Probabilistic Graphical Models

The Kingkiller Chronicle

After "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R. R. Martin, "Bartimaeus Trilogy" by Jonathan Stroud, "The Kingkiller Chronicle" by Patrick Rothfuss is the third fantasy series I have read in the near past.

Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" needs no further introduction as it has been made amply popular by the ongoing television series "Game of Thrones". If you have watched the series and liked it - I assure you (as almost always), you would love the books better.

Stroud's "Bartimaeus Trilogy" is the only fantasy series I can recall that gave humor a high priority. This was one light, fun series of books.

I also vaguely remember reading a bunch of David Gemmel, David Eddings etc. But since they were not read as a complete series these stories have been long forgotten.

I started on Rothfuss' "The Kingkiller Chronicle" last week.
The two books that have been released are: "The Name of the Wind" & "The Wise Man's Fear".
Both books are a delight to read.
Even though they are huge manuscripts, the style of writing in these books makes for a very quick reading.

"The Name of the Wind" I have to admit, is more crisp and tighter than the second one.
Even with some character assassination around the second half of "The Wise Man's Fear", the story does pull itself together towards the end pretty well to set up the third book.

These books have elements that parallel J K Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, Christopher Paolini's "Inheritance Cycle", J R R Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", Daniel Knauf's "Carnivale" etc.

An excerpt from an interview before Rothfuss' "The Wise Man's Fear" was released:

- "What can readers expect from the two sequels and the trilogy that will follow this one?"

- "Well.... I've already written them. So you won't have to wait forever for them to come out. They'll be released on a regular schedule. One per year.

You can also expect the second book to be written with the same degree of care and detail as this first one. You know the sophomore slump? When a writer's second novel is weaker because they're suddenly forced to write under deadline? I don't have to worry about that because my next two novels are already good to go"

But though the first book was released in 2007, the second one only came out in 2011.
The tentative, unconfirmed date for the third book in the series "The Doors of Stone" seems to be May 1, 2013.

Along with "The Winds of Winter", the sixth installment in Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, Rothfuss' "The Doors of Stone" is another book to look forward to.

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry

Kemmangundi - The trip that was

One of those posts.
You decide to write about a trip. You open a gvim file. And start adding sentences.
Next thing you know it is seven pages long, filled with details that you can't yourself read again.
Even to try to condense it into some manageable length.
You give up.
And forget about it.
Then one day, you have a mail that says: Alert: UNIX Home Directory is 85% full.
You start to delete useless documents occupying precious space in your home area.
Then accidentally chance upon the once concocted drivel.
Decide to start typing directly into the 'New Post' window in the blog.
Without looking at the gvim file.
About the Kemmangundi trip.
Directly from memory.
Heavily condensed. Repetitive.
Using mostly phrases for sentences.
So that - if not for anything else -  waking up at 4:30 AM on a Saturday morning on the 8^th of September, 2012 gets recorded.

Yup. This is one of those posts.

Here we go.

The top points of the top points of the trip.

Mullayanagiri, the highest peak in Karnataka, was reached first.

Stone steps were climbed. 

Through the clouds.

Through horizontal rain.

Through gales of wind.

To the temple on the top.

It was cold. It was wet. It was great. 

There was amateur spelunking involved.

Discarded chips packets and old water bottles were discovered in the caves.

There was amateur photography too. As shown here.

Z Point, Kemmangundi was reached the day after.

The mud was verified to be red.
Red mud paths  were trod upon.
Through small leeches.
Through greenery.
Through Shanti falls:

Till a certain height was crossed when Nature changed.
Red mud tracks were now trod upon:
Through the clouds.
Through horizontal rain.
Through gales of wind.
To the Z point.
It was cold. It was wet. It was better than great.
Bread was had. So were biscuits. Not sure about the biscuits though.
Nature was wonderfully furious.

(Be warned: The Z point picture above captures none of Nature's fury)

Hebbe falls was the last place to be visited before heading back.
Badly kept roads were traveled on worse kept jeeps.
Longer distances were trekked as usual routes were blocked.
By gatekeepers of the coffee plantations.
Through the forest estates.
Through the realm of leeches.
Through streams along the path.
To the breath-taking falls.

 

Literally.
The water was too cold to breathe in.
All of twenty minutes were spent in the water.
Before making the trek back.
Through the realm of leeches.
Through the streams along the path.
Through the forest estates.
In the opposite direction.
Uphill this time.
And without drinking water.

