Nenjil Nindravai

I'm in India. Home sweet home!! Do you know what the predominant question in India is? A software professional recently asked me THE question - "Which platform are you working on?"



:)

It means a lot to those who understand this picture!



For others... a post is coming up very soon.

Can't argue with that. Could you?

This post does not have any direction. It does not follow any rules of writing that I feel like I am taking revenge on my English teacher. I am just too bored. It’s hot and humid in Florida. Work is busy. I am learning something about Oracle data-cubes. It is someway of storing multi-dimensional data. I have always wondered if this world has more that three dimensions (I am not talking about time being 4th dimension), a true 4th (or may be more) spatial dimension.

Let me slightly digress. I did my Masters in Operations Research. If I were to dramatize why I chose OR as my masters, I say I owe it all to ants. You heard me – ANTS. When I was in school, to be precise when I was in 6th standard, I learned about how ants find the shortest path to their food. To cut the long story short, they use pheromes, a kind of scent. I was so amazed that whenever I find a line of ants feasting on some sweet in our kitchen counter, I would erase the pherome around the sweet and move the sweet away. The ants would run hither and thither to locate the sweet again. What a sadist I was back then?!!

I grew up and exactly 12 years later, I went to Purdue and was visualizing solution space of a linear programs in multi-dimensions. That was when I was taught to question if this world is exactly 3 dimensional? As a first step, let us imagine the world to be 4 dimensional. Say Mr. G is a four dimensional person, i.e. He can see and deal things in 4 spatial dimensions. How will we 3D human beings looks to him? To get a little perspective, let us look at the ants in the kitchen counter. The kitchen counter is so big that they can move only in 2 dimensions. Assuming they do not sense (even smell) in what we call the Z-dimension, they wouldn't know what stuck them. The sweet just disappeared off the kitchen counter in thin space and re-appeared somewhere else (in x and y dimensions). Looks like a magic to those 2 dimensional creatures. Isn't it? Mr. G can do it to we 3D people. He can bring out something locked in a 3D room without even opening that room. Things that we call as scientifically impossible today, is possible in that 4D spatial world. Sometimes, I think there really is a 4D Mr. G who is watching on us. (No points for guessing who that Mr. G is?). Sometimes he plays with us a little. This is what I thought when I read this news yesterday. May be He is a sadist too!!

Leaving aside my philosophy, let me get on to my next opinion. Now we assume ants line in 2 dimension. They cannot travel in the 3rd dimension. OK? Imagine one infinite 2D sheet (technically 2D can stretch to infinity). Make imagine two of them. So there are 2 infinite 2D sheets which are parallel to each other. A set of ants live in 1 sheet and another set lives on the other. How much ever they explore their 2D, they wouldn't know if similar ants live elsewhere. Even if the sheets are not exactly parallel, 2D intersect only in a line (1 Dimension). So when each of these sets of ants explore, only if an ant from the other world (sheet) is present in the intersecting line at the same time, they would know about the other existing world. Now let us extrapolate it to 3D. Two 3D worlds intersect in a 2D. So, in the whole exploration of extra territorial species, we would know that life exist somewhere else only if a similar 3D world intersect at a 2D sheet, both of us are present in that sheet at the same time.

To make things complex, what if instead of two 2D sheets, there are many more, some intersecting and some not. All these happens only in a 4 Dimensional world. If we take it to 5 dimension, For Mr. G in 5D, a 3D world looks like a dot in 3D world. Each small particle in our 3D world is a dot and we were assuming, the whole world is made of these small particles. From Mr.G's perspective, out whole 3D world is only peck of dust. This is what I was thinking yesterday. Anyway, before I could think of 6D and above, I heard the good news that Atlantis touched this part of the 3D world again and Sunita Williams reached back safe. Thank you Mr. G!

On a different note, I uploaded this video in Youtube and somebody asked me if it is Neelambari or Punnaga Varali. Any music expert please help!

A lot of change at office in the last 3 months - Restructuring, resignations, layoff, transfer. Surprisingly, I have taken the change much better than I would have assumed. May be I'm growing up :). Anyway everything happens for good and I am off to the sunshine state. As Calvin would say - "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol'd buddy... ...let's go exploring!"

An 18 hour drive awaits me and for the record -"I hate packing" though this is the eighth time I am shifting apartments in the last 3 years and 10 months.

Been a while here. Have plenty to write. But don't feel like it. I'll just post an awesome video which I got from youtube. It's been 10 years that this article appeared in Chicago tribune and it still is refreshing.




More about this inspiring video:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-970601sunscreen,0,4664776.column
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_sunscreen

For you were my first car, and I have loved you dearly
More dearly than the spoken word can tell !
Though I would own another car in a few days
My heart is full of tears at this farewell !!

Many thanks to you for taking me and my friends and family to innumerable trips. A special thanks to Guru for introducing this special car in my life !