Google Drive

Google has been kind enough to invite me to use Google Drive this week. At first glance the service looks interesting and I know this service is useful. I have been using Dropbox from their very beginning. So the service is not entirely new to me. Google drive is pretty much identical to Dropbox except Google drive supports partial synchronization while Dropbox does not. It means Google Drive can synchronized a different set of folders in different computers; which is kind of cool because, now I can synchronize my personal files in my laptops and home computers while my works are synchronized in different work stations in my lab. On the top of that I have been paying Google for storage for last couple of years and I can use them up in Google drive as well. So I have plenty of incentives to move to Google Drive from Dropbox.

However, it becomes uncomfortably difficult to trust Google these days. The way they are pushing everything toward Google+ that makes me little cautious to move to Google Drive (I feel sad for my Picasa). Moreover, Google Drive is not publicly available yet, so it is too yearly to bet all my files on behalf of a beta product. Well I can do something interesting. I installed Google Drive and create a Dropbox folder inside it. Now moved my previously configured Dropbox folder into the new Dropbox folder. So now my Dropbox synchronizes everything I have in my Dropbox and Google Drive synchronizes everything inside the Dropbox folder and few mores (those are in siblings of my dropbox folder). In this way if something unexpected happen to my Google drive my dropbox still have those files. I hope Dropbox would not die pretty soon. Good luck Dropbox!

Java variable argument function!

I found an interesting compile time error today. Java allow variable argument function in that case the signature of the function looks something like, 

Class Y {

int func(int ... x)

}

However the function can be invoked as y.func() without any compile time error. That is kind of interesting for language like Java. It invokes the function with an array of integer of size 0. The same function can be overload with not argument at all! However they don't allow empty call if the function is overloaded with two different types of variable arguments.

ফিরে যাওয়া

অনেক অনেক দিন আগে, একদিন বসে বসে গান শুনছিলাম , কার যেন গান; গানের কথা ছিল, "আমিও পথের মত হারিয়ে যাব, আসব না ফিরে আর, আসব না ফিরে কোন দিন।" আমার পাশে বসা ছিল শিশির ও তখন খুব ছোট। আমিও গুন গুন করছিলাম। হঠাৎ করে শিশির জিঙ্গেস করে বসল, দাদা তুমি কই যাবা? সেদিন জানতাম না, আমি কই যাব? আজও জানি না আমি কই যাব, কিন্তু জানি আর কোনদিন ফিরে যাব না।

Medieval fair, 2012

How much things could change over time. When I went to the medieval fair for the first time I thought it was cool. Lot of interesting costume thing was going on. Many people are roaming around in a medieval set. I thought it was kind of cool. But when I went to the medieval fair this year, my idea is kind of opposite. I feel like it is kind of boring. Partly because all the same people wearing same costumes again and again. Even worse all the stalls are even similar. When I went to take picture, I realized some the characters are actually my familiar. I took picture of them last year. I guess this is the norm of a campus town, here things don't change, people change.

Professional research ethics training

I am attending professional research ethics training this weekend. The training is okay, it kind of remind me the old days when I joined OU. I had to attend plenty of trainings at that time. I have not been attending any training for last three years or so. So it's kind of remind me my early days at OU. My personal feeling is good about the training.

Now what they discuss! Well they were kind of trying to discuss ethical decision making process in the research. The nature of the beast suggest that there is not single right or wrong answer of these questions. All answers are equally valid under different circumstances. So, the whole point is not implanting any right or wrong into the trainees but rather focus on the problems and discuss as many different circumstances as possible to answer the question. Under that perspective I think the training is pretty successful. 

Personally I don't believe anything called ethics but I do believe in social responsibilities. Probably social responsibility is the reason I am not going to street and doing whatever I feel like doing. I believe making a better society is part of my responsibilities: it is the same responsibility that make people take care of their children. Think of a situation where you take good care of your children but then at the end you send them to hell. 

