404: Page not found

I am writing code in C after several years. Needless to say, I am woefully out of touch and don’t remember the most basic of things. Add to that, I am writing code using a simple text editor and compiling it using gcc on commandline. Every time I see a funny error, it takes me a while to actually understand what is wrong. A really good IDE with awesome intellisense really does spoil you!

So I got this funny little compilation error which left me stumped:

/tmp/cckI2FzP.o:(.eh_frame+0×11): undefined reference to `__gxx_personality_v0′
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

I googled and found that this error is normally related to C++, but I was writing code in plain old C. So what was wrong? I found later that I had named my code file as List.C instead of List.c. After renaming it to List.c, all was well.

Turns out that filename extensions in linux are case sensitive (wonder why I did not run into that problem all these years),  and that C is a commonly used extension for C++

So I was out in NYC on the second day of my trip. We did not have much planned. I wanted to go to Rockefeller Center and my friends agreed kinda for the want of a better plan. So we got out of the subway station, and we saw this Brazilian carnival happening. You know what to expect in such a place. It was full of life and lots of people; brimming full of food, music drinks, and some other good things.
After a while I got very thirsty and wanted to get out of the place cos it was too crowded. Then we went over to Rockefeller Center and later the St. Patrick’s cathedral and did the regular tourist stuff (you know…clicking pics and all that). Most of the people were already tired and they were sitting on the cathedral stairs outside. One of my friends suddenly said, “Hey, Rafael Nadal just walked along the street).
“What?”. I did not want to believe that, but I just found myself saying “Lets go” and I started running across the street. I heard my friend say that he was wearing a yellow tshirt. My mind was a whirl. It could easily have been a mistake. But NYC is currently hosting the US Open and I did not want to miss a glimpse of the world’s top seeded tennis player. I spotted the man in question from across the street but the crossing was difficult due to the traffic. I had to wait for the walk signal to come on, an then I ran again. He looked slightly taller than what I expected and the hair looked shorter and straigher from behind. Nevertheless I kept running and went ahead past him. I heard that unmistakable voice speaking fluent Spanish. I forgot to mention, he was walking with a couple of other guys (and they were all walking very fast, as if they were in a hurry).
I turned around and looked at him. I was still not sure and I just stood there while he walked past. I saw someone else approach him and shake his hand while he continued to race along the road. I was reluctant to approach him since he seemed in such a hurry and I told my friends that he wont stop for us. But two of my friends were insistent and they went and they stopped him and requested for a picture. I did not see much, but I just happened to notice Nadal turn around and pose for the photograph. I ran ahead to bask in the moment.

I was meeting my favourite tennis star of the time. Ironically the guy who clicked the photograph was the one who was most crazy about Nadal. (Thanks for clicking the picture Sanatan). After the picture was clicked, we yelled a “Thanks Rafa” chorus and we knew that our day was made.

Ok. I am back after a long hiatus. Today marks the completion of 3 weeks since I landed in the USA. I have come here to pursue a Masters’ Degree in Computer Science. I could not think of anything to write about because most of my recent posts have been about books I have read. The last book I read was “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follet, and unfortunately I did not get enough time to complete it before my flight to the US. And for some reason, I did not even carry the book with me (maybe it was the size of the book). So, its been 3 weeks since I read anything creative and hence no posts. Life in the US is not very different from what it was back home. I still feel like I am here on an extended nightout at a friend’s house.

The past 3 weeks were spent in setting up my new house, shopping, eating, sleeping, shopping, opening bank accounts, roaming around campus, shopping, waiting for my new laptop to get delivered, and other miscellaneous things not worth writing about. This makes me feel that I have done absolutely nothing productive in the past 3 weeks. Oh yes, I have this big obsession about productivity and using my time effectively (but I end up wasting most of my time anyway and then fret about it in posts like these).

One noticeable difference between life in Bombay and life here in the US is that I do not have to use public transport as extensively as I had to while in India. My university runs a shuttle service which takes me to most nearby places, and not just to and fro. That having said, it is quite difficult to go even relative far off places without a car. Bombay suburban transport system rocks. Yes, I said Bombay and not Mumbai. You would be surprised….people here do not know Mumbai, and I like calling it by the old name. It got a classy zing to it.

As it is apparent, I am suffering from a writer’s block. Suggest me of something to write about.

My Name is Red (Benim Adım Kırmızı) is a turkish novel by Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel laureate. It won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003, as well as the French Prix du meilleur livre étranger and Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour awards in 2002. The book in consideration in this article is the English translation by Erdağ M. Göknar. There have been questions about the English translation not being as good as the Turkish version and the word order being quite difficult. But honestly, I did not know that the book I was reading was actually an English translation and not an original English work.

