solar system.Mario Livio writes, Laplace had different views,instead of relying on God’s handiwork, he simply proved mathematically that solar system is stable over long period of time , much longer than anticipated by Newton. Now, this is the drift I talked about earlier though a negligible but a significant one considering the time span over which the evolution of discoveries/inventions/thoughts has occurred.

Astronomers learned only in 20th century, it is the gravity which keeps 100 billion stars wheeling in the arms and thronging in the centers of spiral galaxies As the harmony exhibited by stars, planets and all celestial bodies necessitates the prevalence of some force(in this case gravitational force),we can continue with the argument to penetrate to the level of prevalence of some force which produces gravitation. There might be some force responsible for the movement of protons ,neutrons, gravitons or any other particle which in turn produces gravitation(the reason for such force is yet unanswered).I am sure there is a limit to what a human mind can understand beyond which his intelligence does not suffice. It could be because of these reasons that scientists/philosophers of antiquity had pulled the God’s handiwork in the simple/complex phenomenon of nature. I believe that there are magnitude of other things existing out there yet to be explored by man.

As the time passed, man utilized his creativity to give birth to myriad things, discoveries and inventions, each step leaving the foundation for the next big invention and a slow drift away from nature, God and universe. Every invention put a stepping stone forward towards the advancement of man in every field.

If computers and internet were not into existence, I wouldn’t have been able to publish this piece of writing but wait….without even realizing man has started to dig his own grave. He has reached to a point where he is engrossed in entertaining himself and is constantly trying to change nature and universe created by the divine power to suit his needs and in the process creating an environment hostile(perhaps otherwise) to his own existence.

Moving past the boundaries

I am so excited, its my first trip out of the country into the boundaries of United states of America.We finally got the visa and I am writing this from right inside my hotel room in the beautiful city of Albany,NY.Its great and amazing here and am even more glad that I am not in NYC as that would have been much like my Bangalore--crowded, traffic, pollution(of all kinds)and what not.This place is full of lush green trees making all the roads look like a boulevard,its heart throbbing.
The culture here is diametrically opposite to ours and it kind of takes time for people who are introvert and talk less(like ME)to get adjusted to the people around you.People here talk too much and about anything that gets to their mind ,even the things that are impertinent to the subject under discussion(phew! that bores me).
The rules are strictly followed, unlike in our country , that makes living much easier and organized.(Live and let live is an apt phrase here).
I find the outfits of the people little funny here but it has its own charm.Its just been 4 days that I am here, got lot more things to see and explore.Will keep writing..

Auto Complete with AJAX

Its the first time that I have wet my hands with AJAX.(Reference - AJAX/JAVA)Prior to this I have been using .Net AJAX server side controls which internally wrap AJAX calls ,thus letting a user to deal only with facade.
There are numerous utilities to add auto-complete functionality to your site/application.I found them complex to use leading me to write one for myself.
It has three simple steps
1.Make asynchronous call to the server(handled by servlet) using XMLHttpRequest .
2.Get the required data in servlet and send the response as XML
3.Grab and process the data(display) in the front end when control is returned from the server.
The above three steps are common for any functionality achieved using AJAX.
The jsp page looks like this


In the above jsp if you have seen, on "onkeyupevent", function getData is called passing in the 4 parameters.The javascript file(its in text format) can be downloaded here
The servlet which handles the synchronous call made by jsp is shown below.The data to to be loaded is initialized by overriding the init method of the servlet(data retrieval will vary according to ones need)



That is pretty much.There is definitely a huge room for improvement but its gets the target rolling.

NOTE:The blogger.com parses everything ,so I had to include code in images.If anybody knows a better way to include code in blogspot, will be great.Thanks

Know your co-ordinates

Geolocation recently caught my attention, so thought of dabbling with it.There are numerous tools available to get the geo location but the one I tried is Google Geolocation.It is one of the AJAX APIs provided by google(reference Maps Basics, Developer's guide, Thasha's blog).

It deviates from actual longitude/latitude of the place when it depicts the place on the map.

