Michelangelo

Talking to a friend recently I remembered I used to have a pet turtle. That's right. A real live baby turtle. I found it one spring morning on a family picnic at the beach. I saw a tiny black thing running towards the water at an amazing speed from a distance. When we finally caught up with it me and my siblings couldn't believe what we saw. The only thought in our minds was how to get it home. We put it in a tiny bucket sealed it up and hid it in the car trunk. It tried to bite me too.

Those days Ninja Turtles were all the rage. So naturally we named it Michelangelo. The coolest of them all. Although over the course of time it was called all four names. There was speculation if it could actually mutate into a six foot tall ninja if we fed it toxic stuff. Thankfully sense prevailed and nobody tried anything of the sort. Michelangelo became a celebrity among my friends and got frequent visits.

I dug up a hole in the flower bed, lined it with plastic, covered it with real sand and made it like a tiny beach complete with seashells and of course a turtle. In those pre-google, pre-wikipedia days we had to rely on encyclopedias and the school library to find out more about sea turtles. Yes. I'm that old :P. After much research we found out that they eat fish, jelly fish and pretty much everything that swims and fits their mouths. All research aside, we fed him stale bread. And not once did he complain :P

Among Michelangelo's fans were the neighbourhood crows. Maybe they thought that the tiny black thing was a baby crow which fell into water and didn't give even up after many failed attempts thanks to security features on the little private beach. In the end they eventually got to the poor guy and literally sent him to sleep with the fishes. That was a sad day and the beginning of my enmity with the crows when I swore to avenge the little guys undeserved and premature death.

Little did we consider the fact that sea turtles are an endangered species and need to be protected and helped so that they may survive and flourish in their natural habitat. Turtles can live up to a hundred years. Who knows if we hadn't caught him that day he might have pursued his genetically programmed dreams of swimming to Australia. On the other hand he might have been caught in a fisherman's net. You never know. That's life. As a wise man once said "That's how it is" :P. Nevertheless, Michelangelo gave us many happy memories and for that I dedicate this post to him. COWABUNGA dude!

No paper? No problem

I just realized something. I used to be a regular newspaper reader but it's been two years since I last picked one up to read it seriously. I don't have a TV either. Then where do I get my news you ask? Well. Theres Twitter and Flipboard and NYT and google reader on my iPad and a chatterbox neighbour at work :)

Sightseeing - The Tri nation trip

I teamed up with Hassaan for this road trip who drove to Karlsruhe, DE in his car all the way from Ljubljana, SLO. The trip was full of sightseeing, song listening, sleeping in the car and in Hassan's case, cursing Italian drivers or accusing bad drivers of being Italians :P

Day 1:

After almost missing the Juma prayers we left Karlsruhe for Freiburg. Spent a few hours there and tried searching for the entrance to the Black Forest but apparently the elves have hidden it pretty well :P So we decided to head to Zurich. We spent the rest of the daylight hours (which are a lot in this season) exploring the city on foot listening to stupid fans cheering for their pathetic team for the FIFA world cup match with Honduras). The weather was sunny and hot. So was the crowd :P We finally hit a doner shop for dinner and a cool Slushie along the Limmat river. We stumbled upon ETH Zurich, the source of the paper that became the foundation for Boltay Haath during the walk through the city. Hassan's car (Renault Megane) earned the nick name 'Megan Fox' during this trip.It was parked deep inside the labyrinth of old streets we got lost twice before finally finding it. If only there was an app to help us find our car :P

Day 2:

We left for Matterhorn mountain early morning. Its the highest mountain peak in Switzerland and second highest in the Alps. (Fact: Its only half the height of K2.) On the way we went over the Furka Pass in the Alps. The roads were all zig-zagged and twisted in a paper-clip scheme. It looked like a pretty dangerous path but we eventually made it. On its highest point the road was at more than 2400 meters above sea level. At one place we discovered a pristine water fall and filled up all our bottles with 'alpine' mineral water.I had a bright idea of selling it but apparently its illegal so all I got was two coke bottles full of the most delicious, freshest glacier water and an almost frozen hand while trying to fill them.

After a couple of stops on the way (which could not be resisted due to the sheer beauty of the scenery) we reached Matterhorn Mountain. Beyond one point internal combustion vehicles are not allowed so we had to take a train to the summit town (Zermatt). It was almost like the Muree mall road but 100 times more developed. The chair lift could take us even further but it took 1 hour to get to the top and based on the schedule of the car we would not have had enough time to spend there so we decided to not go further and save the 60 EURs :P We bought souvenirs though.