The story is based in 16^th century Istanbul, a year before the thousandth anniversary (calculated in lunar years) of Hegira (the migration of Muhammad and his followers to the city of Medina). The Ottoman Sultan Murat III has commissioned an illustrated manuscript to display his power to the Venetian Doge. This manuscript is to be made utilizing the “controversial” aspects and techniques of the Frankish masters, namely portraiture and perspectives. Due to this reason, the Head Illuminator of the Sultan is bypassed and the work is commissioned to Enishte Effendi, who co-ordinates Master miniaturists Stork, Olive, Butterfly and Elegant. It is rumored that the paintings are blasphemous and an affront to Islam and The Prophet. Subsequently, the master guilder Elegant working on the manuscript is murdered. The book follows the path of a murder mystery where the identity of the murderer is revealed at the end. Pamuk’s knowledge of Islamic miniatures is mind-blowing. He goes on to narrate several stories from Islamic lore, stories of great miniaturists and their history, going back to Behzad and the Chinese influences brought by the Mongols. The book discusses and debates about various topics, the most prominent of these are:

·        Form and style,

·        The relationship of art to society, religion and God, and

·        The artistic, cultural and political differences between the Ottomans and the Venetians.

The first thing that strikes you while reading this novel is that the story is narrated in several different voices which recur throughout the story. No two consecutive chapters are narrated by the same narrator and all speak in the first person. There are a couple of rather unusual narrators: a gold coin, a tree, a dog, Satan, and even Death itself. I later figured that these narrators are in fact the central themes of the illustrations appearing in the secret manuscript in question in the book. One of the central points about traditional miniatures, I learned, is that they always appear as illustrations of a story, and never as independent paintings. Pamuk has adopted this style in his narration of the story: by describing the protagonists as part of an old manuscript, supporting the story. The characters are aware that they are characters in a story and address the reader with irony.

The setting of the story in late sixteenth century Istanbul is detailed; the plot is engaging (albeit a bit slow moving in certain places) with several interesting characters. Indeed there are too many themes in the book (art, religion, Allah, love, lust, jealousy, hatred, intrigue, murder) and I cannot do justice to all of them in this short article. If you are interested in Islamic art, Ottoman miniatures or medieval Istanbul, then pick up this book. But be warned, this is not an easy or quick read.

Slaughterhouse Five : Kurt Vonnegut
This book is widely regarded as one of the best anti war novels of all times. It begins as a memoir and is based around the Allied bombings of Dresden in World War II. The author Kurt Vonnegut is a minor character in the story as the narrator and is quite funny. Both Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut are portrayed as prisoners of war in Germany.

The book has an unusual narrative style which is quite nonlinear in time since the protagonist Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck in time” i.e. he experiences different periods of his life in seemingly random order and he has no idea which part of his life he will visit next. As a result of this queer condition, Billy experiences his own death several times and he switches back and forth between prisoner camp in Germany and his life as an affluent optometrist in Ilium, NY, and sometimes his stay on the planet Tralfamadore. One of the important events in Billy’s life is when he gets abduced by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. The Tralfamadorians teach Billy about the concept of time as the fourth dimension, fate, and death’s lack of discrimination. To the Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, everything always exists and has always existed. Everyone is alive and has always been alive. They see time as we might see the Rocky Mountains, stretching endlessly on both ends. So if all events are predecided, then “what about free will?” asks Billy. The Tralfamadorian responds: “I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe… Only on Earth is there any talk of free will”. This lends to the belief that human beings do what they do because they must.

The book opens with the narrator’s account of his own relation with the Dresden bombings and his reasons for writing the book. Although there is no reason to believe that this account is also not fictional. Thus, the real story begins with chapter 2. I found this form of writing unusual (although amusing) which they say, is common to postmodern meta-fiction. Throughout the story, the author pokes fun at the concept of war, portraying the characters in sarcastically humorous light. Vonnegut says that the soldiers dying in these wars are young men barely out of high school. That is the reason he portrays these soldiers as scared young men instead of heroes of war. This is so that his book does not encourage more wars in which children would be sent to die (quite like the so called Childrens’ Crusades).

All in all, a very entertaining and funny book. Quite an easy read.

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction of the year (1938). Also, The Hobbit has been recognized as “Most Important 20th-Century Novel (for Older Readers)” in the Children’s Books of the Century poll in Books for Keeps.

