LaTeX Beamer

I have been enjoying the past few weeks at my sister's home in Chicago. In my free time I tried out the PPT like packages for LaTeX. The Beamer package from Till Tantau rocks. It took just over an hour to convert my ASPDAC presentation to Beamer. If you use LaTeX to write articles use Beamer to write the corresponding presentations.

I have been using LaTeX for the last 3 years and I have been hooked on to it. The major reason is the beautiful documents it produces and the mathematical typesetting capability and also for a reason summarized by Peter Smith.

"You want to use LaTeX because you really like its fundamental concept that you should keep the business of specifying the logical structure and content of your documents sharply distinct from the business of specifying layout."

Nature's fury

Sea and earth joined forces to destroy much of the Indian Ocean nations. The extent of damage is unimaginable. I hope that nature will spare the aftershocks and help us recover.

பூமி தாயே கடல் அன்னையே!
மீண்டும் ஒரு இருத்ரதாண்டவம் வேண்டாம்!

Bhoomi thayae! Kadal Annaiyae!
Innoru ruthrathandavam vaendam

Biography of a forgotten cricketer

I read interesting biographies of a forgotten cricketer and an unforgettable cricketer.

The forgotten cricketer Jack Iverson was the so called mystery spinner. Iverson had a unique grip which meant that he could bowl legbreak, googly all with the same grip. What is interesting is that he took up cricket when he was 31 and played test cricket at 36. Jack Iverson's biography is titled Mystery Spinner: The Life and Death of an Extraordinary Cricketer and is written by that brilliant Aussie writer Gideon Haigh.

There are many moments in the book which touch your heart but the following one tops it all because of my similar experience in the grad school. Iverson was undoubtedly the best spinner during 1950-51 Ashes series but still had self doubts. He says sometime later (1960's) in an interview, ``Do you know how it is to play Test cricket with an inferiority complex? ''
Just demonstrates, test cricket is a mental game more than anything else. Probably applies at every level. Grad school is just like test cricket. You get into grad school because of your ability. The success in grad school is down to your mental makeup.

If you are not still convinced about picking this book to read, please read this review on Guardian.

I think the blog is little too long. I will post the blog on Basil D'Oliveira sometime later.

A sad day

My good friend, more of an elder sister to me, Chetana died in a horrific accident on Monday morning (09/20/2004). I am in a complete shock. Chetana was a cheerful lady who usually played the prankster in our team at Honeywell India.

Suddenly everything seems unimportant. Death really gives a perspective. How people cope up with the loss of the loved ones? It seems so unreal. We were chatting few months back and it seemed like the old days at Honeywell India. My thoughts are not so coherent. I am little lost as memories come back flooding.

God takes away people whom he really likes at a very young age. My prayers are with her family and especially Prashant her husband with whom she spent her best part of the last decade.

Sport and Politics

Sports and politics ideally should be twains that shall never meet. But as usual they meet more often than you would like. Probably that is because you can never compartmentalize things. Everything has something of the other and influence one another.
The saddest thing I read in recent times was the recent Asia Cup football final between Japan and China in Beijing. The Chinese really hate the Japanese due to the Imperial Japan's atrocities during the World War II in the mainland. But then by any token, booing Japanese national anthem was disgraceful.
It reminds of Valluvar's saying which roughly translates to,
"If someone does something bad to you, then shame him by doing good to him". He also adds that if you end up trying to be as bad as him then there is no difference between you and the other guy. Hope sometime that everybody in this world follows the Valluvarian path. Alas, we don't live in an ideal world!

Oh! Dear Windies!

West Indies suffer another defeat and hitting new nadir every day. Well nadir w.r.t Windies seems to a NP-Complete problem. If Bennett King had accepted the coaching offer would they have hit this low? Probably not. Getting a foreign coach might do a world of good. The other great masters of criminal negligence, Pakistan, hopefully are back redeeming themselves with Bob Woolmer as their coach.

Writing these reminds me of those titanic series played between Pakistan and West Indies in the late 80's. These matches were classics but sadly never find a mention in cricketing literature like the ones involving England or Australia. For someone who was getting to know cricket at that time it was a thrill to watch these two sides play each other. I could watch only the one dayers they played in Sharjah and no Test matches at all. Satellite television was coming little late! But as a cricket crazy kid in India I followed their matches by reading The Hindu. The one test I remember was at PoS in 1988. The Pakistanis had almost chased down the large 4th innings target with Javed making a century. The last over was real seat of the edge thriller with Sir Viv getting that combative keeper Yousuf first ball. With the Windies needing just the last wicket to square the series, Abdul Qadir played out the last 5 balls from Sir Viv to secure a draw. The final test was another classic with Pakistanis unable to land the sucker punch and Winston Benjamin played his innings of his life to help the Windies square the series. Sadly, Imran Khan's dream of winning a series against the Windies remained unfulfilled. Windies would not be beaten in a series for the next seven years. Their glorious reign ending when the Waugh twins joined together famously in Kingston.

Bowlers - Second class citizens?

West Indies are celebrating their 75th year anniversary of entering the test cricket. They picked the top 5 players to have represented them.
Frank Worrell, Viv Richards, Garfield Sobers, Brian Lara, and George Headley.
All of them are unquestionably legendary batsmen but not a single bowler in top 5? Atleast Malcolm Marshall deserves to be in.

Mike Selvey argues for the bowlers in this article. Selvey was a good county level seamer who also played a few tests at the highest level. One of those tests was unfortunately at The Oval when Sir Viv played a truly majestic innings which I think finished his career.

Technocrats in Politics

I was reading an article in Najam Sethi's Daily Times, one of the more saner newspapers in the world. It was about technocrats in Politics. Thankfully we had a humanist guiding our economic destiny in those turbulent early 90s.

Atherton v Donald

I was reading ATY in the Cricinfo website. The first item was Atherton v Donald. I remember watching that great duel. I have seen great duels but the one I remember most is Ambrose v S Waugh PoS, 1995. Waugh sledging and Curtley glaring ... A moment to remember.