An Engine with a difference

The night stands in stroboscopic stillness broken only by a cacophonous breed of organ grinders, infesting the streets of Cambridge. It seems impossible to estimate the enormous misery they inflict upon the multitude of English intelligentsia. But today they offer nothing more than a passing distraction as royal ink intoxicates my study. Cast in partial shadow of the moonlight; lies the blueprint and my ambition. Unbeknownst of the outcome I shall submit my relentless effort to its realization, for I know –the geometry of chance yields only to the chisel of an untiring spirit. 

It’s all very simple if you come to see, so much that its beauty hurts the eye like the vast complexity of this universe never could. The mere existence of this idea, implicates order in the final secrets that nature has not unraveled to us, but has nudged and pushed us with its clues, and given us the letters in which it writes our story. It’s meaning we may never know. However, that’s irrelevant. 

I imagine this, boiled down to its essence to be a bend in our road to the sky, just that we can’t see it yet. You can never say, what might come of it. We see elaborate proofs around us, and in abundance; of how terrible our imaginations are. Consider the snowflake, and the intricate designs it can sometimes take. The basic principle behind its fascinating shape however is the fact that when water freezes into snow, it releases latent heat which creates a bump adjacent to it, so on and so forth ad infinitum. It’s a process applied to itself that gives the snowflake its glorious structure. I am willing to bet a hundred pound sterling that such simplicity in design would never occur to an artist if he hasn’t seen a snowflake, which of-course is unlikely. Even chess which is based on a concise set of precise rules makes it impossible to determine a definite win. 

The blueprint is nothing but stacks, and stacks; not of things but numbers. If only I know how to fit them together, we would have created a mind outside of blood, bones and skin. It would think for us, work for us, and reduce ginormous amounts of human effort and drudgery. It’s just exhilarating to imagine what we might do with this accidental gift of time to our race. Computers will be out of work, and I suspect if they would be gay about it, neither would be Marx. I plan to call it an engine, because it will drive computation just as Bulton and Watts design of 1775 power our rails. 

It would take more than me, from me to create this spectacle of a machine. For the abstract, I have a natural gift. I can tell with a fair degree of accuracy the fraction of broken windows in Carfax tower as a function of time. But when it comes to cogs, gears, springs, pulleys and spools, the odds just accumulate against us. I need to understand the language of these entities, and appreciate the limitations of what is possible with our present paraphernalia to manufacture. I shall persist and I shall prevail.

Super-condensed summary: Hypothetical diary entry by the father of computing when he stumbled on a once in a generation idea: The Difference Engine

What's-up-with-me-post-you

So you had a break up eh? had sleepless nights? did extra-hours at work? ate less? ate more? worked out at the gym? worked on your pick up skills? Saw scrubs season 1-8 in the shortest time humanly possible? I did all that, and one more thing. I wrote about it. Here's my story...well almost!

An Unlikely Confluence

He drops the pill to see it explode in a scatter and settle at the periphery of a glass. It’s cloudy and only the most persistent of sunrays make through the filter of the window of his car. With a forced chuckle he gulps, rejecting his quintessential human experience. The clicks of his watch space out and vanish.

"Falling through pages of Martens on angels
Feeling my heart pull west
I saw the future dressed as a stranger."

The radio blips on the turn of the key, internal combustion subdues in him as it rages in the engine. The machine sets in motion; windscreen grows grainier with the drizzle leaving a rainbow in the rearview. Not quite sure if the rainbow was in a distance or just refraction of the corner of his eye. The funny thing with rainbows is that they don’t have a location; they are as much in the eye as the distance anyway. What he was certain of was the meander of a road that trailed behind. It had seasoned his hands on the wheel; just as much he had seasoned it in fair exchange.

The drizzle matured to a downpour playing a staccato in partnership with the wipers, the flicker of headlights arguing with dim crimson of the sun. The road ahead bent in a slight curve, an unlikely human figure stood at the far end of his vision. It stood like a milestone certain of its place, patiently waiting.

