The bus and wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi. Or, in Japanese, 侘寂. The first letter, spelled wabi in Japanese, suggests disappointment and abandonment. The second letter, sabi in Japanese, suggests stillness and desolation. Together, these characters represent a Japanese aesthetic that cannot easily be explained without examples.

The bus sported its indiscreet uniform of orange, white and purple.Today, I boarded the bus home. Sat in the front seat on the second deck for it offered the widest view.
The plastic pane covering the tube which the driver looked through to observe the upper deck had its frame broken.
One side was missing. The others were chipped.
The window was stained with teardrops of translucent grey dust; its gray frame was yellow with dirt.
There weren't many people up on the second deck; just me and a few aging uncles performing an on-again-off-again conversation in a dialect that would probably disappear from regular usage given another generation.


Everything was incomplete, they have suffered under the hand of time.

And in it all in all the dirt and dust and rust it was beautiful.


Like the journal wrinkled from rain and dog-eared from thumbing.

Unlike the storybook protected by non-biodegradable plastic.

Like the clumps of damaged thread on your aged garment.

Unlike the dress and sash you bought just yesterday.

Like the yellowing bedsheets of five years old.

Unlike the LCD television, sleek and glossy.


The paint forced on the bus peel under rain revealing bits and portions of metal dulled white.

2 ideas

1. Bottled coffee
   
   
   
   • Well, we have bottled tea already, so why not? It might be a cultural crime, but there are lots of apathetic wage slaves who just want to get their jolt of caffeine in the office from a 500mL/1.5L bottle. Of course, research must be done on the effects of acidic coffee on plastic bottles.
   
   
   
   


2. 
   Online file storage
   
   
   
   • But we have Google Docs already! And box.net! Well, the thing I'm considering right now is not so much google docs. Imagine an online file storage service that can be opened in your file browser (or Windows Explorer). Your zip and archive files can be opened, you have thumbnails for your pictures, you have previews of your file icons, your flash files are animated, your video files too, your program code is highlighted, and, you have an integrated image editor, text editor, word processor, archiver, spreadsheet program, presentation editor, and all the office programs save in the ODT format. You can also save and open HTTP files/web pages. By the way, check out www.liondrive.com
   
   
   
   

Immature fac and nCr functions in Python

Okay, here goes nothing!

def fac(n,k=1):
 #k for multifactorials
 if n<k:
     return 1
 else:
     return n*fac(n-k)

def nCr(n,*k): #(n,k1,k2,k3,k4), no k defaults to n/2
 #negative generalization not supt for multifact
 for r in k:
     r=r//1 #get floor of r
     if r<0: #negative exception
         return 0
 if not k:
     k=(abs(n)//2,)
 if len(k)<=1: #if binomial, n*...*(n-k+1)/k!
     prod=1 #k=n-k is not used for negative considerations
     for i in range(k[0]):
         prod*=n/(i+1)
         n-=1
 else: #if multinomial, n!/k1!k2!k3, does not generalize to neg
     if n<0: #negative exception
         return 0
     prod=fac(n)
     for r in k: #for every dimension
         prod/=fac(r)
 return prod

Hehe : D

The forest-inspired cities of the future

Humans. Beings descended from apes. Beings who developed their own culture, began to understand the natural world. Began to realize the principles of the Universe. We now have cities. We now have control of our own future, well, sort of. But humans still long for the rain forests that we once roamed in. Studies have shown that greenery in offices make employees less stressed out. The familiar greenery, the familiar plants; humans still long for them.

We live in urban areas now. Be it slums or cities, more and more people are migrating to areas of high population density. The best cities have good infrastructure and tall skyscrapers.

And what better model for skyscrapers than the tree? What better model for cities than the rain forests that we once live in? The big difference lies here; while we used to be large creatures living among the branches of trees about 2 to 20 times our size, we shall, in future, live in trees about 200 times our size. As the "water" of the trees.

The roads, pavements, walkways are the roots of the trees. The lifts, the well, are the xylem and phloem. The corridors are the branches and our offices the leaves, where all the work gets done. All that is needed is to devise a system to deliver food (directly synthesized from soil) and furniture through pipes, make our living spaces more "organic" in design, and employ "green technology". The paints on the wall will not be conventional paints; they convert the unreflected light into voltage. The laminated plastic-glass walls have nanomachines in them that purify the air, transpiring noxious gases. At the tips are flowers and fruits, a metaphor for communal spaces where we interact, work, play, create. Should we need any quick transportation, recyclable, reliable parachutes provide a quick means down.

Each space will be unique, each with its own quality. All the factors; sunlight, space, atmosphere will affect the space and structure of every space. Every piece of furniture is custom-designed to your wishes. You design the furniture you want; the computer designs the furniture. Out of a vessel comes a seed, and you place it in your room. It latches onto the wall or floor of your room, and incubates; grows. In the course of a day, you have the furniture you want. Should you decide to get rid of it, throw it into the Bin room; bacteria designed to recognize the NanoID/DNA of your furniture decomposes it in an instant.

By night; here is what you see; the dull cream or orange glow from cell-shaped rooms. The reddish or bluish bloom from the flower-shaped communal spaces. Tiny lights coming and going, in a strange network of roads; these are the cars of commuters.

To build such a skyscraper, all you need is a seed, sunlight and water. And people to live in.

Yes, the future is exciting.

The cell: a fairyland

From TED talks. TED FTW. If nothing, watch the last quarter of the talk.

With great wisdom or power or love comes great responsibility

Say this pledge out loud :D

1. My life is mine because of the altruism of my benefactors.
2. My luxury is mine because of the altruism of my benefactors.
3. I shall always seek to pass my benefit to others.
4. I shall not receive thanks or thank another till all others eligible has recieved my benefit.
5. I shall always remind and encourage one another to benefit first those most in need.
6. I shall always thirst for knowledge and ideas.
7. I shall always be skeptical of the knowledge and ideas I recieve; I must always distill opinions I hears about into their building blocks and test them against the scientific method, history and literature, in that order of precedence, to see if the idea is permanent and sustainable.
8. I shall always seek real-world applications for the ideas that I discover, and attempt to benefit everybody from these ideas

A loong hiatus

And even longer for my other blog, which has just been restored! Hooray!