From the Matterhorn Zermatt we went to Bern and guess what? The capital of Switzerland is Bern and not Zurich. True story. We got to see USA lose to Ghana at a local Mc'Donalds. We visited Einstein's old house from his patent office clerk days. Just like all capitals it was a pretty boring place. What made it a little interesting was how a guy wearing pants on his knees tried to convince a random chick to go to a party with him by rapping in front of her. It didn’t work :)

Day 3:

On the Bern to Geneva leg of the trip we watched the road signs change from German to Italian and finally to French. Lots of historical places in Geneva. Weather was sunny and warm. Rather than going home from Geneva we decided to go to the Annecy lake in France. It was a really beautiful place. Overflowing with local talent :P

We started a new tradition (for us) during the trip. There are old fountains in every city and town in Switzerland which have provided the citizens with drinking water since ye olde times. So wherever we went we collected water from these fountains for drinking. The water really is delicious. The ‘ghaat ghaat ka pani’ tradition continues to this day.

On the way back it was smooth driving with cruising speeds of 180 km/h on the German Autobahns where there were no speed limits. You could feel the Porsches and Audis whizzing by at what must have been more than 200 km/h. Except for the occasional work-in- progress slowdowns it was an awesome driving experience. I missed my Khyber more than a few times. Especially its right hand drive 'feature'. Even though it couldn’t pull of 180 even on German roads :P, I dedicate this trip to the memory of my trusty Khyber.

Major stops:

Karlsruhe, Germany

Freiburg, Germany

Zurich, Switzerland

Furka Pass, Switzerland

Taesch, Switzerland

Materhorn Zermatt, Switzerland

Bern, Switzerland

Geneva, Switzerland

Annecy, France

Of married people

Don't you just hate it when married people act as if it's a sin to have fun in the absence of their better halves? I had a friend in Hamburg whose wife couldn't join him for one year due to visa issues. Everytime there was talk of going somewhere for sight seeing or trying a new restaurant or going to the movies, his typical response used to be: "I don't have such interests but I will go when my wife gets here." He spent his days in a constant wait state. Holding off any fun activities until 'she' got there.

Then there is the case of a friend whose facebook statuses reflect a level of despair in direct correlation to the distance between the two of them. Something like 'Life is good' means she is in town; 'Ain't no sunshine when she is gone' means she just left town; 'Not having the best of days' means the wifey won't be back for a while and the local maxima '...is highly demotivated these days', I'm scared to even speculate where it goes next. Although his is a special case of MoIP (Married over IP) and warrants a separate blog post (coming soon) and even though he participates in online activities and tries to sneak back into the cool singles club, the distinction is almost always apparent.

A similar case is of Humpty Dumpty who works with me. Even a hint of 'extra curricular' activities elicits the annoyingly regular response of 'gar nicht' (no way). I mean, come on dude. You can't even go out for a little ice cream with the rest of the gang? Are you afraid it won't taste good enough if you go out with the rest of us mere mortals.

And don't even get me started on the girls. Don't. I might get into trouble for that :P



I respect the connection married people share with their spouses. It's a wonderful thing. They should consider themselves lucky. But remember that before you got hitched, you used to be individuals. Not part of some two headed entity that cannot function if separated. Being such needy saps accomplishes nothing expect rubbing it in the face of us singles that you got there first. So stop crying already and come to the party.

For those reading between the lines, you got it right. I am single (and available :P) and enjoying life in the ever decreasing ranks of the singles club.

Privacy in the Smart Grid and Multi Party Computations

The Smart Grid will enable users to monitor their energy consumption at a much lower level of granularity than the legacy grid. Such detailed information along with time-of-day billing can on the one hand allow consumers to control their energy consumption in order to minimize expenditure but on the other hand, if it falls into the wrong hands, can reveal insights into the daily activities of the user e.g., which appliance is used at what times, how many people use the facility and if/when they are away from home. An ideal resolution to this problem would protect the privacy of the users by ensuring that the profiles are revealed to no one other than the consumer but at the same time be used to calculate the billed amount at the end of the billing period by the supplier.

The role of Multi Party Computations in modern privacy protection schemes has been well established. Privacy is preserved by using algorithms that allow operation on sensitive data without it ever being revealed to any of the participating entities. Such a mechanism which operates without the need for a trusted third party shows promise when considered in the context of the consumer - distributor - supplier chain of communication where detailed energy consumption information is available only to the relevant party (consumer) yet at the same time allowing the distributor and supplier to carry out their billing activities.

The real challenge here is to come up with just such a mechanism and be able to perform the operations using the limited resources of a smart meter. That's what I am working on these days. Wish me luck :)

Addicted to change?

I left my job in favour of masters in Hamburg because I needed change. Then I started looking for thesis options elsewhere because, that's right, I needed change. I know change is good but I keep wondering, am I addicted to it?

Ubuntu bug

What next :P ?