“To be driving in this god forsaken limbo. You’re stupid or lost?”

‘Lost! You need a ride?’

“Now asking a stranger that…I am guessing you’re stupid too. As a matter of fact I do. My baby here twisted her rim; need to find her a repair station”

‘Hop in. Stranger!’

“Yeah let’s roll”.

They exchange a casual smirk as a remainder of an old joke. The hiker clasped the bike on the carrier of the car roof and slid his F-Cut Hobner to the back seat. He briefly wondered if small talk would keep away an avalanche of silence between them.

‘So you know this place?’

“Long enough to ride outta here with blinds on”

‘That’s comforting! It’s a strange place for a nube like myself and a darn scary one at that. Anyway when did you pick up on the guitar?’

“Ah! Somewhere around when I stopped cribbing about what a bitch life is and started seeking for the best in myself”

‘Sheeking out the bessht in myself. What a cliché!’

“Oh! Shepherd me my blind master, I am guilty of not seeking answers in an empty glass of moonshine on my dashboard. We all get sucker-punched, we all have blindspots. Get out of it”

‘Get out of what?’

“Your Spot”

‘Spot?’

“Your alcove of distress.”

‘Hehe quite a plum pudding conversation we are having here, banality decorated with big words. You haven’t changed much. I am having second thoughts if giving you a ride was a good idea’

“May be, maybe not. But I can bet this is the first time you’re smiling on the whole trip “

‘Why are you here?’

“I guessed you could use some navigation and nostalgia airlines host some very hospitable flights to this place.”

‘So Mr. Navigator you’re going to choose all the turns for me?’

“Au contraire, it shall be the other way round and I won’t complain.”

‘What if I fatigue?’ His voice: listless and grim.

“You’ll see through it. Keep faith”.

‘Keep faith, Right! I need reasons.’

“Why?”

‘Why? Coz I hate reason role-playing a crippled little brother to faith. Faith: the fulcrum around which the world revolves. The war of religions, the concept of money, even science does not escape unscathed: ‘atoms are spherical’ predicates the kinetic theory of gases which underlies the working principle of air conditioner of my car. All connected through a causal DAG yet faith stands as a force in itself and does not always require reason to validate it. Like a cruel trick nature played on us’

“Don’t you think we played a cruel trick on ourselves? The language of reason is defined in a definite framework with finite outcomes. It’s not designed to work precisely in random universe with literally inexhaustible outcomes. That’s where faith comes in. It shields us from a callous resignation to the external world while we keep our reason at work exploring options. On a long enough time-line a team of reason and faith always win. Think of them as expedients for survival, each used when their application is appropriate. Besides you don’t question survival, do you? Because you’re not wired to, your reason too is no more than a little trick you play on yourself guided by your primal need to survive. Existence precedes Essence, hence my pathological optimism that this too shall pass if you keep faith.”

His face...austere, slowly stretching for a smile. His eyes laden with unruffled lunacy. The rain ceased; making the road resplendent grey.

’I guess it’s time you play me something’

“Of course!”

Supercondensed Summary: If you could summon your future self, how cool is that for a super power?

A story of satanic convenience

Struggling in a pensive quicksand, he drew his last strength to trudge uphill in a remote hope of finding his horizon; only to meet an ashen sky drenched in an early morning fog with a dull greeting reflection from an ocean now at his feet. His mind wondered if he had a choice while his body prepared for the chill and impact of his imminent plunge. Light, sound and regret all submerged in a deafening silence and apathy. He had again opted for the default- a path of least action, presuming he had an option.

With a few rehearsed motions of his lean frame he found himself regaining balance and breath, so he paused to collect himself. Meanwhile in close vicinity, a fairy had fallen, not to her sins but at the caprice of the ocean. As natural order would have it- The silence and apathy of solitude gave way to shared warmth of mutual embrace.