I should probably have read this book before reading Lord of the Rings since quite a few characters in the epic tale have been introduced in The Hobbit: most notably the titular protagonist Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf the wizard, Gollum aka Smeagol. Also noteworthy is a side character Gloin, who is said to be the father of Gimli- Elf Friend (Fellowship of the Rings). Two other noteworthy characters are the dwarves Balin and Ori. Recall that the Fellowship of the Rings discovers Balin’s tomb in Mazarbul in the Mines of Moria and the Book of Mazarbul written by Ori. The story also accounts how Bilbo Baggins gains the possession of the One Ring. The ring, along with the character of Gollum, sets the tone for the much known sequel.

The tale is based around a typical comfort loving, homely hobbit Bilbo Baggins who finds himself on an adventure with thirteen dwarves also accompanied by Gandalf, an itinerant wizard who disappears in the middle of the story later to reappear at key moments (typical Gandalf). Gandalf is out on his own business but incidentally assisting the dwarves on their quest. The team of the thirteen dwarves and the “burglar” Bilbo have set out to reclaim an ancient treasure of Thror the Dwarf King under the mountain which is now guarded by a ferrocious dragon Smaug. Their journey takes them over strange and dangerous lands which lands them into mortal peril more than once. The story is in the form of an episodic quest and the prose is interspersed with poetry and songs that are typical to Tolkien’s works.

The publishers of the Hobbit requested for a sequel which eventally resulted in the epic Lord of the Rings. Tolkien rewrote some of the parts of the Hobbit in order to facilitate a smooth transition into the darker themes of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a story for children, and The Lord of the Rings for the same audience who had subsequently grown up since its publication. The Lord of the Rings was written in less humorous tones deals with more philosophical and darker themes: while the Hobbit has its share of death and danger, it is about the quest for a lost treasure. Even though many of the encounters are dangerous or threatening, the general tone is light-hearted. On the other hand, LOTR is about the war between good and evil: it is the war for middle earth. One can scarcely underestimate the gravity of that situation.

All said, I am quite amazed at the detailed work of Tolkien who has gone to extraordinary lengths to bring his fictional world to life. Middle Earth has a very well documented history: wars and legends, legacies left by kings, generations and genealogies, maps, ancient lands, wild characters, magical objects, runes, languages, lores, music, poetry; and all this changing through the times as characters change and their places are taken up by new generations. The chronology almost reads like a history textbook.

A live-action film version was announced on 18 December 2007, to be co-produced by MGM and New Line Cinema, and produced by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. A date of 2011 has been proposed for its release.

 Far over misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To find our long-forgotten gold.

I was told by people to be wary before picking up a Rushdie book because Rushdie’s works are normally considered very heavy, with challenging prose and long sentences. My friends told me to read one only if I am ready to spend a lot of time with the book. I remembered seeing Rushdie’s interview on television several weeks ago when he spoke of latest novel. He spoke about Jodha being an imaginary character in Mughal history. At that time I did not know why he was making the point. I thought that it was probably because of the ongoing controversy about Jodhaa-Akbar: the movie.

Half of the story is based in the time of “Akbar the Greatest” , in the city of victory – Sikri, while the other half in Renaissance Florence - the time of Niccolo Machiavelli. The story is about a lost Mughal princess: an enchantress who relates these different worlds together. Magic and enchantments have a special place in this story and they have been treated very differently from other books based on magic. This is not fantasy fiction. It is historical fiction in spite of the heavy concentration of enchantments throughout the story. The characters we meet include the Navratnas in akbar’s court: Abul Fazl, Birbal, Tansen and the others. Then there is Salim, Badauni and the like.

The character of Queen Jodha is particularly enigmatic because of the magical character ascribed to her. The reader is left to interpret her character by his own imagination. She can either be thought of as a product of collective schizophrenia at the insistence of the Emperor’s will; or as a product of the amazing creative powers of the Emperor: The Shelter of the World, the Invincible.

Truly, the character of Akbar is grand. I always admired Akbar as a great king; the grand unifier of Hindoostan, but never before had I imagined his character as he has been shown in this book. You can truly feel awesome power vested in this man. He is the omnipotent emperor: the man who has the power to do absolutely anything in the world. He can conquer the world; He can bring the perfect woman of his dreams to life from a mere fantasy.

In the other part of the world we have Nicollo Machiavelli and his two friends growing up from young boys in Florence. There are glimpses of Girolamo Savonarola’s weepers, whose doctrines are put to end in a blazing fire quite like the “bonfire of vanities”, practised by him and his followers. Only in this case it was Savonarola and his followers who were roasted in the fire. The story traces the fall of the Medici, the creation of the republic, the return of the Medici, the troubled times of Europe, Popes indulging in warmongering etc.

