Sunday, February 17, 2008

Quotes from Einstein

"Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest."

Those words were said by Einstein, amongst the greatest scientist/thinkers of our time, he spent his life working on some of the most intriguing problems of his/our time. His quotes are a source of inspiration for me; another quote of his is
"What does a fish know about the water it swims in?"
I am reading a book on chaos called "CHAOS The amazing science of the unpredictable" by James Gleick. I picked up last year in Dubai. It's been a pretty good read so far, with some really though provoking arguments and some really interesting questions. Two of the ones that really seem trivial to start with are
Q1. Does wind have a velocity?
Q2. Can you measure the length of a coast line?
I will let you figure out those on your own but I will provide an answer to another question to help you start thinking about the answers.
Q3. How many buckets of water are in the Pacific Ocean?
A3. It depends on the size of the bucket.

Unfortunately very few bookstores in Saudi Arabia carry good books on science/math. I have been trying to get my hand on a book on Fourier transforms for a while but have had no luck. I applied for a credit card so I could buy it but it online but I was turned down. I applied for a card at the bank I work at, and they turned me down! *Insert explicative here* what the !@#$ do I need to do to get a credit card? There is more than one way to skin a cat... So I will be applying for a card at a competing bank and get approved because I have to enough money in my account to qualify for one. Plus, I don’t have bad credit history, heck I don’t have a credit history, not that it matters in Saudi Arabia. I have always been amazed at how much importance a credit history plays in the lives of people in the USA and how it matters little to none in Saudi Arabia.
Well enough of that, time to go back to writing plugins for eclipse. I can't get my plugin to connect to mysql on my target runtime; I have got to keep working on it.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Today's funny moment

Telephone: Ring Ring
Me: Hello ?
Guy on the other side: Hello, Syed Wajahat?
Me: Speaking.
Guy on the other side: Hi, I wanted to know why your phone extension was not working.
Me: ????
Me: uhh.. it works now, thanks
Guy on the other side: Your welcome

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