So I think if you take good care of your kids, I think you should take good care of your society because society is the place where they are gonna be within couple of years.

If you know what I am talking about!

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is not in the initial product list of Google. I mean the Google bar that hosts a list of google products. I don't know about other people I used to used it a lot and now they remove it from the list. is this a flop product? I kind of like it. I used to use it every day. I wish they would not dis-continue google scholar anytime soon. Now-a-days the way they started dis-continuing their products, I would not be surprised if they discontinue all of their products except google+. Users already did the job for Google in case of google+ :)

Quotes!

When I was a kid my father used to tell an interesting story. Let’s start with that. Once upon a time there was a wise king. He had a daughter of age 18. The king was thinking of her marriage and like all fathers he decided to set up a quest for a wise and knowledgeable life partner for his daughter. After one week of thinking he came up with an interesting idea. He declared anyone who would be able to answer his two questions would be chosen as Princess’s life partner. So many princes from neighboring states showed up for the quest but apparently none of them had any luck. The king himself starts thinking if nobody can answer his questions, how can he find a perfect match for the princess. After few weeks a janitor showed up to took the challenge and surprisingly he passed! So the entire kingdom became puzzled about the knowledge of the janitor. The king declared he is going to accept the janitor as his daughter’s groom and ordered to start preparation for the wedding.

 But then minister had a different idea and he went to the janitor and asked about the two profound questions that nobody was able to answer. The janitor replied, “Oh! That was easy. When I entered into the room the king showed me one finger and I showed him two in return. Then he showed me three fingers and I showed him my thump finger in return.” The minister got confused and asked, what that first finger means? The janitor replied, “Oh! That was easy, I have three wild hogs and the king was demanding for one.” The minister further asked what your reply was then. The janitor said, “Well, since he is the king and ask for one wild hog, I was ready to give him two, so I showed two fingers.” The minister went on and asked what the second question was then. The janitor replied, “Well, then he asked for three of them and certainly I can’t give him all of them and so I showed him my thump finger.” The minister was kind of surprised and went to the king.

He went to the king and asked about the interview with the janitor. The king replied, “I showed him one finger which means, Allah is one and he replied me he replied me with two fingers which means Mohammed is his messenger. But when I showed him three fingers means who is the third he replied nobody by showing thump finger.” Then the minister explain everything to the king and bla.. bla.. bla..

I hope you all kind of get the idea what was the précis of the story. Seeing and perceiving are two entirely different process. The same thing may bear entirely different meaning to two different people. Human language is ambiguous and therefore whatever we listen we process them based on the knowledge we have so far. The context of any information is very important to process information. No two people understand same thing from same sentence. I have a quote page in my blog. I guess those quotes don’t mean the same thing as do to me. One of my friends was once telling me he used to look at the favorite quotes of any person to know about him. I think a single could be misleading unless I put thought about it. So I think I need to explain those quotes in context of me. Let’s see how it goes.

উত্তরন

বাতাসে ভেজা মাটির গন্ধ, গাছে গাছে নতুন পাতা, বছরের এই সময়ে ঘরে বসে থাকা খুব কষ্ট। জানালা দিয়ে বাইরে তাকিয়ে দেখি বসন্তের ঝকঝকে রোদ। জানালা দিয়ে তাকিয়ে কেমন যেন হারিয়ে যাই। যেতন ফিরে পাই কমপিউটারের মনিটরের দিকে তাকিয়ে। বেটা কমপিউটার কে বালেছিলাম একটা সম্ভাবতার মান নির্নয় করতে, বেটা আমাকে দেখাচ্ছে মাইনাস দুই হাজার! ঐ বেটারও মনে হচ্ছে মাথাটা নষ্ট গেছে। কি আর করা বাতাসে ভেজা মাটির উন্মাতাল গন্ধ, কারই বা মন কাজে বসে। 