To each lick of her sore, she asked who he was. "Satan" he diffidently replied each time. Fixing each other they began to converge. In the stupor of this merging existence he thought to himself if they were anything more than conveniently arrayed on this wave of time. Little did he know that the albatross of convenience borne by him; was secretly endorsed by her too. It all came down to one question: could he love the Satan in her and could she love the Fairy in him?

Supercondensed summary: A story of a selfish guy who does whatever is convenient to him, but he's faced with his own hypocrisy when he finds it uneasy to accept that he's not the only one who does "what's convenient". The selfish guy is me.

The K-Map Minimizer

Motivation: The K-Map minimizers I found over the net had an upper limit to the no: of variables they could handle in a Boolean expression. I could not grasp why something that’s based on an axiom as simple as X+X'=1 has not been generalized for n variables, where n is arbitrarily large.

On closer examination I found what kept us from finding a generalized solution. Often we look at things not as they are but as we are. We (humans) follow a Top to Bottom approach to solve Karnaugh Maps i.e. finding patterns on a '0' '1' matrix. That’s not how computers need to solve it. K-Maps are visual aids for humans, which are redundant for computers. Here I present a Bottom-up approach at solving a Boolean function which treats minterms as elements that "mate" to evaluate the function. A pdf elaborating my approach can be found here.

Fatal Approximation

I stood in a corner of a room a little too dark for my weary eyes and fuzzy state of mind to determine its shape. Its smokiness resembled the chaos the day gone by, particles drunk on the idea of Brownian motion. A familiar tune played in a distant background, a little too distant to be generated in the same space as me.

With each sip of my drink, my senses made truce with the smokiness and pungency of the room and my mind with the haunting uncertainty that precedes a tomorrow.

The light source in the room shied, creating a perfect canvas for human outlines ending changing moving at the whim of the spirit in my glass, save the blue one.

It seemed to grow, unhurried moving towards me. My pupils could dilate no further to see the sly on the face enveloped by blue proclaiming its independence from the liquid now in my stomach crunching my guts, but my heart felt it.

Mumbled words "Love is a fatal approximation of reality" knocked on my ear drums with a husky female voice, part of me that was still awake confirmed registry. I wondered if the words were a part of the song or emanated from the outline that now had a scent.

"It has a will of its own, it makes you believe what it wants" I answered more to myself than the scent and the outline.

"What does? Love or reality?"

"How does it matter now? I made the approximation dint I?"

"Men live by choices and approximations; it’s wiser to avoid the fatal ones"

My lips contorted in a scorn "Only if you know which ones are fatal" I muttered.

"Are you ready to make another one tonight?" she asked, but the tone lacked the expectation it generally carries with that particular question.

My hand sandpapered in a deliberate move against the contour of her spine, feeling the metallic friction of our bodies or of the choice we just made.I moistened her neck with warm vapors of my breath as if compensating for the previous gesture.

We kissed...as if writing an endnote to a century of romantic literature. She convulsed in a loose frame made by my arms around her hip. We kissed again as if writing an endnote to each other.

Supercondensed summary:I am drinking in a smoky room after a hard day, a girl walks up to me, we talk nonsense and then we kiss! Twice!

Well, the shirt doesn't seem to come off!!

as the young men forage at a hard earned supper,
street dogs gape with mixed emotions of fear and anticipation,
lights ebb in a calculated rhythm of their cautioned footsteps,
corners lose their distinct geometry; milestones...their measure,
silhouettes of men dissolve in a typical blue murk,
and the clamor of garbled voices is unusually absent,
in revolt of this nothingness, someone hums a flat tone :

...hmmmmm...
will i be missed?
the air wont care...
who's lungs it fills..
saline lips..
funny thing in my eyes..

Supercondensed summary: I am drunk on false collage pride and shit scared of taking on the corporate world. Also theres a sense of nostalgia.