Phased Out >>>{{

It was a dark dark night

Yet my neighbors had the light

Morbid shame, sunken face

Truth is out, nahi three phase:(

“This is it my boy…” I said to myself over and over again. “You just gotta take Mr. Proakis out and give him a once over.” Alas, Fate (and their new election allies, aka EB) had other plans. For the third time this weekend, my house, like in a third-rate thriller, was plunged into darkness.

“Tick tock tick tock” the eternal dance of my bedroom clock continued, mindless of his companion's mood. Sighing, I replaced Mr. Proakis (in the cobwebby corner) and opened the door... to step into centre stage!

The streets were alight, the neighborhood fluorescent tubes bestowing their incandescence into the night. I pinched myself… “Eeow!” assured once more I was on Planet Earth, raced down the stairs, only to hear my grandma gushing over the phone “Saaar, no current in my house only saar. We have single phase!”

The nightmare continues…

John G. Proakis ?!?

They said it could not be done.. Make men fly that is.... Yet the Wright Brothers did it.

They said it could not be done.. Flying into space that is.... Yet Yuri Gagarin did it.


And before you decide that i have gone rock-craving mad and push that nifty little mouse pointer towards the nifty little X on your screen.. all right, all right, sheesh i am getting to the point already. This review is about Digital Signal Processing by John G. Proakis.

Call me mad.. after all who in their sane minds would write a review on an engineering textbook. Especially if he is not yet gone bald, or married, or underwent a tragedy of both? Or maybe it's just the cobwebs settled on the yellow-cum-violet paperback textbook that drew my attention that day.. or my dad's ever so gentle warning that he is gonna make me beg on the streets. Or it could just be the heavy supper tonite that refuses to settle down in my ample tummy and made me dream up the whole damn thing..

Whatever it may be, one thing is for sure.. the author is gonna do something he wouldn't have imagined doing so in his wildest dreams.. would have laughed his head off if you had told him before. Be it as it may..

On a dreary Wednesday evening(if it ever really did happen and i was wide awake, it occured on 8/11 at 8:30PM IST) , the author stumbled upon a book titled Digital Signal Processing Eastern Economy Edition. Charmed by the magic of the three Es, the author slowly opened the book only to find........................................................................................... what did you expect you moron? the first page of course! Drawn by the sequence of numbers, he turned the page, and lo behold, he found the second page!!! With a beating heart(and wild expectations) the author continued to flip page after page and drew up the following conclusions:

• the book had a sum total of 968 pages(not counting the appendices) of similar nature and structure
• all had a white background and black printing in a language similar to English
• the contents were cryptographically mastered in Greek and Latin semantics, possibly based on a code similar to Da Vinci's
• the page numbers formulated an arithmetic sequence beginning with the number 1 having a seed/increment of 1 as well, and mean 484!

Alas! all this intense research exhausted the author into a state only a triathlon champion can possibly understand. Yet, he was no ordinary mortal. Summoning his Herculean strength, the author was about to explore the magic of the first page(an obscure charm called Preface, possibly a spell to do with making your nose longer or morphing some other facial feature), when his legendary Mom called him down to eat:( With a heavy heart, he lifted that wonderful manuscript and restored it to its rightful place(in the cobwebby corner).

There it still lies.. waiting for the next unsuspecting mortal to enter the hidden depths of ... DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING by John G. Proakis.

Enid Blyton - Ecstasy

Yes.. I am actually gonna begin this blog with an Enid Blyton post. You can laugh at me, sneer even. And yes, my gray cells could very well be under-developed. All I know is, read a Blyton once.. and you will never be the same!

I have always loved Blyton.. she is the epitome of what fiction meant to me as a child! How well I still remember the early Brer Rabbit books.. the easy language, the excitement with which I used to flip over the pages to see what new trick the wily rabbit has played on poor Brer Fox! A world of talking animals with IQ s over 90 is not a new idea, granted.. it has been around since the times of Panchatantra. What distinguished the British novelist was her unique narrative style.. one felt that he was part and parcel of a play that was enacted before his very eyes! She, at least to me, is one of the few authors that brings every single character, be it a 12-year old boy or a golliwog, to life!

My literary quest with Enid Blyton took on a new turn when I was introduced to the Famous Five series, the adventures of five(duh!) cousins and their dog. There I learnt the meaning of honor and fair play, why telling the truth, though never easy, always worked out for the better than a easy fib. I went along cross-country bicycle rides with the Five, feasted on cucumber and tomate sandwiches, ate sausages and ice-creams washed down with ginger beer. More importantly, I learnt what it means to share, to take courage even when the tide is against you, and what friendship truly meant. Blyton, was in short, my very first moral philosopher, my best friend and guide.

Swept along into teenage, I feasted upon the Mystery and Adventure series. Fatty of the Find-Outers still amazes me.. his brilliant feats of deductions rivals the legendary Holmes; Philip of the Adventure set had a magic with animals.. a thirteen year old having the courage to take on an angry bear(The Circus of Adventure) , and Jack with his passion for birds! Blyton made me love and admire Nature, gave me a fresh outlook to life! Even today, when stressed out from college, when I take up a Blyton I feel myself enter a magical world of talking rabbits, amateur detectives and delicious macaroons, and gives me HOPE!!! THANK YOU BLYTON.