Of the Confusion, and of 3D

You know what my problem is? It's having two many interests. Well, at times it can be in an advantage, but generally it means I'm divided between doing all the things I like and learning about them.

One of these many interests of mine which I had forgotten for many years is drawing. As a kid, I used to take drawing classes. Once my teacher told me, "you know what, you're quite good at drawing. Do you like drawing?" I answered, "I don't know!" He looked at me in some strange sort of way, like it's the strangest thing in the world not to know if you like something or not.

Now that I come to think about it, at that time I was feeling quite the same way that I do now. I knew I liked drawing, but I didn't know if it's the right thing to like. It's a few months that I'm thinking about this again. And now, I have more problems. I have already channeled my abilities to other fields. But since I am already confused about what I'm going to do after graduation, maybe a little more confusion is not much important.

My other fields of interest are programming and computer science (especially formal language theory, compiler theory, data storage, and graphics), and linguistics. To add to the confusion, my current field of study is computer hardware!

Back to the drawing problem, I'm beginning to feel like Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince. Since it seems too late to pick drawing again, lately I've been trying to remedy my situation by studying about computer graphics (from a programmer's perspective) and also 3D modeling and animation. These subjects have turned out to be very fascinating. The following is one of my first attempts to model something non-trivial. It may not be great, but I'm pretty much proud of it! It's my own pair of eyeglasses modeled using Blender, a great piece of Free/Open Source software.



But, yet still, the confusion remains.

The Mighty Fortress

Do not lose your faith. A mighty fortress is our mathematics. Mathematics will rise to the challenge, as it always has.

Stanislaw Ulam

I've not been able to post anything new to my blog for a long time. My mind has been quite busy to think of anything to write. I also haven't had enough time, nor it seems I'm going to have for a while. Anyhow, I was reading this thought provoking article today, when I saw the above quote from Stanislaw Ulam which I really liked. I thought I would post it here, even if it is only as a reminder to myself.

I never thought I would admit this one day, but I really love math!

He Does Exist

If you look at a watch, you can easily tell that it was designed and built by an intelligent watchmaker. Now, what would you say if there has been no power failure in your area for a long time, you are ripping your favorite Lord of the Rings DVDs to your hard disk so you can easily watch them several times a day (skipping parts from time to time) and the operation is supposed to last about three hours and only a few minutes before it is finished the power goes out only for a few minutes? What do you conclude? If you are smart enough to see that the watch has a watchmaker (so God exists!), you can easily see that Murphy does exist, too. It is as clear as daylight!

Bad Place for an Error Message

When a traffic light goes mad!

Iraq War, and the Turtles

Three years ago I watched Turtles Can Fly in the movies. Today, I had the pleasure of watching it again on DVD. The movie is directed by Bahman Ghobadi, while the fabulous movie score by Hossein Alizadeh greatly adds to the value of this great movie. I'm quoting from my diary, the entry for November 28, 2004. Be aware that it contains spoilers.

In an artist's work, one can hear his cry; and his grief, and his pain, and his sorrow. Is the way of expressing their thoughts, the only thing that makes an artist different from others? Maybe. Anyhow, when a group of artists (although, most of them non-professional) together show their best performance led by another great artist we see such thing as Turtles Can Fly by Ghobadi, Alizadeh, and others.

Turtles penetrates to the hearts of the audience. For a short time disconnects them all from the outside world and brings them together to see the real depth of the disaster, and to do this, it does not refrain from making them suffer so that they can feel the sufferance of the children in the story. When Shirkooh tells Kak Satellite how Kak Esma'eel has beaten him, everyone smiles at his sweet childishness but this is only the beginning. When Agrin's son, Riga, touches her mom's face and hair and then his heart, the tears start falling in the theater. When Henkov sees Riga's death in a dream the hearts stop beating for a moment, but Turtles continues: Satellite crying on one side, the child's body under the water of the spring, and finally a pair of shoes at one side of the deep valley (reminding one of the opening scene of the movie in which Agrin jumps into the valley). The movie takes away everyone's breath and in the end, everyone is speechless. All are shocked by what they have seen; the result of the crimes of the dictator who was finally taken away. But then, who is going to answer the pains of all Agrins.

People leave the theater silently. Empty streets, the cold air of midnight, cabs by the door of the theater, Tehran's strange quiet at this hour, all are awaiting out there, but they're still at some distance. People get out of the doors, maybe not even thinking about their companions, each taking their way home while they have not forgotten the stare of Agrin and her child.

An Update on Iranian Censorship

I've encountered two new cases of censorship from the Islamic Republic in the last two days:

1. Journalists are warned not to report any problems related to fuel rationing as BBC reports. I checked out a few newspapers yesterday (both reformist and conservative) and I found out that is correct. No stories. It's not that difficult to hear the real news, though, here in Tehran. You should just get out of the house.

2. To my surprise, today I found out that del.icio.us is filtered out. I cannot imagine why, especially because other social bookmarking websites I know (reddit, digg and technocrati) are not filtered.

UPDATE: I'm hearing that at the "fuel night" mobile service providers had been ordered to shut down SMS services. You see, they're well aware of the importance of text messages in Iran.

How to Set Fire to a City in Two Hours

I've recently had much difficulty updating my blog for two reasons. First, I'm heavily engaged with my final exams; and second, for some reason I can't access blogger. It seems there's something wrong with my Internet provider. I'm now using a proxy server to access blogger.com.

Anyhow, this recent piece of news was so much of a surprise that I couldn't help _not_ to write about it. Last night the government announced the fuel rationing will start from this midnight! I'm reading in the newspapers that even the Traffic Director of Tehran Municipality has not been notified of the government's decision. Now, we in Iran are getting used to arbitrary decisions of the Islamic Republic officials but this one was unexpected even for us. I've heard from the time of the announcement people have rushed to gas stations so that they can get some more fuel before the rationing starts officially. The government announcement indicates that people cannot get more than the announced amount (3.5 liters per day for private vehicles) even for a higher price.

There has been much turmoil in Tehran last night and this morning. The protectors have set fire to several gas stations, and there are HUGE lines in the remaining ones. I took this photo from one such line of cars. The cars on the right side of the street are waiting in a line to get to a gas station some two kilometers ahead.

The huge line of automobiles disrupted the traffic and I had to spend much more time to reach home.

On my way to university today, I felt something is wrong as soon as I reached the street. There were far more people and vehicles in the streets than usual, and then the cab I took charged me a higher price than previous days. I was listening to music all the time so I couldn't hear what people were saying around me. On the way back, I decided to took off the headphones and see what is going on around me. Soon, I noticed everyone is talking about rationing gas. I think this is a serious wrong step by Ahmadinejad administration. I'm personally against almost everything he does, but this one seems to be beating himself. His administration is one of propaganda. The state-run media are trying to ignore the turmoil. Today's headline of the hard-line daily Keyhan, for example, was about another one of the supreme leader's endless talks! One short column described everything about fuel rationing in two paragraphs like nothing important has happened; and just next to the same news-stand that the large number of unsold copies of Keyhan were stacked, everyone was talking about the _real_ news.