Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a bold piece of work, partly because the style of writing differs drasti­cally from the mainstream, and also because it leaves in the reader’s mind, a feeling that Woolf is more inter­ested in capturing the thought, the idea and the essence of the moment than in impressing the reader with the narra­tive. The latter obser­va­tion can be contested, but the former cannot be denied.

The reader will soon realize that the events in the story are immate­rial. In fact, events are an inter­rup­tion to the flow of thought, and it is through this flow that the reader becomes a part of the fantasy world. The charac­ters themselves are more impor­tant than what they do, for what they do is a mere reflec­tion of their state of mind at that instant. Under­standing the charac­ters is the impor­tant thing; all else is secondary.

Woolf makes this task of under­standing easy, by flitting from one character’s mind to the other. Every fleeting moment stretches across minutes, and every thought lingers for sometime on an object, and then makes its way through deeper roads. Every­thing is connected to the past, and the past is, in a way, more real than the present itself.

The style of writing needs some getting used to. There is nothing linear about a person’s thoughts, and this non-linearity is reflected in the writing. To keep track of what is going on requires a good deal of effort.

In the copy that I had borrowed from the library, somebody had scrawled after the last line of the book -

“All these people only feel, feel, feel, but do nothing.”

- which was right, of course! Woolf coaxes the reader to live the story, become a part of it, and trans­form the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Whispers carried upon the breeze;
Wispy thoughts and swirly leaves,
A touch of silence, a cry of pain -
Dust and darkness, the patter of rain.

A garden I built, a garden of love;
Set it with flowers, and eagles above;
Sprin­kled it with water and songs of joy,
Come in! I said to weary passers-by.

With cautious steps, they slowly wandered in,
Oh my! They said — what beauty within!
But evil was at work, with no outward sign -
Wait just a minute — why isn’t this mine?

They looked upon my garden with envy and disdain,
This garden of love, this soother of pain;
The flowers wilted, the eagles flew down;
An eerie silence descended upon the town.

And then they were gone; the twilight was here -
I looked around at all that I held dear.
All this hatred, all this pain!
And after all this ruina­tion — what did they gain?

Whispers carried upon the breeze;
Wispy thoughts and swirly leaves,
A touch of silence, a cry of pain -
Dust and darkness, the patter of rain.

Tick and tock! Tick and tock!
Do you ever listen, oh relent­less clock?
Shapes and silhou­ettes, twilight begone!
Spare me this darkness and bring me the dawn!

Now that a large number of websites have begun to support the OpenID single sign-on system, I decided to register one for myself: http://ramnath.r.iyer.myopenid.com/. If you see a comment on a Blogger or any other OpenID-supported website associ­ated with this ID, then you know who that is.…

At its core, OpenID is a system that allows the user to register just once with an OpenID provider, and use the same username and password on all other sites (that support the system, of course). There can be many providers, but the user’s ID itself can be used to deter­mine which provider is to be contacted for verifi­ca­tion. If you login frequently using a single personal computer acces­sible only to yourself, you can even install an SSL certifi­cate that estab­lishes your identity to the OpenID provider. In other words, you can login without a password on that computer.

It is impor­tant to note that this system does not provide any ‘web of trust,’ so you cannot use OpenID to ‘prove’ who you are. It is quite easy to create a fake ID and pretend to be someone else.

Here is a list of public OpenID providers, so you can get one for yourself.

If you put a handful of mini-marshmallows in the microwave and keep it on ‘High’ for more than thirty seconds, it will be magically trans­formed into a large sticky, stretchy blob of white stuff.

It actually tastes better this way.

Airlines are fond of abbre­vi­a­tions; they could probably publish The Layman’s Guide To Reading An Airline Ticket with a seven-hundred-page glossary of abbre­vi­ated terms.

Getting to the point, ITH stands for Ithaca airport, and LGA stands for LaGuardia airport in New York City. This is the aircraft that shuttles between these two airports everyday.

[Original image and copyright infor­ma­tion can be found here.]

Traveling by this aircraft is like riding a small bus with wings. It can carry something between 25 to 30 passen­gers, depending on the total weight. If you’re taller than average, watch out for the ceiling!

It appears that the Gentoo leader­ship is in a soup. As of today, the Gentoo Founda­tion no longer exists, because the Gentoo Foundation’s charter has been revoked for several weeks. [Link via Slashdot]

Gentoo founder and former Chief Archi­tect Daniel Robbins has offered to return as Presi­dent, but with specific condi­tions attached. This devel­op­ment is largely seen as a positive move, but it remains to be seen how the Gentoo Trust will respond to his offer.

