Just finished "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. Really an intense read. All his descriptions keep snaking through dream, reality, cyberspace and back. I really had to concentrate hard to follow the story. This book was the origin of terms like "cyberspace", "jack in" (to mean connecting to a network). The book was written in 1984, when Internet was only beginning to become mainstream, but Gibson already imagined global networks, ubiquitous and wearable computing etc.
Of course, Neuromancer was the single biggest source of inspiration for "The Matrix" movies. Look here for a list of comparisons.
Hmm, now I am thinking of picking up "His Dark Materials", where I left it from.

Gmail now has POP access. Neat.If you use pine to read email like I do, here is an easy way of accessing gmail from pine.
Create a file called .gmail with the entry

inbox-path={pop.gmail.com/service=pop3/ssl/user=yourgmailusername}

To read gmail, just type

pine -x .gmail

Diwali came and went. No fire crackers. Boohoo. At least I had some good home food,thanks to Karthik and his wife.

Yesterday I went to "Diwali Night" organised by IIT alumni. They had a competition of sorts between the different IITs, which was fun. Most of them enacted some skit parodying Hindi movies. I felt the whole hall was overflowing with pride for being an IITian. Thats not unfounded,IIT alumni list will read like the who's who of computer industry.

I didn't think I will feel cold at 50s. Being used to sub zero at Michigan, I thought I could just laugh at people who say its cold here. I do feel the bite sometimes here. Not as much as in Michigan, though. Goes to prove what I am really used to is the 100s in India.

I watched The Incredibles yesterday. Hilarious movie. Computer animation is
getting more and more realistic. Bay area movie theatres are so crowded.
AMC 20 was sold out for most of the night shows. And there was a huge queue
to get into the movie hall even if one had a ticket.
I kept telling my room mate how in Ann Arbor we can just walk into a theatre,
few minutes before the movie begins, buy the ticket, go to the snack stall to
buy sour patch and there would be still enough time to get to the hall and
find good seats.


Currently reading Philip Pullman's "His dark materials" trilogy.
Entertaining read.

I went to Castro street in San Francisco on Halloween evening. Didn't stay there long enough, so I probably missed the actual fun which might have happened later in the night. Nevertheless, I saw people with funny and interesting Halloween costumes.Pity I didn't take a camera. There were two guys wearing Bush and Kerry masks and boxing trunks and gloves. They were mock fighting, with the guy in Bush mask getting knocked out all the time. There was another guy with silver paint all over and performing robot dance movements for Michael Jackson songs. He was pretty good at it.

Well, other than that, nothing much has been happening. I pretty much follow the same schedule of going to work at 9 and returning at 7 during weekdays and sleep the whole weekend. Work is interesting, so I am not complaining. I am planning to rent a car this month, so hopefully I will do something interesting during weekends.