Rushdie’s command over the English language is staggering. The prose is convoluted at times, which is quite a characteristic of his writing, but this is certainly not at the expense of readability. Although I took a little more time on this book than others of the same length, I did not quite realize it till I finished the book and sat down to write a review.

A celebration of creative writing. Recommended reading.

I have been playing around with the ASP.NET login controls lately. After getting the membership and role management framework to work on my website (which is quite a task in itself), I set to figure out some other small things. In this case, I wanted to apply custom styles to the login control on my Login.aspx page.

Doing this is as simple as assigning a class to the CssClass attribute of the Login control and to any sub-controls whose appearance you want to modify.

<body class=”Body”>

<form id=”form1″ runat=”server”>

<div>

<asp:Login ID=”Login1″ runat=”server” CssClass=”TextBox”>

<LoginButtonStyle CssClass=”Button” />

</asp:Login>

</div>

</form>

</body>

</html>

Now I should mention that these classes are contained in a .css file inside my App_Themes/Default/Styles folder.

So in the <head> section of the page, I added the following:

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”../App_Themes/Default/Styles/LoginStyles.css” />

Simple enough eh? Wrong!

No matter what I tried, no matter how much I played with the path to the css file, the styles simply won’t be rendered on my page. The same styles get applied if you use them in a <style /> element in the page itself. I was flummoxed.

The thing to note here is that the authorization section in my website is configured as:

<authorization>

<deny users=“?“/>

</authorization>

This means that unauthenticated users will not be able to access the website resources: which includes style sheets and/or images on the website!!

So, in order to get this to work, I had to move the stylesheets for the login page and the related images to a separate folder called “AllowAll” and make the following additions to my web.config file:

<location path=“AllowAll“>

<system.web>

<authorization>

<allow users=“*“/>

</authorization>

</system.web>

</location>

Basically this section means that all users (*) should be allowed access inside the “AllowAll” folder, regardless of whether they are authenticated or not.

Then I simply changed the path to my stylesheet on the login.aspx page:

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”AllowAll/LoginStyles.css” />

And that did the trick. Woof…so much for authorization!!

The Scarlet Pimpernel: Baroness Emmuska Orczy

This is an adventure novel set in the reign of terror that followed the French Revolution. The novel is based in the year 1792: the year of grace when French aristocrats are being slaughtered at the gullotine in the name of liberté égalité fraternité.

A league of brave englishmen led by an elusive and heroic leader - The Scarlet Pimpernel, travel in disguise to France, plot a series of daring rescues to save their condemned fellow Frenchmen from daily executions. The identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel is a closely guarded secret and is unknown even to those people whom he rescues. The league, and especially their leader gain legendary status in the elite English society and equal amount of notoriety amongst the French revolutionists.

The book is based around one such rescue plot and is cleverly woven as a cat and mouse chase between the plotters and the French authorities. There is a nice love story which has been interwoven into the fabric of the story without making it seem too obtrusive or distracting. The love story adds to the plot without making it maudlin. The novel is very typically British in terms of the characters and the environs: beautiful women, gallant men, curtsies, bows, formal parties, fashion, high society et. al.

An enjoyable suspense novel although quite predictable at times. Recommended reading.

Black Friday - Hussain Zaidi

A meticulously researched book based on the Bombay serial blasts of 1992. I had not watched the movie, so was not well versed with the plot. The first few pages that described the actual blasts really scared me. Real good work done by the author who collated all the information from thousands of pages of CBI dossiers, courtroom accounts, interviews with real people etc. Since the blasts were a contemporary event during our lifetime, I found this to be an important book with respect to the history of the city. A chilling account of how a set of gangsters (and not terrorists) could mastermind and execute the sinister plot that killed and maimed scores of innocent people.

This is probably the most controversial case in the history of Indian law enforcement, and hence I don’t think we can take every plot in the book at face value; but the book does give a pretty decent picture of the overall framework of the planning for the blast, the execution, the investigation, the court verdicts, and some related events like the Sanjay Dutt case, a couple of gang-wars etc. worth a one time read.

1. Naxalbari in northern West Bengal lent its name to the Naxalite movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalism )

2. Potti Sriramulu’s fast led to the creation of Andhra Pradesh: the first state that was created on the basis of linguistic lines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potti_Sriramulu). (One point each for the personality and the state)

3. Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar (1906-1973), popularly known as Guruji, was the second “Sarasanghachalak” of the RSS. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhav_Sadashiv_Golwalkar )

4. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (father of Farooq Abdullah and grandfather of Omar Abdullah) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Abdullah )

5. Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna_Menon )

6. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: Friday, the 25th November, 1949: Constituent Assembly of India (http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol11p11.htm )

7. Jayprakash (JP) Narayan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayprakash_Narayan )