This 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy is a definite page turner. A gory blood-bath inter­spersed with the good Sheriff’s musings, it is a carefully crafted narra­tion of the inevitable. The antag­o­nist has a definite Lecter-ish quality about him, albeit with a little less charm. The intel­li­gent reader knows what to expect from the very begin­ning, but McCarthy succeeds in demon­strating that it is not the unexpected that keeps us awake at night: it is what we know to be true, but refuse to accept, that leaves us in fear.

The plot revolves around a young man who comes across a couple of million in cash thanks to a drug deal gone bad — and decides to keep it. There is little time to ponder upon the morality of his choices, and time is running out for regrets.

I would give this novel a rating of 4 out of 5, a book that should definitely be added to the reading list.

I watched Bruce Willis’ latest Die Hard flick, Live Free or Die Hard aka Die Hard 4.0 recently. Assuming suspen­sion of disbe­lief, it was a reason­ably good movie. Apart from the crazy hacker stuff and John McClane’s (Willis) virtual indestruc­tibility, it was true to its prede­ces­sors in form and style.

Did you say McClane was indestruc­tible in the previous movies too? True, but then he didn’t battle a military jet or kill the bad guy by shooting him through himself. I bet the older John McClane could have given the Termi­nator a run for his money.

Never mind all that: what I simply cannot compre­hend is how everyone seems to have access to every single Govern­ment network possible. I do mean everyone — the hackers as well as the crackers. I know people can do some cool things with their computers, but this is way too much. Anyway, I was glad there was no third-time-lucky-password sequence (that is, the hacker/cracker is presented with a password prompt that he cracks on the third try, without ever having done it before.)

One impor­tant flaw, in my opinion, was that they paired up the wrong people. You know the classic plot — boy meets girl, rough times together, lots of destruc­tion, hugs and kisses all around, love at last, et cetera. But how the heck is that supposed to happen if the guy (Matt Farrell, played by Justin Long) spends all his time with McClane instead of McClane’s daughter? Looks like they really messed up that part of the story.

Overall, I would give it a rating of 3.5 out of 5. It could have been better. But wait — was it just a beta release?

A day before the New Hampshire Primary, opinions polls indicated that Barack Obama would beat Hillary Clinton by a double-digit margin. We all know what actually happened. Why did opinion polls get it so wrong?

I came across this thought-provoking article on Slate that suggests that opinion-poll results may themselves affect the voters one way or the other. This is a reason­able surmise, but the question is, which way does it swing the voters, and can anything be done about it?

In a way, this is something that happens to any group of people trying to make a decision. If most of the members share a single opinion with convic­tion, the others may be forced to agree just so that they don’t end up feeling silly. Besides, no one wants to end up on the losing side; it feels much better to have the candi­date of your choice elected.

On the other hand, if it seems as if one candi­date has a clear-cut victory in sight, the voters may not be as inter­ested in doing their job. This is a risk that is higher for the predicted winners, since compla­cency is on their side.

There is a domino effect at play, and everyone knows it: the more support you get, the more likely it is that more people will support you. The more relevant question, I think, is: couldn’t the organi­za­tions conducting opinion polls fabri­cate the results in such a way as to tilt the real polls in one candidate’s favor? It doesn’t matter what people think; it only matters what they believe, and how they react to those beliefs.

You probably need to be at least twenty-one years old to under­stand what I’m saying. My apolo­gies to all the rest.

If you look back at your child­hood, can you pinpoint any specific time in your life and say, “That is the point after which I was no longer a child”?

Person­ally, when I was younger, I never consid­ered myself to be a ‘child’, and I am quite certain that no child does. My feelings were just as acute as they are now, my thoughts were no less complex. My perspec­tives were vastly different, and my behavior in public is certainly changed, but my princi­ples and motiva­tions are pretty much what they were many years ago. If I were to base my opinions on my own experi­ences, I would say that deep inside, people don’t change much.

And yet, here I am, thinking, “This is it. I am an adult.” But was there a defining moment when I stopped being a kid and grew up? I know that I’ve grown up because people treat me like an equal. You can feel the differ­ence when they talk to their own (young) kids and then turn to speak to you.

And I am left wondering, “So when did this happen?”