The sight of the jeep at the top provided the same amount of excitement as the falls at the bottom did.
The sight of the punctured wheel took some of that excitement away.
The dysfunctional jack did nothing to help.
Quick trial and error process indicated that six people were necessary and sufficient to tilt a jeep to its side while a seventh quickly changed the tire.
The new old tire held till we were back to Kanthi Nivas.
Lunch was had. Rest. And a second round of cleanup.
There were group photographs.

And the satisfied trip back home.

Shououts/Takeaways/Post scripts:

• Shoutout to Gaanja’s bag which took a dive along with its owner into the water, breaking the fall, saving its owner and the assorted electronics and wallets inside it.
• Fatigue and tiredness makes everyday food taste so much better. Does nothing at all to mushroom curry though. That remains bad as ever.
• The three animals - the deer, the jackal and the same jackal again probably – giving the only indication that there’s some wildlife in the Bhadra reserve.
• Single room accommodation, washroom time-tables and running tap water. 
• Life to death conversion and wanted outlaws.
• The leeches. The damn leeches.
• The anti leech ammunition.
• The leech bite on my left foot, which when healing got infected with an Amoxicillin resistant strain of Stephylococcus aureus, giving the first years in  MS Ramiah teaching hospital a fine experiment to conduct - an incision draining procedure, also at the same time providing a topic of conversation and free lifts on the road from random people.

All men for Honor hardest work

[Long story short, I came to realize that I had come up with a 'close reading' of a wrong Emily Dickinson poem. This monstrously cringe-worthy mutilation of a brilliant work is thus presented here. For your face-palming. Cheers!]

All men for Honor hardest work (1193)

All men for Honor hardest work
But are not known to earn —
Paid after they have ceased to work
In Infamy or Urn —

This is one of Emily Dickinson’s short poems. It follows ABAB style of rhyming.

Analysis of the poem:
The poem talks about all people who work for Honor.
Honor, here, can be taken to mean honorable work, charitable work, work carried out for the benefit of others, the general public. It represents a sacrificial type of work that transcends banal occupations carried out solely to acquire money or achieve fame and fortune for oneself.

Emily says that such virtuous people are not known to earn.
Earn, in the way it is used, can refer to earning money, physical or material comforts or luxuries. It can also refer to earning of accolades, adulation, praise, rewards for the honorable work done.

Emily indicates such people are rewarded or paid only after they have ceased to work.
It is when the men retire from service and are no longer seen to be beneficial, to be of any further productive value; only then she says that the public will rise to take note of them.

The rewards and payment indicated in the poem, doled out to such men who gave their all towards Honor, at the end of their tenure, according to the poet, are usually infamy, harsh criticism, dishonor, notoriety or in the some cases even death.

Death is signified by the word Urn in the poem. Getting paid in urn here can be interpreted in three different ways.

Since the poem by itself strikes a melancholy note throughout, firstly, it can be taken to imply that the hard work of the people was never appreciated and was actually considered to be against the public interest and such people were put to death and their ashes contained in an Urn.

Secondly, paid in an Urn could mean that the person working towards Honor, did just that till his own death and his only reward was death itself, naturally knocking on his doorstep.

Or thirdly, taking the ever slightly positive note – it could be interpreted to mean that the selfless person’s work is appreciated at last, after his death and he is rewarded posthumously. But the initial interpretations gel better with the mood of the poem.

Summary:
The righteous people who work the hardest, while doing honorable, selfless deeds seldom garner earnings of any sort during the course of their duties. It is only after they stop being beneficial, they are paid by dishonor or death.

Possible Interpretations:
This poem might be slightly autobiographical.
The men working hard towards Honor can be taken to represent Emily herself. As, even though she composed over eighteen hundred poems, in her lifetime she saw only a very small handful of those poems published.
She did not gather any recognition as a poet while she was still alive, nor did she earn anything from her work.
The poem might be an indication of her realization that probably after her own death, when the people did discover her work she might live in history, in infamy at least.


PS: Parallels:
This poem reminds me of the poem “The Patriot” by Robert Browning wherein a similar theme is portrayed.
The patriot is elected joyously, and even after he works hard and accomplishes tasks that no others would have done, his achievements are not recognized and he is sent to hang. At the end, the man does feel a sense of relief that since his achievements were not paid for by the world – God will have to answer in heaven.

A Nonchalant Exfoliator...

A loofah

A loofah, aloof

A loofah, aloof with flu

A loofah, aloof with flu, flew

A fool!

Judges You!



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Downloaded, Finger Painted, Blogged from my Windows Phone.

Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta

The longer one stays away from posting or giving any heed to the blog; when restarting, more becomes the need to pen down such a monumental literary piece that would someday be at least made into a bad action movie.

