ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

1. The Hindustan Motors Ambassador based on 1957 British Morris Oxford 2. Charing Cross Road in the hill resort town of Ooty [how quaintly English] 3. Young Indian women clad in colorful Saris 4. The nut and chickpea vendor 5.The Nilgiri hills of western Tamil Nadu 6. Decrepit railway coaches at a decrepit railway station 7. The Tea plantations of Ooty. Recently I visited the hill resort town of Ooty, in the extreme west of the Indian State of Tamil Nadu, about 2700 meters above sea-level I found many relics of the time when the British planters,soldiers and missionaries were here. A town with a name like Wellington, a road called Charing Cross, and a bookstore called Higginbottom's are a reminder of the days when the pallid English retired to the hills to escape the stuporific heat of the Indian summer. But more than the ghost of its ex-colonial status, I found in India many disturbing signs that make me doubt whether it should be put in the same league as China when we talk ...

1. Artificial Life Forms generated by a computer program 2. Tom Ray's Tierra Artificial Life and World -less graphical but no less revealing 3. Conway's Game of Life-cellular automata, Life created on a Grid A ONE-PAGE DEFINITION OF LIFE Prologue Until a few decades ago, most people thought they knew what it meant to say that something was alive. Breathing, eating, the ability to reproduce, having a shape, existing in a time-space dimension etc were some of the characteristics which defined Life. Until the advent of computers and programmers who wrote code that could also perform most of the things which living things do. And that has led people [like me] to re-evaluate the meaning of saying that you are a living thing. It was John von Neumann, who first thought of self-reproducing cellular automata, and inspired John Conway, Chris Langton, Tom Ray, and Stephen Wolfram, John Holland and countless others to institute the study and creation of entities that exhibited life-like be...

1. Selling Shanghai Hairy Crabs and River Shrimp In The Waiting Room of Suzhou Railway Station 2. A Popular Pastime Among Chinese Babyboomers: Card Games At The Park 3. Aplate of Jellied Shark Meat. 4. An Autumnal Hot Pot Dish: Frog Legs, Lotus Roots, Leek, Garlic, Pine Nuts etc 4. The Ancient Back Gate to City of Suzhou, 5. View From One of the Many Bridges in this Venice of the East. Om my last trip to Shanghai, I took a 30 minute train ride to Suzhou, in Jiangsu province ,one of the most beautiful cities in China-sometimes called the Venice of the East, because of the number of canals and bridges that criss-cross the city. Being on the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, Suzhou has always been an important city for commerce, having been in existence for at least 2500 years. But it's also known for its scenic bridges, pagodas, shophouses with verandahs and wood- carved windows. Though only about 80 kilometers from metropolitan Shanghai it has a distinctly rural ambience. W...

The British have their bacon and eggs, the French their croissants, and the Japanese their porridge and pickles. The Americans have their McDonald's and their Dunking Donuts and the food that they serve in Diners and Truck Stops. The popular Singapore breakfast food above is fried Rice Noodles [more accurately, Vermicelli]. In the local Hokkien dialect it is called Bee Hoon which literally translates as "powdered rice". Its relative blandness goes well with the fried fish, slice of luncheon meat [what you call Spam], and fried egg. Cut red chilies, and Chinese parsley are garnishes which complete the dish. The fried fish is especially tasty because it has been marinaded in a blend of soya sauce and Tamarind, a sourish fruit. Singapore Bee Hoon is a light, healthy and tasty breakfast and costs about US$2.30 even for this Deluxe version with all the trimmings. Some people have just the plain noodles which costs 70 cents. But that's not all. My breakfast is always accomp...

Randomness :" I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."~~ Ecclesiastes 9:11 Non-linear Feedback Loops : “I tell you everyone who has, shall more be given, but from him who has nothing, even what he has shall be taken.” ~~Matthew 25:29 Cycles :"When the seven years of abundance enjoyed by the land of Egypt came to an end, the seven years of famine set in.."~~ Genesis 41:53/54 1. I-Dimensional Continuous Wavelet Transform of SP500 January 06-July 08 2. S&P500 Weekly Data: Jan 2006 to July 09 2008 (133 data points) 3. Wavelet-based Synthesized Time Series Example A 4. Wavelet-based Synthesized Time Series Example B 5 . Wavelet-based Synthesized Time Series Example C The reason why the stock market's direction (as represented by an Index) cannot be pr...

A Simple Chinese Repast: Click on Images for fullsize and Details. It sure is comforting in these inflationary times to know that a nutritious dinner for two can cost only US$3.50. In Singapore, the Teochew Chinese [a dialect group from Guangdong] are famous for their Rice Gruel meal accompanied by a choice of dozens of small dishes. The accompanying dishes could be something as simple as boiled peanuts or tofu cakes, to dishes like braised duck or steamed Flower crabs. If you stick to the simple stuff, a Teochew porridge dinner for two, even in big-city Singapore costs less than the price of a Big Mac. My meal for two persons downing 3 bowls of rice gruel each @ 20 cents a bowl ( above pictures of the 3 dishes, and a bowl of rice gruel) was a delicious and healthy meal that cost me just US$3.50 at the current exchange rate. The dishes are (from second top picture): (1) Minced pork with black beans, (2)boiled Silver Fish with lime and fresh-cut red peppers (3) Salted Mustard Greens. (B...

Believe it or not, guitars breathe, and they do need to breathe if they are to sound good. Take out a guitar that has been kept in its case for ages, especially an acoustic guitar, and pluck the strings. It will sound muffled and stifled. The ringing sustain with clear overtones that you expect from a good guitar will be absent. But leave the guitar outside its case for a few days, in a place that's not so humid, and there will be a difference in the sound. Good wines breathe, and so do guitars. The type of finish (paint) used on a guitar is a very important factor in its ability to breathe. Many vintage guitars sound great because they do not have thick coats of paint but were au naturel, or had only a thin coat of paint followed by a top coat of nitrocellulose lacquer. The ban on nitrocellulose lacquers (for health or environmental reasons I think) and the fashion for guitars to have custom colors like Shell Pink, Pacific Blue, Candy Apple Red, etc resulted in guitars that could...