The Thought Curry

When I saw the Notre Dame cathedral from outside, I thought it was remarkable. Not awe-inspiring, just remarkable. But when I walked in, my jaw dropped. If there is a church that could convince people of Jesus, God, and Satan, the Notre Dame is probably it. This cathedral demands reverence. I took several deep breaths to let the magnificence of the place sink in - the stained glass patterns, the towering arches, the lighting, and the choice of colors. A contralto voice filled the cathedral seducing the visitors to give in to her Lord's majesty. This is a building designed to drive fear and awe into a man's heart and offer salvation in the form of a Christian God. The 200 odd years spent constructing it had most definitely been put to good use. As I explored the place, I saw a man with long unkempt hair and a rosary tucked into this belt, bowed in prayer, and wearing what appeared to be white racing overalls. I couldn't see his face. The name "James" was embro

I was in Paris this weekend which meant that I finally got to see the Eiffel tower! This scene was shot from the Pont d'lena, which is the name of the road that leads away (or towards) the Eiffel tower. The pictures do not do justice to this spot because the place is not just about the beautiful tower. There are con-artists pulling the age-old cup and ball scheme, surrounded by a cacophonous crowd that thinks it can win, illegal vendors, and policemen chasing them, a million tourists, street-mimes, and traffic that can give Bangalore a lesson or two in chaos ... For me, the Eiffel tower captures what it felt like to be in Paris! Not bad for a tower that was to be brought down 20 years after construction.

Mand-fakir felt a whoosh of hot air rising up his backside before he was thrown headlong out of his cave into the frigid Himalayan mountainside. As disorienting as the launch and landing was, he realized that lying on his face on the icy mountain-side with a burnt and exposed bum was likely to be quite nasty. So he got up and examined himself. Satisfied that there was no real damage, he turned to check his cave. It looked the same. He looked up. The sky did not look the same. What had been a starless full moon night before his belly-flop had turned into a very starry one, and the star population was increasing even as he goggled at the strange phenomenon. Within minutes, the sky was ablaze with what looked like a crore suns; so intense, it pierced through his closed eyelids. And a few moments later it was dark again. Blinded, but excited, he tottered back into his cave, feeling for his conduit, a human skull. He dimly noted that his hand felt alien, as if it was only entertaining hi

I just spent two days trying to install CUDA on Ubuntu. I thought that the documentations make this appear much harder than it needs to be. The main thing in my experience is just that we need to be careful about the driver. Here are the steps I suggest: 1. Install an NVIDIA driver from the ppa:graphics_drivers/ppa. Ensure that the version of your OS is supported by the driver. This information is provided on the ppa website here . 2. Download the correct version of the CUDA runfile. Installing from the package manager did not work for me because it would install an unsupported version of the driver. When installing from the runfile, ensure that you do not install the driver that comes in the package. As long as the restricted driver you downloaded in step one is recent enough, CUDA will work. 3. Set the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables. 4. After installing cuda, check if /dev/nvidia* files exist and ensure that you set the permissions so that non-root users can use

For all practical purposes, since time immemorial, it had stood there. Far away but close enough. Unseen. It was a sentinel. An agent to watch over the young earthling race as it took its first steps. Waiting  … To announce humanity to the elder races when it was ready. And then ... Curiosity crushed it. ---------------------------- Note: Curiosity  is a Mars rover launched by NASA that recently landed on Mars. It is a nifty bit of technology.

This caricature was made on a gloomy morning when I found myself depressed thinking about India and its politics. I cannot fathom how the conscience of our leaders allows them to bicker endlessly while the country is falling apart . Notes: 1. The turbaned person is Dr Manmohan Singh and the bald speaker is L K Advani, representing India's Government and Opposition respectively.  2. Use of R K Laxman's Common Man:  I am not sure what the copyright lawyers have to say about this, but I could not think of a better person on wheel chair for this.The drawing is mine, the character belongs to R K Laxman , one of India's greatest Cartoonist.