I couldn't place it any where but at the bottom of my blog.Please scroll down to see the Google API(geolocator) in action

Co-ordinates tuned
I spend some time on Google Map API and learnt some more features about it. One can add overlays on the map based on the data(addresses) one has.Though google already provides feature of showing myriad utilities(hospitals. schools etc etc) on the map, but this will be handy when one's data is more customised and changes frequently.
As I have written earlier that the co-ordinates as calculated by the API vary a little , so I have added correction of point something to the latitude and longitude,that gives better results

New job profile for IT in India

Please decode all numbers in brackets in blue to their corresponding alphabets .
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
P Q R S T U V U W X Y Z
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Ever came across a job profile for IT like this?
Experience--10 years
Technology --Expert in JAVA
Ready to travel immediately
(18-5-12-9-7-9-15-15)-----(14-15-14-13-21-19-11-9-13)
May be you answered NO,but looks like not any more.
It is ridiculous and it hurts when ones 18-5-12-9-7-9-15-15 (or whatever you name it) comes in the way of profession.
As a pavid Kashmiri girl, I always wanted(and I still want to as I like traveling) to travel abroad and States was always my first choice.But with the passage of time , moved along the flow of life and the thought of traveling took a back seat.But recently, my work demanded me to go to States. That was really exciting as traveling is something I like.
The consul at Chennai consulate was a nice Caucasian. He asked me few questions-- Great so far! . But in a second,I found him frowning and he came up with words “Yours is a FUNNY little case and your case needs some administrative processing”.
Funny?Was my face funny? Was my nose funny? or Was I funny ? Naah! It was just that my name was funny and it kicked some part of his cerebrum to come with those funny words.It hurts and it pains to think that I can’t go to States(or I am supposed to wait for some months) because of my name(off course it in turn relates to something else.Great! if you understand that).I am temporarily sad about it.
Never mind,nothing is everlasting, so what if America is the most powerful country :)

Quiescently moving on a stright line

Ever since I joined Software company after graduating,I noticed a trend in myself-getting bored/frustrated after working on a project for a while.This I thought attribute to my lack of patience(less patience) but little did it made difference when I tried to be patient.This trend in me continues even after 3 and half years of workig experience in 'S/W companies'.Though I thought of writing about after such a long time,its only after a year that I realised,that its consequence of the following graph Well,this is too less learning in descent amount of time(considering other factors being optimal) and it really bothers me and haunts me all the time leading to boredom and frustration.Now what about the following graph Thought the difference between the two graphs is evident, there is one more factors which augments the second one and i.e "Learned What".Let me try to give an example.

Learned--

Transition from my scary world to Bangalore-y world

Please decode all numbers in brackets in blue to their corresponding alphabets .
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
P Q R S T U V U W X Y Z
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26


(2-12-15-15-4-19-8-5-4), (6-9-18-10-14-7),(3-18-15-15-19-6-9-18-10-14-7),(12-1-20-8-9-3-8-1-18-7-5),(3-21-18-6-3-23),(3-15-18-4-15-14) are among the few words I learnt in my early childhood and are so blended in my life that their absence make s me feel unusual about the present but… its relieving.25 years have passed, the situation there remains the same and the same words welcome every newborn etching every fragile mind with the dirt that has poisoned the world today.My pair of eyes has seen (2-18-21-20-1-12-11-9-12-12-9-14-7-19), (2-15-13-2-19),(2-21-18-14-9-14-8-20-15-23-14) and what not.That picture never fades away from my mind and every time I think about it, a tear drop washes my anger away.
Being in Bangalore for about 7-8 years now has changed me as a person.When I first landed in Bangalore as a teenager, it really amazed me with so much of exposure, host of other things to see and learn, different kind of people around me. I remember something funny. One of my batch mates in freshman year was my room mate in our college hostel(She was bred in Dubai).It was pretty frequently she used to say ‘ I am going to cyber cafe’.I used to think what on earth can this ‘cyber cafe’ mean which sounded to me more like something related to space.So I once decided to go to her cyber café and to my surprise ‘cyber cafe’ meant ‘internet’.I had never used internet before.After that incident, everyday back from the college till late evenings I have spent time in internet café using it for everything but INFORMATION.
My 4 years of graduation went pretty well but had there been some mentor, some guide to direct me,I would have been able to do more than just my studies, perhaps like Sunayana (or may be I was not smart enough to get the things done on my own).whatever it is,I have changed(rather I had to change).Better late than never! behooves me.I will try to leverage the facilities and grab opportunities to make up for the lag and do something cooool!

The world beyond .Net

I have been working with .net for quite a while and found my self confined within the four corners of Microsoft.So I recently broke one of the walls and plunged into the ocean of java and open source.I am excited with kind of combinations (servers, frameworks,language etc) one can work with making me realize that I have been actually missing all the fun in the four corners.But its still a long a way for me to go.
Since I broke only one wall, the rest of the three walls influence me to thing the new language(java) and servers work the same way as I am used to in .net which is just not the case.Microsoft is good for RAD with numerous in-built tools and external tools compatible with .net making ones way, way easier.It was(is) very important for me to unlearn and learn to make my way through new language, servers , tools etc.I stumbled in the beginning and am still but its all fun.