বসন্ত! বসন্তের সাথে আমার প্রথম পরিচয় উনিভার্সিটিতে পরার সময়। খুব ভিজতাম বসন্তের প্রথম বৃষ্টিতে আমি আর তিন্নি। কতকাল বৃষ্টিতে ভিজি না। কোনদিন ছাতা কিনি নাই আমি, যখনই বৃষ্টি হত, ভিজতাম, এখনও কিনি নাই, কিন্তু ভেজা আর হয়ে ওঠে না। শুধু বেচে থাকার ব্যবস্থা করতে গিয়েই হিমসিম খাচ্ছি, বাকি সবকিছু কেমন যেন হারিয়ে যাচ্ছে। হঠাৎ বড্ড ক্লান্ত লাগে। কোন কোন দিন কাজ থেকে তারাতারি বের হয়ে যাই কোথাও যাব বলে, যাওয়া হয় না, ঠিক ঘরে ফিরে যাই, গিয়ে কি যা করি ঠিক বুঝে উঠার আগেই রাত হয়ে যায়। সময়ের সাথে এই পাল্লা আর ভাল লাগে না।

শীত আমার একদম ভাল লাগে না, আমি ঠিক সহ্য করতে পারি না, ঘর থেকে বের হতে পারি না, বসন্ত এলে তাই মনটা কেমন যেন উদাস হয়ে যায়। বসন্তেও বের হতে পারি না কাজের চাপে। নিজের জন্যে আজকাল আর কোন সময় নাই, কে জানে কিংবা 'নিজ' বলেই আর কিছুই নাই। এক গুগল ক্রোমে সবকিছু আটকে গেছে। বসন্ত বেটাকে যদি ক্রোমে নিয়ে আসতে পারতাম, তবে আরাম করে উপভোগ করা যেত। 

হারিয়ে যাচ্ছে আমার জীবন থেকে বসন্তরা, হারিয়ে যাচ্ছে আবছা হয়ে যাওয়া ঢাকার ওলিগলি গুলোর মত, হারিয়ে যাচ্ছে ফ্যাকাসে হয়ে যাওয়া বন্ধুদের মুখের মত। ওরা সবাই কেন যেন চলে যাচ্ছে। আমি ঠিক কিছুতেই আর ওদেরকে ধরে রাখতে পারছি না। হারিয়ে যাচ্ছে আমার বাংলার মত, অনেক বাংলা বানানই আর ঠিকমত মনে করতে পারি না আজকাল। আমি সেই অধম যার মা-বাবার মুখও দিন দিন ঘোলা হয়ে যাচ্ছে। ধর্ম, কালচারত কবেই গেছে। এমনকি দেহটাও ঠিক আগের মত নেই।

আমি জানি পুরোনো দিনে আর কোনদিন ফেরত যাওয়া যাবে না, নষ্টালজিয়ার মূল্য আমার জীবনে এখন ব্লগ পর্যন্তই সীমাবদ্ধ। তবু মন মানে না, মন কেন যেন নষ্টাজিক হতে চায়, খুজে বেরায় হারান মুখ গুলকে। কোন কোন দিন সকালটা নষ্ট হয়, বিকেলটা গরিয়ে যায় কাজে মন বসে না, মনটা মুক বধিরের মত ঘুরে বেরায় এঘর ওঘর সেঘর আর ঠিক কি যেন খুজে বেরায় সিরসেন্ধুর গোপালের মত। সবাই বলে এর নাম নাকি 'উত্তরন'!

The dude abides!

Why can’t I be the dude? What makes the dude so special! Why can’t I thrive? Why am I so serious? Why do I think I need to win every race? Why do I think I need to do the right thing every time? Why do I think I need to be acceptable? Why do I think I have to likeable? Why do I think my work has to be perfect? Why do I think I need to graduate fast? Why do I think I need to be loved? Why do I have to be sensible? Why do I think so much? Why do I need to follow routine? Why do I worry so much? Why can’t I just abide like Shiblee abides!