Slowly starting our goodbyes...

As Gaurav put it very pointedly: It sucks that we're leaving Australia. Given all the different factors, however, it was the best choice we could make. That obviously doesn't mean that the decision wasn't heart wrenchingly difficult.

We have now been living in Sydney for almost exactly 3 years and it has truly become our home in that time. We've got friends, a social life, regular activities like bushwalking or geocaching and our every day life is running really smoothly. After our move back to Europe, we'll have to set everything up again. Luckily enough, we already know a couple of people in and around Tilburg - so it's not like starting completely from scratch.

The hardest part of leaving a place you call home for at least some time of your life is saying goodbye to people who are dear to your heart. You know you are going to miss them terribly (yes, I'm talking about you guys, Gaurav and Gunjan), but you still try and keep a brave face. I guess the advantage to slow long goodbyes is that you can talk about all the good times spent together, spend lots of time together and start making plans for future visits. Modern technology will definitely help us keep in touch!

But in the end it all comes down to giving each other a great big hug, trying not to cry and then walking away without looking back. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes... |sniff|

Oh well, there are still a couple of weeks to go - 12 to be precise. Let's make the most of it!

this sucks

just heard from menno and tanja that they'd be leaving australia for netherlands since menno couldn't get a suitable permanent position here. This really sucks, not just because me and Gunjan love Colwin so much, but also because Australia cannot afford to lose good academics like menno and cling on to some really really pathetic ones (without naming - you know who you are).

it was extremely depressing and haunting last evening. memories just kept coming back to the mind and all the future moments we thought we'd go enjoy with our good friends slowly start unreachable. what troubles me the most is the very idea of Thursday, camping in early summer, beaches all summer, going past barr street and realizing that there is no one to call your name and reach out for you. menno and tanja have been really good friends with no pretenses or hang-overs, great role models for us to bring up our own kids.

blessed are we with the technology through which we can still see them and colwin, with the emails, super fast posts and air travel which is always a very realistic oppurtunity to meet each other.

when they come back (if they ever do), colwin will be six and we promise we will be there at the airport to get him - whether you want us or not. 13, barr street will always be one of the fondest memories of our lives. we will miss you guys - A LOT :(((((((((

Fifth corner of the Four Corners

My name is Gunjan also.. and I'm Gaurav's sister. I live in Austin, Texas (Yee..haw...) with my two daughters Maya(4) and Anjali(2) and husband Ravi.

I'm hoping this blog will help Gaurav, Gunjan and me to know more about each other day to day lives and things that seem so trivial to mention in the long distance(kinda expensive) calls. Also give me some time to put all the zillion things I can never remember to tell on phone/email.

Which gives me a great segue to launch into Mom talk:-).

Yesterday Anjali needed a diaper change (this story has other details which I'm not too sure are appropriate for this forum). Ravi lifted her up between his arm and waist kind of like football (not soccer). She yelled and said 'Let me down. I'm a lady".

I think this one has taken after Gaurav.....

Important people

I can hardly believe it. Me? writing a blog? Today, the world has changed. I always thought that people who write blogs think they are they best and that because of that other people should read what they write. Think about it: the greatest people obviously have interesting stuff to write.

Let me emphasize, this really is not why I am writing a blog entry now. The real reason is a bit silly. I am looking for a convenient way to keep track of stuff that I do. With stuff that I do, I mainly mean work related stuff. Projects I'm working on, students I'm supervising, etc. I sometimes write down what's going on in a project and with student supervision I really try to keep track of what they are doing so I can yell at them when they haven't done what they said they were going to do.

Keeping track of what you're doing is not easy it turns out. Text files only work with text. Tables (especially when they get a bit bigger) and images are a bit hard to get in. LaTeX files are a bit better, but inconvenient, HTML may be better, but is annoying to work with manually. What's next? Wikis? Blogs?

Today I created an account on Blogger. This blog is set to private (it's about my thoughts on personal projects), so there's no need to start searching for it (if you were planning that at all). After I created this, I saw that I was already a member of a blog, which I had complete forgotten.

I'll see if blogs do what I want in my project management documentation gap. If not, perhaps I'll become one of these important people who have blogs. I'm sure everybody has been waiting for this blog entry and now they'll want more. What have I done???

potential student names to write on whiteboard

here at macquarie, we mark students for their assignments in practical sessions.
they are required to write their names on whiteboards, the practical demonstrator (demon)
calls out their names and marks them. I like to write some names on the whiteboard and see the demon yell these out in front of the laughin class :D yes, i'm bart simpson - just that i'm on the other (better) side of the table ;-)

hoosawea ner
aimamo ron (this is the best)
aimanid iat
aimawea ner
homer simpson (some demons fall for even that !!!!)
mesohor nee
yumo ron

and the list continues......

G2 numbers

a couple of months ago, Faiq reminded me of a puzzle in endgame in times of india -

find a number n such that if the last digit is moved to first digit, the value is doubled.

eg if n=1234, you move 4 to the front and n becomes 4123 but 4123 is not equal to 1234*2

i had posted one solution to the paper about 5/6 years back using rudimentary approach.

but being the super-geek-nerd phd student, i derived the root family of such numbers (8 such

numbers only) along with a proof that a concatenation of any such number n (n n n.....)

is also a member of the family. so there are infinite such numbers - proof is here :)

the sad thing was, when i contacted the global math repository people, turns out somebody

already proved this 20 years back - damn you, mathematicians :'(

eternity 2

recently, gunjan and I bought eternity 2 and having 256 pieces that need to be put together, it has 256! combinations out of which (presumably) only one is correct.

now 256! =

85781777534284265411908227168123262515778152027948561985965565037726945255
3147589377440291360451408450375885342336584306157196834693696475322289288
49742602567963733256336878644267520762679456018796886797152114330770207752
66464514647091873261008328763257028189807736717814541702505230186084953190
68138257481070252817559459476987034665712738139286205234756808218860701203
61108315209350194743710910172696826286160626366243502284094419140842461593
6000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

(this is calculated by using my math library I wrote coz I had nothing better to do - of course you realize calculations on large numbers - thousands of digits long, require alternative approach since integers and other variables can only take so much. the program is available here - *the program might still have some bugs in division but multiplication and factorial work fine)

which is a humble 507 digit long number. 10^507 approx= 2^1700.

so this problem reduces to an AES-cracking problem with key space = 1700 bits.

now cracking AES-1024 itself is "computationally infeasible" so 1700 bit would require some commitment I reckon. anyways, the puzzle would be good jigsaw to put on the wall once the solution is eventually made public :D

the puzzle has a healthy bounty of 2mn USD after which one doesn't need to work much I reckon. However, it would be nice to get the money in advance so that I can put my life on hold to solve the puzzle in the first place :D

Colwin day!

Its our most awaited day of the week again! Woo hoo!

I am looking forward to learning to play soccer from Colwin. He tried really hard to teach me on Monday but was very disappointed that I can't play like Govosh :)

Back from hell

Recently, one of my very good friends, Daniel, recovered from a brain surgery. It was a month back that he was told by doctors he had a type of brain tumor at a time he was living alone in Sydney, his family being in Indonesia and Melbourne. I can only imagine the emotions he would have gone through. Just the thought of which scares me. The surgery was a success and he is back doing what he likes, studying math (ewe!!) and teaching programming and algorithms.
I wish him all the best and pray that no one else goes through the hell he and his family has been through.