Though the hiatus from blogging does fit nicely into that long time interval, this is not one such post.

This is not.

The most action you might come across in this post is a three way bull fighting scene, which was witnessed for a grand total of three seconds, from the window seat of the bus, someplace outside Bidadi.

But if you are reading this line, you have already come across it. The action sequence of the post is over.

The remainder of this post deals mostly with tips about reaching Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta and making it back.

First off, knowing Kannada helps.

A basic knowledge of the where the place is does too.

Since all knowledge about reaching Bilikal Betta on the internet appears to be generated by various versions of the one paragraph, here is some more content to increase that database:

Assuming you are not going by bikes, cars or skydiving right to the top the hill - this is what you do:

Get to K R Market, Kanakpura Bus Stop. There are buses to Kanakapura every 15 minutes or less. At least that’s what it looked like. Hop into one.

No matter what the Google maps say - there is no need to go to Kanakapura.

Get down at Harohalli.

Take a shared auto to Dodda Maralwadi. This is 8 km off. You pass through a lot of Doddis on the way like Narale, Karikal, Durgagowdana Doddi etc. Try to sit in the back of the shared auto with your feet dangling off the edge. Imagination permitting, a video can be made depicting one running very quickly in the air – in full reverse.

Stock up on food, water and drinks at this point. Stare and disbelief at auto drivers who proclaim it is an additional 15 km to the bottom of the trek. Small outbursts of laughter are permitted as well.

The foot of Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, or as the locals call it - Tal betta is 5 km from Dodda Maralwadi.

Get into an auto whose driver mentions a number no more than 7 km.

One passes through Devanahalli, Konala Doddi during this part of the trip. The place is overgrown with mulberry plantations. And every house is immersed in sericulture.

The best way to make the auto driver warm up to you is to ask basic questions on sericulture, where the eggs are procured, where the silk is sold; make appropriate sympathetic sounds when he details how they get only around 200 bucks for kg of silk produced etc. This effort will not only increase your sericultural know-how, but will also get you his name and contact details, and on the way back make him get a better auto and wait for you for the best part of a quarter hour - as you make your way down the trail.

The trek up – from Tal betta, to Madhya Betta to Bilikal Betta - is about 3 km. In the worst case scenario, as we had to test it out, starting at 1 under the scorching Sun, it takes exactly 2 hours to reach the top. If there are four people trekking, you will almost completely go through at least one kg of bananas, one kg of oranges, one liter of Maaza and two liters of water in this interval.

Tamarind and ‘Belad hannu’ can be foraged as additional appetizers along the way, but this completely depends on how accurately one can throw sticks or dried coconut husks to strike these down from the tree tops.

This trek is usually grouped under Easy to Moderate. In retrospect, it is easily moderate.

Atop the hill, there is a Rangaswamy temple. Carved underneath a giant monolithic rock.

There is a man made pond to the side of the temple, a slight ways off, which provides a sweet swimming area for several small frogs, large toads, small birds and huge bees. As we also came to understand, it serves a dual purpose of providing clean drinking water to the temple inhabitants.

And also, if you really wanted to know it all right away - on a biggish rock in front of the temple, an elephant is painted in blue.

The temple is open on Satudays. The priest comes in for puja on Saturdays. Saturday is the day of the week to target. Or the week of January 14-15th. A huge jatre takes place atop the hill and people from all surrounding villages attend at this time. But this decision, esteemed reader, is totally yours.

The altitude atop the Bilikal Betta makes it so that there is a very pleasant cross breeze at all times. After soaking in the scenery all around where one can see for miles and miles on end, lounging near the temple’s side is serene and peaceful.

The trek down takes just 45 minutes. The Sun also helped by greatly reducing its experiments to see how quickly it can dehydrate trekkers. You could call up your newly made auto driver buddy halfway along the trail, who will deliver you from Tal Betta till Dodda Maralwadi - directly into another auto which will take you all the way till Harohalli and a from there a bus will get you to Bangalore.

If you happen to get down at Banshankari and not K R Market, eat Masala Dosa and Sambar Vade in Adigas before returning home.

The trek will then be truly complete.

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This post is dedicated to Sarvesh and my brothers -the fellow trekkers, the Harohalli aunty- who knew the place way more than Google maps and various blog posts on this topic put together, the kids along the way– Sidalinganna –the woodcutter- for his entertaining tales of elephants and wild buffalo and his elephant survival techniques, Seethamma and her two brothers – for finishing the supply of chocolates, Manju – the sericultural auto driver – for being there on the way back and not making us walk an additional 5 km back to Dodda Maralwadi from Tal Betta.